Two fugitives and an arsenal All leads to MMD by Riccardo Lo Verso
The arrests of Bigione and Marino, the arms of Paceco. Something bubbling up in the Trapani area.
PALERMO - Two arrested fugitives and a rediscovered arsenal. Three sequential episodes only apparently unrelated to each other. If it is true that in the province of Trapani not necessarily all investigations must revolve around the figure of Matteo Messina Denaro, who is rooted in Trapanese roots of his criminal power, is with the figure of the fugitive that the three episodes oblige to confront.
In a few days between Vita and Paceco they arrest Vito Marino and find a weapons depot. Marino was a fugitive from 2016, when the life sentence for the Brescia massacre became final. It was he who exterminated, in 2006, the entire Cottarelli family - father, mother and seventeen year old son - in their villa. They arrested him in a sheepfold in the countryside of Vita.
Vito Marino is the son of Girolamo, called 'Mommo' u nano '. In 1986, the killer on board an Alfasud stopped in front of the Paceco boss and exploded two guns of machine guns. Messina Denaro was also shot. 'Mommu u nano' paid for his refusal to kill his brother-in-law's wife who had decided to collaborate with the magistrates. The past is not forgotten: Marino, with the prospect of remaining in prison for life, is one of the worst enemies of Messina Denaro.
How did you arrive at his arrest and find the weapons? Are the two episodes tied? Is there any confidential source behind it?
They spend a few days from the arrest of Marino and in an abandoned farmhouse in the Paceco countryside four ready-to-use Kalashnikovs are found, complete with magazines and ammunition. There was a sawed shotgun in a bin, two 38-caliber revolvers, a shotgun, a mab 38 submachine gun, and another mp-40 rifle. In short, an arsenal at the disposal of the Paceco and Salemi mobsters. And that is to say those who, more than others, have shown great fidelity to the fugitive godfather.
Just as loyal was Vito Bigione for years,manager of drug trafficking originating in Mazara del Vallo. They arrested him in Romania. Long beard and dark glasses to disguise. "My name is Matteo", he told the mobile policemen of Trapani. For years, Bigione, on behalf of the family of Mazara del Vallo, has managed the drug routes between South America and Europe, acting as a glue between Cosa Nostra, 'ndrangheta and South American cartels. Just in South America, now about ten years ago, Matteo Messina Denaro would have been sighted.
Bigione was very respectful with Vito Gondola, the last capomafia of Campobello di Mazara who died last year at the age of eighty. Messina Denaro blindly trusted Gondola. Until March 2010, the correspondence transmission system had been managed by the fathers of the fugitive, Vincenzo Panicola and Filippo Guttadauro, and by his brother Salvatore. When they were all arrested, the fugitive looked to the past to replace them. And he chose Gondola who was already present at the dinner organized in December 1991 based on oysters, lobsters and Dom Perignon in the house of Tonnarella where Totò Riina lived. It was there that the 'chief of chiefs' decided to exterminate the enemies of the Marsala mafia.
All the investigations that led to the two arrests and the kidnapping of arms are coordinated by the Palermo prosecutor Francesco Lo Voi and by the adjunct Paolo Guido, and that is the same as the magistrates who seek Messina Denaro. Something bubbling in Trapanese. We hope to bring the fugitive. Certainly the three news events are a sign that the territory is manned.
