Sep 24 2008
Mafia killer poet caught
Prison escapee was ‘unrecognisable’, police say
Milan — A convicted mafia killer who changed his appearance after escaping from prison has been nabbed by police at a Milan beauty parlour.
Salvatore D’Avanzo, 46, was caught while getting a tattoo of a Samurai warrior – one of many treatments since he absconded from jail in April that investigators said had made him ”unrecognizable”.
Police explained that while doing time in Milan’s Opera prison, D’Avanzo had greying hair, glasses, pasty skin and a chubby physique.
But in his five and half months of freedom the mobster cultivated a new look, dying his locks raven-black and working up a healthy tan.
D’Avanzo also swapped his spectacles for contact lenses, got a series of tattoos and lost around 15 kilos, they said.
When police burst in on him at the beauty parlour, he told them: ”Thank god it’s you, I thought you were hitmen”.
D’Avanzo was linked to the Palermo Vitale mafia family and was jailed for life in 1999 for the murder of Diego Bonura, a member of a rival clan in the Sicilian capital.
Bonura was shot in the head, disfigured with a pick axe and buried. His body was only discovered 10 years later.
D’Avanzo earned day parole in 2001 for good behaviour and was famous in the prison for composing love poetry to a girlfriend on the outside.
But in April he failed to return to the prison from his day job, faking his own death by abandoning his car near the prison with the lights on, the doors open and the keys still in the ignition.
”He was tired of prison life and wanted to live with his girlfriend,” a policeman said.
D’Avanzo, who had 1,400 euros in cash and fake identification papers in his pockets when he was caught on Wednesday, spent his time as a fugitive between Lombardy and Liguria, frequently visiting the San Remo casinos.
His girlfriend is under investigation as an accomplice to D’Avanzo’s prison break but claims she knew nothing of her lover’s criminal past.
D’Avanzo has now been returned to his cell in the Opera jail.
Mafia killer poet caught – ANSA – 2008-09-24 19:13 – This story was found at: http://www.ansa.it/site/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2008-09-24_124250862.html
