A determined manhunt that began 23 years ago ended yesterday morning when Salvatore Lo Piccolo, reputed to be the Cosa Nostra's new "boss of bosses," was captured by a small army of police in a Mafia hideout near Palermo, Sicily.
In spite of Mr. Lo Piccolo's ability to avoid detection for longer than the careers of most of Sicily's anti-Mafia police and prosecutors, Prime Minister Romano Prodi hailed the arrest as "a success for the state ... and all honest citizens."
Francesco Forgione, the head of the Italian parliament's anti-Mafia commission, said the arrests "mark an extraordinary day for Italian democracy and the anti-Mafia fight."
Mr. Lo Piccolo, 65, was seized in a raid on a country house that had been under police surveillance for about two months. Forty police officers, some of whom fired warning shots, surrounded the house at 9:30 a.m. local time. No one was injured.
The raid produced prizes other than Mr. Lo Piccolo, who was known as il Barone (the Baron). Also arrested were his son, Sandro Lo Piccolo, 32, who shouted "I love you" to his father as he was being cuffed, and two accomplices said to be rising Mafia stars, Gaspare Pulizzi and Andrea Adamo. All four were among those on Italy's 30 Most Wanted list.
The arrested men did not return gunfire. Palermo Police Chief Giuseppe Caruso said the four had eight guns among them, one equipped with a silencer, another a police-issue handgun. "Lo Piccolo is a really dangerous man," he told reporters.
Mr. Lo Piccolo's capture was no accident. Police had been searching for him in connection with a 1984 murder, but made a breakthrough in August, when they arrested Mario Franzese, who had been a faithful Lo Piccolo lieutenant. Mr. Franzese shed his loyalty in a hurry and agreed to co-operate with the police. The result was the betrayal of his former boss.
The arrests mark the end of one Mafia era and perhaps the start of another, as warring Mafia families try to fill the power void left by the arrests.
Mr. Lo Piccolo began his crime career as a bodyguard for Sicilian mobster Rosario Riccobono, who was later killed in the wars between the rival Palermo and Corleone Mafia families.
That war peaked in the late 1980s and took the lives of about 2,000 people, most of them members of the Palermo families.
The infamous Toto Riina emerged from the war as the Cosa Nostra's boss of bosses. He was arrested in 1993 and was replaced by another ferocious killer, Bernardo Provenzano. Mr. Provenzano, who had been on the run for 42 years, was arrested 18 months ago. Both men are in their 70s and will die in prison.
Police believe Mr. Provenzano's arrest triggered a power struggle between Mr. Lo Piccolo, the leader of the Palermo Mafia families, and a brutal gangster named Matteo Messina Denaro, 45, who is supported by the Corleone clan. Police, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, consider Mr. Denaro among the world's top drug dealers. He is also a ruthless killer. Among his alleged victims was his girlfriend, who was three months pregnant when she was strangled.
With the senior and junior Lo Piccolos under arrest and out of the way - both had been sentenced in absentia for murder in the 1990s - it appears Mr. Denaro's rise will face fewer obstacles, but also attract more concentrated police efforts.
"No organization can survive for long when it is continuously deprived of its leadership," Italy's Interior Minister, Giuliano Amato, said after yesterday's arrests.
With a report from Lorenzo Tondo in Rome