Police Nab Mafia Boss Tied to Duisburg Killings
October 16, 2008
Police announced the arrest of suspected mafia boss Antonio Pelle in southern Italy. He has been implicated in the vendetta that led to the August 2007 slayings of six members of his clan in Duisburg, Germany.
Pelle, 46, was found in a bunker in the country in southern Calabria. Police said he fell to his knees when they arrived saying, "I surrender."
Suspected of heading the Pelle-Romeo family, one of two feuding clans in the village of San Luca, Pelle had been on the run since the Duisburg killings. The main suspect in the killings, Giovanni Strangio, 29, of the Nirta-Strangio clan, remains at large.
Trial of suspected mafiosi
Fifty-eight suspected mafiosi will go on trial this month and in November following a probe into the feud between the Pelle-Vottari and Nirta-Strangio clans, which has claimed nearly 20 lives since 1991.
The feud became international news when six members of the Pelle-Romeo clan, aged 16 to 39, were killed execution-style outside a pizza restaurant in Duisburg in the early hours of August 15, 2007.
Their bodies were dumped in two cars outside the restaurant. But the vendetta had already claimed more than a dozen lives and was the focus of an investigation by prosecutors in southern Reggio di Calabria that had begun in 2006.