A Sicilian mafia boss who ordered his son to assassinate his sister because she had fallen in love with a policeman has been arrested.
Guiseppe “Pino” Scaduto, a mafia boss in the Sicilian town of Bagheria, was one of 15 arrested during an operation against the Cosa Nostra.
They all stand accused of mafia association and extortion targeting local businesspeople in the mineral water and construction industries.
Police said Godfather Pino Scaduto thought his daughter’s relationship with the senior Italian police officer had led to him being arrested in 2008 while he was trying to reform Costra Nostra’s governing council, the Cupola.
Investigators hunting through prison correspondence stumbled across alarming references to a specific “gift” he wanted to bestow his daughter with.
Detectives say Scaduto senior, who was released from prison in April, then told his son to kill her, saying: “Your sister has become an informer”.
But the younger Scaduto, whose name has not been disclosed by police, was unwilling to comply with his father’s orders.
In a conversation intercepted by police, he said: “I don’t want to do it. If you want it done, do it yourself. Why should I deal with the problem? I’m 30.”
The son, who is already facing an unrelated murder charge, also rejected his father’s request due to fears of winding up in prison.
“I didn’t want to be burned for doing it," he was recorded as saying.
Scaduto junior said he was told to murder his sister in the attempt to re-establish honour to the family because “she had become a cop”.
Scaduto senior is said to have then attempted to hand the job to another individual but they rebuffed it because it was a family conflict.
Scaduto senior, who rules over the Bagheria syndicate near the Sicilian capital of Palermo, was also allegedly planning for his daughter’s boyfriend to also be murdered.
