An Italian lifer who has been
granted work parole in 'semi-freedom' on Friday failed to show
up at his workplace in northern Italy, spurring a manhunt.
There has been no trace of Giuseppe Mastini aka Johnny the
Gypsy, 57, since he left Fossano Prison this morning and did not
go to his job at at a prison guards' school at Cairo Montenotte
near Savona.
He will be formally charged with going on the run if he fails
to turn up by nightfall.
Mastini, who was probed for the 1975 murder of Pier Paolo
Pasolini, has had a film and a song made about him.
Mastini first went to jail while a young man after killing a
tram driver and escaped twice, first from Casal del Marmo jail,
and then from prison island of Pianosa.
In summer 1983 he was arrested again, after a shoot-out with
police.
Four years later he obtained a furlough for good behaviour
and during that furlough, in February 1987, went on a bloody
trail of crimes that ended up with the arrest of his girlfriend
Zaira Pochetti, who died a few years later after a long illness.
Towards the end of the manhunt, Mastini stole several cars,
robbed petrol stations, kidnapped a girl, Silvia Leonardi, and
shot at police killing a guard, Michele Giraldi, and wounding a
Carabinieri brigadier, Bruno Nolfi.
He gave himself up in the countryside near Mentana outside
Rome, surrounded by police.
Sentenced to life in 1989, he has been in Fossano jail for
several years.
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