Italian police on Tuesday recaptured
Giuseppe Mastini, a convicted three-time murderer who fled
captivity earlier this month.
The 60-year-old, who is nicknamed Johnny lo Zingaro (Johnny the
Gypsy) for his Sinti roots, had made his third .jailbreak on
September 6 when he failed to return from a day's furlough for
good behaviour from Sassari prison on Sardinia.
He was tracked down in a farmhouse in countryside in the
province of Sassari.
The police found him alone and unarmed and he did not put up
resistance.
"I escaped for love," Mastini told police and prison guards
after being recaptured, sources said.
"You always escape for love".
Justice Minister Alfonso Bonafede thanked the State and
penitentiary police for having tracked down the fugitive via
Twitter.
Mastini was moved to Sassari's high-security jail after escaping
from a prison near Savona in July 2017.
Mastini, who was also briefly probed for the 1975 murder of
filmmaker and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini, has had a film and a
song made about him.
He 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 was in Fossano jail near Savona
for several years.
Pasolini was killed on November 2, 1975 by a rent boy who
subsequently reversed his confession and said others had been
involved.
The murder remains a mystery.
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