Marco Raduano’s lunch date was going great until the carabinieri showed up.
The Italian mob boss-turned-prison breaker was caught Thursday by police on the Mediterranean island of Corsica while he was having lunch with a woman. Raduano, one of Europol’s most dangerous criminals, leads the Gargano Mafia, which operates in the southern Italian region of Puglia.
The mobster first made headlines in February 2023, when he was captured on camera using bedsheets tied at the ends to escape a high-security prison on the neighboring island of Sardinia. In video footage, the reverse-Rapunzel maneuver can be seen ending in an ungraceful plop onto the grass, from which Raduano takes off running.
The fugitive eluded authorities for almost a year until he was apprehended at an upscale restaurant on Corsica, where he was accompanied by a female friend. He had previously been serving a 24-year-sentence on charges of drug trafficking and illegal arms possessions, among others.
On the same day that authorities arrested Raduano, they also brought in his top aide, Gianluigi Troiano, in Spain. Troiano had been loose since 2021, breaking house arrest after slipping out of his ankle monitor.
“The overseas capture of two dangerous fugitives, the boss Marco Raduano and his right-hand man Gianluigi Troiano, by the carabinieri, represents another hard blow to the criminal underworld,” Matteo Piantedosi, Italy’s Interior Minister, wrote on X in Italian. “With these arrests, our government continues the important fight against organized crime.”
The arrests also resolve some of the Italian government’s ensuing embarrassment from their initial escapes.