Italian police on Monday arrested Salvatore Lo Piccolo, believed to be the Italian Mafia's new boss of bosses.
Lo Piccolo, 65, was arrested in a 40-strong police raid on a house in the Palermo countryside along with his son Sandro, 32, and two other top Palermo bosses.
Police entered the one-floor, four-roomed building while Lo Piccolo was leading a Mafia summit - as shown by three plastic coffee cups and two recently stubbed-out cigarettes.
The Mafia head tried to get rid of incriminating evidence by unsuccessfully trying to flush handfuls of 'pizzini' - coded Cosa Nostra paper messages - down the toilet.
Lo Piccolo had been vying with a younger Trapani rival to become the Mafia's undisputed head since police put an end to boss of bosses Bernardo Provenzano's 42 years on the run 18 months ago.
"Salvatore Lo Piccolo was the only one able to take up Provenzano's mantle. He was the top man in Palermo and was scaling the peak of the organisation," Italy's Anti-Mafia Prosecutor Piero Grasso told ANSA.
"This exceptional result is a big step forward in our fight against Cosa Nostra".
Interior Minister Giuliano Amato said the arrest would loosen the Mafia's grip on local businesses.
"From today, the Sicilian economy can feel a bit more free," he said.
Lo Piccolo's clan controls much of Palermo through protection rackets and has even imposed a fixed charge of 15 euros to keep electricity running in parts of the Sicilian capital.
The Mafia also dominates public works contracts on the island.
The head of the Italian parliament's anti-Mafia commission, Francesco Forgione, said the arrests marked an extraordinary day for Italian democracy and the anti-Mafia fight".
Lo Piccolo and his three cohorts were arrested on the day Italy mourns all its Mafia victims - including crusading judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, killed by bombs in 1992.
Lo Piccolo had been a fugitive for 24 years before police burst into his hideout 15 km west (nine miles) west of Palermo on Monday morning, firing warning shots to keep the four Mafiosi's guns holstered.
The Palermo don's features were different from his current identikit picture, police said.
As the police cuffed Lo Piccolo, his son repeatedly shouted "I love you, Papa".
Police found a cache of documents, cash and weapons - including a police-issue hand gun - in the house.
Since the arrest of Provenzano, 74, at a small sheep farm outside Corleone in April 2006, Lo Piccolo had been fighting Matteo Messina Denaro, 45, for the top spot in Cosa Nostra
Messina Denaro has been on the run since 1993.
Provenzano became the undisputed 'boss of bosses' of the Sicilian Mafia after the January 1993 arrest of ferocious fellow townsman Salvatore (Toto') Riina, with whom he took control of Cosa Nostra during the 1980s.
A 'pax mafiosa' initially settled in after Provenzano's arrest because neither Lo Piccolo nor Messina Denaro appeared to have sufficient forces to seek control of Cosa Nostra.
But police were concerned by four top-level hits they feared might spark a full-blown war of succession.
Police said Lo Piccolo had the upper hand because he had been Provenzano's right-hand man in Palermo. Many of the dozens of pizzini found at the old boss's hide-out turned out to have been addressed to Lo Piccolo.
Furthermore, his greater experience won him the respect of the older generation of bosses as they pursued Provenzano's policy of keeping as low as possible while strengthening their power network.
These bosses had been reined in by Provenzano when he put an end to the Riina-driven war against the state that claimed Falcone and Borsellino's lives.
Lo Piccolo's other claims to the top spot were his links with Cosa Nostra's American cousins which helped restore Palermo's place in the worldwide drug trade.
One of his sons had married into a New York Mafia family and Lo Piccolo had successfully linked up with bosses who first came to public notice in the Pizza Connection trials of the 1980s.
He had also succeeded in bringing back to Palermo the losers in the Corleonesis' bloody ascent to power, such as the Inzerillo clan.
Messina Denaro, a former Porsche-driving playboy from Trapani, enjoys a semi-mythical status among newer, more ambitious initiates.
The gangster sealed a reputation for brutality by murdering a rival Trapani boss and strangling his three-months pregnant girlfriend.
A recent FBI report indicated that Messina Denaro had become one of the world's top drug dealers.
According to a study issued last week by the Italian retail association Confcommercio, Cosa Nostra is Italy's biggest private enterprise, generating some nine billion euros or 7% of GDP annually - more than car maker Fiat or fuel giant ENI.
