The disappearance and suspected murder of a reputed Mafia boss may indicate that a power struggle is under way for control of Cosa Nostra following the arrest of its supreme chief earlier this year, organized crime experts said on Friday.
Bartolomeo Spatola disappeared on Monday from his sister's home, where he had been living for the past five months after serving a nine-year jail term for mafia association.
The 72-year-old Spatola is said to be in poor health and needs to be near an oxygen machine.
According to police, the alleged head of the Tommaso Natale gang may have been involved in a plot to eliminate fugitive Salvatore Lo Piccolo, who along with Matteo Messina Denario is believed to have assumed control of Cosa Nostra following the April arrest of long-time superboss Bernardo Provenzano.
"The probable elimination of Bartolomeo Spatola is a very disturbing development which may indicate a power struggle in Cosa Nostra," observed Democratic Left MP Giuseppe Lumia, chairman of parliament's anti-mafia commission.
"If fugitive bosses have begun to settle scores, this means that there has been a regrouping (after Provenzano's arrest) and we may be on the eve of a very dangerous period," he added. Investigators said a 'pax mafiosa' initially settled in after Provenzano's arrest because neither Lo Piccolo nor
Messina Denaro appeared to have sufficient forces seek control of Cosa Nostra.
Lo Piccolo, 63, and Messina Denaro,43, were considered by investigators to be Cosa Nostra's 'odd couple' who put aside their ambitions to continue Provenzano's policy of forging political ties, claiming public contracts and shielding Mafia business from scrutiny. However, police have been unsure from the start how long Cosa Nostra could remain a two-man show - rather like Provenzano's arrangement with his more blood-thirsty fellow Corleonese, Toto' 'the Beast' Riina - and thought it was just a matter of time before one of the pair would make their move.
Experts believe that Lo Piccolo, from Palermo's Mafia-ridden San Lorenzo district, commands the respect of the older generation of bosses who were reined in under Provenzano, while Messina Denaro, from the southern Sicilian city of Trapani, is a model figure for younger mobsters.
Because Lo Piccolo was Provenzano's right-hand man in Palermo rackets and had greater experience, many observers were convinced he would come out on top of the younger man. However, Denaro, a former Porsche-driving playboy who looks in his last photo like a trim, slickly cropped manager on the make, 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.
Provenzano, 72, had been a fugitive for over 43 years and became the undisputed 'boss of bosses' of the Sicilian Mafia after Riina's January 1993 arrest.
