Giovanni Brusca

Giovanni Brusca
Mafia boss Giovanni Busca
Born	Giovanni Busca (1957-02-20) 20 February 1957 (age 60) San Giuseppe Jato, Sicily, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Other names	"U verru" (The Swine) "U scannacristiani" (The Slayer)
Occupation	Mafia Boss
Criminal charge	* Mafia Association * Multiple murder
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment (multiple life sentences related to different homicides and mass murders)
Criminal status	imprisoned since 1996
Allegiance	Corleonesi
Conviction(s)	Mafia Association, Multiple murder

Giovanni Brusca (born 20 February 1957 in San Giuseppe Jato) is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia. He murdered the anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone in 1992 and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders but was unable to remember the exact number. He was sentenced to life in prison in absentia, captured in 1996 and started to cooperate with the authorities.

A pudgy, bearded and unkempt mafioso, Brusca was known in Mafia circles as "U' Verru" (in Sicilian) or Il Porco or Il Maiale, (In Italian: The Pig, The Swine) or "lo scannacristiani" (people-slayer; in Italian dialects the word "christians" often stands for "human beings"). Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia turncoat who had cooperated with Falcone’s investigations, remembered Giovanni Brusca as "a wild stallion but a great leader."

Born in San Giuseppe Jato. His grandfather and great-grandfather, both farmers, were made members of the Mafia. His father Bernardo Brusca, a local Mafia patriarch, served concurrent life sentences for numerous homicides. Bernardo Brusca allied himself with the Corleonesi of Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano when he replaced Antonio Salamone as capo mandamento of San Giuseppe Jato, paving the way for his three sons’ careers – apart from Giovanni, his younger brother Vincenzo and elder brother Emanuele.

By the age of 20, Brusca was reportedly working as a driver for Bernardo Provenzano. "All the pentiti have described him as a kind of butcher with a lot of instinct and little charisma," says longtime Mafia observer Francesco La Licata, a journalist working for La Stampa newspaper. Giovanni Brusca became part of a Corleonesi death squad which reported directly to Riina. He became capo mandamento of San Giuseppe Jato after the arrest of his father in 1989.