Giuseppe Di Matteo was the 12-year-old son of Santino Di Matteo, a member of the Sicilian Mafia from Altofonte, in the Province of Palermo, Sicily. Santino Di Matteo took part in the May 1992 killing of anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone. After his arrest on 4 June 1993, he became a government witness, or pentito, giving prosecutors detailed testimony about the assassination. In retaliation for his cooperation, the Mafia targeted his family.
On 23 November 1993, men posing as police officers abducted Giuseppe Di Matteo, telling him he was being taken to see his father, who was then under police protection on the Italian mainland. The kidnapping was ordered by Giovanni Brusca and other senior Mafia figures. One of the men involved, Gaspare Spatuzza, later described the abduction in his own confession after he became a pentito.
Santino Di Matteo traveled to Sicily in an attempt to negotiate his son's release. Giuseppe Di Matteo was held for 779 days, during which he became physically ill as a result of mistreatment and torture. On 11 January 1996, he was strangled on Giovanni Brusca's orders by three men — Enzo Brusca, Giovanni's brother, Vincenzo Chiodo, and Salvatore Monticciolo. His body was then dissolved in a barrel of acid, a Mafia practice known as lupara bianca that leaves no remains to recover.
In 1997, Santino Di Matteo and Giovanni Brusca came face to face during court proceedings. Di Matteo told the judge, "I guarantee my collaboration, but to this animal I guarantee nothing. If you leave me alone with him for two minutes, I'll cut his head off," and had to be restrained by court security guards. Brusca separately asked Giuseppe Di Matteo's family for forgiveness, as did Gaspare Spatuzza at his own later trial.
Italian courts convicted more than a dozen people for the kidnapping and murder between 1999 and 2016. In 1999, the Corte d'Assise of Palermo sentenced Giovanni Brusca to 30 years, Enzo Brusca to 28 years, and Vincenzo Chiodo to 27 years, along with two further men to 20 years each. Additional convictions followed in later years as more Mafia members became government witnesses: three men were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2006, three more were sentenced to 30 years each in 2010, and five men — including Matteo Messina Denaro — were sentenced to life imprisonment in 2012, when Gaspare Spatuzza, who had taken part in the original kidnapping, was separately sentenced to 12 years for his cooperation. A further defendant was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2016 after testimony from another Mafia witness.
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