Giovanni Brusca (; born 20 February 1957) is an Italian mobster and former member of the Corleonesi clan of the Sicilian Mafia. He had a major role in the 1992 murders of Antimafia Commission prosecutor Giovanni Falcone and businessman Ignazio Salvo, and once stated that he had committed between 100 and 200 murders. Brusca had been sentenced to life imprisonment in absentia for Mafia association and multiple murder. He was captured in 1996, turned pentito, and his sentence reduced to 26 years in prison. In 2021, Brusca was released from prison. A pudgy, bearded, and unkempt mafioso, Brusca was known in Mafia circles as u verru (in Sicilian), il porco or il maiale (in Italian; "the pig", "the swine"), and u scannacristiani ("the people-slayer"; in the Sicilian language, the word cristianu means both "Christian" and "human being"). Tommaso Buscetta, the Mafia turncoat who had cooperated with Falcone's investigations, remembered Giovanni Brusca as "a wild stallion but a great leader". Early life Brusca was born on 20 February 1957 in San Giuseppe Jato. His grandfather and great-grandfather, both farmers, were made members of the Mafia. His father Bernardo Brusca (1929–2000), a local Mafia patriarch, served concurrent life sentences for numerous homicides. Bernardo allied himself with the Corleonesi of Salvatore Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca Bagarella when he replaced Antonio Salamone as capomandamento of San Giuseppe Jato. He paved the way for his three sons' careers—Giovanni, his younger brother Vincenzo and elder brother Emanuele. When Bernardo was sent to prison in 1985, Giovanni became head of his San Giuseppe Jato district. Murders In 1992 Brusca murdered the anti-Mafia prosecutor Giovanni Falcone by planting half a tonne of explosives under a road. Brusca detonated the explosives as Falcone's car drove along the road, killing Falcone, Falcone's wife and his three bodyguards. Months after the Falcone's death, he also murdered the boss Vincenzo Milazzo and the businessman Ignazio Salvo. After Santino Di Matteo was arrested on 4 June 1993, he became the first of Falcone's assassins to become a government witness – a pentito. He revealed all the details of the assassination: who tunnelled beneath the motorway, who packed the 13 drums with TNT and Semtex, who hauled them into place on a skateboard, and who pressed the button. In retaliation for Di Matteo becoming an informant, the Mafia kidnapped his 11-year-old son, Giuseppe Di Matteo, on 23 November 1993. According to a later