Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
Mafia Boss Caught By Google Street Car - The Gioacchino Gammino story
Wed, 05 Mar 2025
Gioacchino Gammino, a convicted murderer and member of the Sicilian mafia group Stidda, escaped from Rome's Rebibbia prison in 2002 and evaded capture for nearly 20 years. During his time as a fugitive, he adopted the alias "Manuel" and established a fruit and vegetable shop, El Huerto de Manu, in Galapagar, Spain. His whereabouts were uncovered in late 2021 when Italian authorities, utilizing Google Street View, identified him conversing outside his shop, which led to his arrest.
Who is Gioacchino Gammino and what is his mafia background?
If you've ever seen mafia movies like The Godfather or Goodfellas or even The Sopranos, then you probably thought, oh, it'd be so cool to be in the mob. But what if you worked your way into the mafia, unalived a bunch of people, and then got caught by a Google streetcar? This is wild. Okay, so this guy, his name is Gamino.
And Gamino, he's in his 40s, he's from Italy, and Gamino's also kind of a hard ass. He's the crime boss of this mafia clan in Sicily. And he's caught up in a feud with another mafia in the area, so he's doing all kinds of illegal stuff. Like sometimes, blam, blam, he's got to take a few guys out, because that's what you got to do when you're up in that mob sh**.
And like at one point, he's allegedly involved in murdering an anti-mafia judge, which they do by placing a bomb in the guy's car and kaboom. No more judge. So yeah, Camino's hardcore. He doesn't play around. And because he lives this crazy mob life, that also means he's in danger of either getting unalived or getting busted.
And one day in 1998, Camino is hiding out in Barcelona and it finally happens. Bam, he gets busted. I believe this is his mugshot. And so he gets shipped back to Italy so that he can go to trial. He gets found guilty and they throw him in an Italian prison. And so Gamino's there for a few years, serving his time, lying low. But here's the thing with that.
Gamino doesn't really like prison all that much. Like, it's not for him. So then, in 2002, something kind of crazy happens. An Italian film production company decides to shoot a feature film, and this movie is set in a prison, so they need a real prison to film in. And so this correctional facility that Gamino's in, I guess they decide to rent out their place to this production company.
So then this big film crew comes to the prison and they set up all their equipment and they got all these actors and these extras and they start filming this movie there. And so suddenly all these random people are just floating around all the buildings and the whole prison gets pretty chaotic.
And I guess one of the prisoners starts thinking, you know, with all this chaos going on, it feels like it's the perfect time to escape. And so, boom, this dude suddenly starts trying to scale the walls. So then pow, the guards hit the alarms and the alarms are all going off and they all rush to the wall to try and stop this one guy from escaping and this creates a ton of calamity.
And Gamino's watching all this and he's thinking, hey, maybe I could escape. See, here's the thing about prisons in Italy. In the U.S., most prisoners wear, like, standard orange jumpsuits. But in Italy and most of Europe, prisoners actually wear their own civilian clothing. Like, within reason. I don't think they're allowed to just show up in, like, a thong or something.
But they wear their own clothes. And so Gamino, low-key, slips in with all the movie extras and film crew. And because there's this prison break going on, the prison staff go to the film crew and they're like, "'All right, for your own safety, you all need to get the hell out until we can fix this issue with the guy trying to scale the walls.'"
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