Giuseppe Setola, the alleged head of a murder squad run by the Casalesi clan of the Camorra or Neapolitan Mafia, gave Italian police the slip today by dropping through a trap door at his hideout into the sewers:
Carabinieri police and divers followed Giuseppe Setola into the labyrinthine sewage system but by late Monday they hadn't found him or the bodyguard who escaped with him, Carabinieri Lt. Domenico Forte said. "We were on the floor, and they were under the floor," Forte said in a phone interview from Caserta, near Naples. * * * About 50 Carabinieri paramilitary police surrounded his hideout in Trentola Ducenta near Caserta. What they found was a small, 50 square meter (540 square foot) apartment that had a false floor underneath a bed that receded to show a trap door leading to the sewer, all of which was locked with a sophisticated locking system, Forte said. Forte said Setola a good head start into the sewer since it took so long for police to break through the trap doors. While the sewer conditions are treacherous, Forte said he expected Setola and his bodyguard to survive. "They are very resistant," he said. "They have stamina."
Setola is a fugitive who has been sentenced to life in prison for murder, and his hit squad allegedly is responsible for at least 20 murders since last May, including the slaughter of six West African immigrants last September near Caserta as a misplaced warning to Nigerian gangsters to stop encroaching upon the Camorra's drug business.
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