He was just a teenager, Giuseppe. He loved horses and never missed a chance to spend time at the stables. Giuseppe was very close to his father, Santino Di Matteo — the former mafioso involved in the Capaci massacre, who was later arrested and became a state witness.

Precisely because of his father's cooperation and testimony in the Capaci trial, prominent Cosa Nostra figures such as Matteo Messina Denaro, Leoluca Bagarella, Giuseppe Graviano, and Giovanni Brusca decided to kidnap Giuseppe, sending a message to Santino Di Matteo and to all other informants. On the afternoon of November 23, 1993, at just twelve years old, Giuseppe was approached by a group of mafiosi at the riding school he usually attended — and taken away.

The kidnappers disguised themselves as officers from the DIA (Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate), easily deceiving the boy, who believed he was finally going to see his father again — who was at the time under protection and no longer in Sicily.

The kidnapping lasted a long and painful twenty-five months. During 1994, Giuseppe was moved several times between various hideouts in the Palermo, Trapani, and Agrigento areas. By summer 1995, he was confined to a tiny chamber beneath the floor of a bunker farmhouse in the countryside of San Giuseppe Jato.

The end came when Giovanni Brusca — then a fugitive — was sentenced to life in prison as a result of information provided by Giuseppe’s father. It was at that point that Enzo Brusca, Vincenzo Chiodo, and Giuseppe Monticciolo were ordered to kill the boy. On January 11, 1996, after 779 days in captivity, Giuseppe was strangled and his body dissolved in acid.