In a typical Italian mafia intimidation exercise, the severed head of a horse was found on a businessman’s property in Sicily. The gruesome discovery, which resembles a scene from the mafia blockbuster The Godfather, was made in Altofonte, a village on the outskirts of Palermo. The bloodied head of the animal was left on the seat of an excavator belonging to an Italian businessman. The businessman is a construction contractor who works near Palermo, the regional capital of Sicily. The carcasses of a pregnant cow and her calf were also left at the scene.
Altofonte Mayor Angela De Luca said her community was very worried. “I was horrified; I cannot understand such brutality,” she said. This process seems to take us back to the Middle Ages with its unacceptable practices.
Marlon Brando played Don Vito Corleone in the iconic 1972 film, which ends with a horse’s head in the bed of tyrannical film director Jack Woltz after Woltz refuses to be part of Corleone’s deity.
According to Guardian, The news sparked a row on the island, where more than 20 mafia bosses have been released from prison in recent months after serving their sentences. Delivering severed animal heads or dismembered animal carcasses is one of the most common intimidation tactics used by the Mafia in Sicily, who prophesy the godfather.
According to investigators, this tactic serves the dual purpose of terrorizing its victims and attacking their most cherished bonds: the animals they often bond with. Last May, a goat’s head was found in front of a construction entrepreneur’s house in Palermo, and in 2023, a pig’s head was hung from the gate of a police station in the province of Messina.