Mafia Boss Was Alive When He Was Fed To Pigs, Police Say

An Italian mobster was alive when he was fed to pigs by members of a rival mafia group, police said recently.

Although Francesco Raccosta, a member of the 'Ndrangheta mafia clan in the Calabria region of southern Italy, disappeared from his home last year, his body was never found, authorities said, according to The Independent. But details of Raccosta's gruesome killing emerged this week with the arrest of Simon Pepe, 24, a member of the rival Mazzagatti clan, which has feuded with the Ferraro-Raccosta clan for decades.

Police said they had wiretapped Pepe's phone and overheard him describe the killing. "It was satisfying to hear him scream...Mamma mia, how he squealed," Pepe allegedly said, according to the Telegraph. "Someone said a few bits of him remained at the end of it all, but I couldn’t see anything, for me nothing remained at all. I said, wow, how a pig can eat!”

Raccosta's horrific murder was said by officials to be a revenge killing: the mobster was allegedly beaten with iron bars and thrown into a pig sty shortly after the March 2012 murder of rival Mazzagatti boss Domenico Bonarrigo, 45.

The ghastly crime came to light after a police investigation into the 'Ndrangheta syndicate's lucrative business dealings resulted this week in the seizure of nearly $100 million worth of property and assets.