Massimo Riella, the 48-year-old escaped from prison on March 12 during a permit to go to his mother’s grave, ended after four months. The news of the capture was given by the Province of Como. The fugitive from Como was found in Montenegro, 1,300 kilometers from the woods where he had managed to hide for weeks despite an impressive manhunt and perhaps thanks to the complicity of someone who, on his mountains he knew very well for his poacher activity , had helped him hide.
Massimo Riella caught in Montenegro, between daring escapes and manhunts: who is the fugitive hidden in the woods
by Lucia Landoni
The 125-day escape ended after Riella managed to escape any attempted capture for months. As the newspaper’s website reports, “even when one of the prison police officers managed to meet him to try to convince him to surrender and turn himself in”, he ran away again. “That attempt ended with a new escape and the accusation – which proved to be completely unreliable – by Riella’s father of wounding his son by the same agent of the penitentiary”, reads the article.
Massimo Riella captured in Montenegro: the traces followed by the investigators and the blitz
Investigators discovered that in the last few days Riella had managed to get away from Italy and for this reason an international arrest warrant was issued. It was the Interpol International Cooperation Service that communicated his capture to the Investigative Unit of the Penitentiary Police, which had followed his tracks for some time and which had reported his presence on Montenegrin territory to the Service for International Police Cooperation (SCIP). . Now the Italian judiciary has taken steps to trigger an arrest on request for extradition.
Thanks to the articulated and complex investigations carried out by the Lombardy Regional Investigative Unit and coordinated by the Deputy Prosecutor of Como Alessandra Bellù, since the end of June the men of the NIC have maintained direct and constant contact with the international cooperation services, reporting Riella first in Montenegro, then in Serbia and then again in Montenegro. Up to precisely locating the place where the fugitive had found refuge, communicating it to the special departments of the Montenegrin police who carried out the blitz.
Massimo Riella, here’s how the fugitive escaped from the cemetery and hid in the woods of Como
On 12 March Riella, who had been detained since the previous December in the Bassone di Como prison in custody on charges of having robbed two elderly people, went out under guard to go to the cemetery in Brenzio, a village on Lake Como, to greet the tomb of the mother. It was enough for the man to remain without handcuffs for a few minutes to allow him to escape from the agents. Then for months he had disappeared in the impervious woods of the Como area, which he knew well given his past as a poacher, probably helped by friends and acquaintances, hunting for food and hiding. Until all trace of him was lost.