China
October-24th-2008, 12:22 PM
Mafia gang send donkey head as threat (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/3252071/Mafia-gang-send-donkey-head-as-threat.html)
A small-time mafia gang have been branded "idiots" after sending a donkey's head to a shopkeeper in an ill-conceived stunt apparently lifted from The Godfather.
By Matthew Moore
24 Oct 2008
The gang's target, a local bread shop owner who had refused to pay protection money, was so puzzled by the confused threat that he presumed it was a practical joke.
In Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, mafia boss Don Corleone uses the "gift" of a severed horse's head to intimate film producer Jack Woltz into giving his godson a part.
Woltz woke up one morning to find the bloody head lying next to him in his bed, and immediately consented to the request made by the Don, played by Marlon Brando.
But while that threat made sense – the head was of Woltz's prized thoroughbred stallion - there was no such context for the donkey.
"The man didn't know the donkey, he didn't own the donkey, he doesn't care about donkeys. It didn't make sense. It was the work of idiots," a police spokesman in Villafranca Padovana, northern Italy, said.
Click on the link for the full article
A small-time mafia gang have been branded "idiots" after sending a donkey's head to a shopkeeper in an ill-conceived stunt apparently lifted from The Godfather.
By Matthew Moore
24 Oct 2008
The gang's target, a local bread shop owner who had refused to pay protection money, was so puzzled by the confused threat that he presumed it was a practical joke.
In Francis Ford Coppola's 1972 film, mafia boss Don Corleone uses the "gift" of a severed horse's head to intimate film producer Jack Woltz into giving his godson a part.
Woltz woke up one morning to find the bloody head lying next to him in his bed, and immediately consented to the request made by the Don, played by Marlon Brando.
But while that threat made sense – the head was of Woltz's prized thoroughbred stallion - there was no such context for the donkey.
"The man didn't know the donkey, he didn't own the donkey, he doesn't care about donkeys. It didn't make sense. It was the work of idiots," a police spokesman in Villafranca Padovana, northern Italy, said.
Click on the link for the full article