'Cataraman Killer' breaks out of jail again

Filippo De Cristofaro poisoned, chopped up yachtswoman for boat

(By Denis Greenan).

(ANSA) - Livorno, April 28 - The notorious 'Catamaran Killer' has broken out of jail for the second time, prison sources said Monday, sparking a row about furloughs and job permits for Italy's worst criminals. Filippo De Cristofaro, 60, who made his first jail break in 2007, failed to report back to Porto Azzurro open facility on the former prison island of Pianosa after a three-day Easter furlough for good behaviour, judicial source said. “This must not happen again," said Interior Minister Angelino Alfano, claiming that regulations on good-behaviour leave and other easements of incarceration had become "laxer" under a previous centre-left government.

Ironically, the De Cristofaro break-out came just as parliament was discussing new alternatives to jail time as a way of easing overcrowding in Italy's jam-packed prisons. The new moves are being discussed after repeated criticism from the EU and under strongly reiterated input from Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and Pope Francis.

Milan-born De Cristofaro, also nicknamed 'The Rambo of the Seas' for his failed romantic flight to Polynesia with a 17-year-old Dutch girl after murdering a yachtswoman when he was 34 in 1988, has been sought by police since he failed to report back to Carabinieri after his permit ended on Easter Monday, police said.

His escape was not detected until two days after, on the Wednesday, because he was in any case out of the facility on a work detail helping maintain Pianosa's historic and now-closed high-security prison - once home to Risorgimento and anti-Fascist heroes - and its lush gardens. For his Easter holidays De Cristofaro reportedly went on a trip to the Island of Elba, Napoleon's famous place of exile after his first downfall and before the 100 days leading up to Waterloo, judicial sources said.

The killer's flight led prison guards' union OSAPP to call for "urgent action to reverse a very disturbing trend towards ever-greater leniency". This was partly due to budget cuts which have meant less expert advice being available, or the views of warders being ignored, OSAPP said.