New photofit helps in hunt for Mafia kingpin

Bernardo Provenzano has been on the run for 40 years but he is still regarded as the head of the Sicilian Mafia. Last year he was sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment for his part in numerous murders in the 1980s. He is believed to be living in the hills above the town of Trapani in the far north-west of Sicily, in the Mafia's heartland.

Why have the police failed to catch him all this time? Various explanations are offered; one possibility is that, even if they picked him up, they might have trouble recognising him. The only time the police got close enough to Provenzano to take his picture was in 1959. Four years later, he walked out of the town of Corleone, headquarters of the gang that bears the town's name, into the countryside, and was never seen again.

This week, the police's prospects of arresting him improved at least a little when a new likeness was published. It was a collaborative effort by Nino Giuffre, formerly his number two, who became an informer last year, and the Palermo police computer.

The mug shot shows a flat-faced man with wide-set eyes, chestnut brown hair, a bull neck and a clamped, aggressive jaw. This was the man known fearfully as "The Tractor", for his propensity for mowing his enemies down. Forty years on, the hair is white and receding somewhat, exposing a furrowed brow; the eyes appear to crinkle with worry, the jawline is more ruminative than vicious.

For more than 35 years, the police thought he was dead. It was only with the capture in 1997 of another gangster, Leoluca Bargarella, that it dawned on them he was still the unquestioned chief of Cosa Nostra – and the quiet, invisible architect of a quieter, more respectable modus operandi for the Mob. No longer "The Tractor," now Mr Provenzano was known as "The Accountant": the brains behind a sustained attempt, following the bloody mayhem of the 70s and 80s, to refashion Italy's top crime syndicate for survival in a different, modern age.

The arrest of 32 men in February of last year who police believe to be linked to Mr Provenzano suggests he has had considerable success. Among the men nabbed on charges of corruption and illegal profiteering were a prominent Roman lawyer, a surveyor at the Ministry of Public Works, and the director of a prison.