Di Matteo made a desperate trip to Sicily to try to negotiate his son's release but on January 11, 1996, after 779 days, the boy, who by now had also become physically ill due to mistreatment, was finally strangled, and the body was subsequently dissolved in a barrel of acid — a practice known colloquially as the lupara bianca. The executors were Enzo Brusca, brother of Giovanni, Vincenzo Chiodo and Salvatore Monticciolo on the orders of Giovanni Brusca. Shortly before he ordered the murder of Di Matteo, Brusca had also discovered that he had been sentenced "in absentia" to a life sentence for the murder of Ignazio Salvo.