Former mafia godfather shot dead on French highway 10 years after his brother mysteriously vanished

A former local mafia boss died Wednesday after he was shot in his car in the middle of a busy highway near the French city of Grenoble, local authorities and sources close to the case told French news agency AFP.

Jean-Pierre Maldera, 71, died of his wounds after the shootout Wednesday morning, the civil defense and the regional prosecutor’s office said.

Maldera was one of the so-called godfathers of the Franco-Italian mafia that terrorized the southeastern city in the 1980s, along with his brother Robert, a source close to the case told AFP.

Robert Maldera, nicknamed “Il pazzo” (“The madman” in Italian), had gone missing at the age of 55 in 2015, the source added. He vanished after attending a meeting on the outskirts of Grenoble, and his car was discovered two months later in a parking lot nearby, BBC News reported.

A prosecutor at the time said there was good reason to believe he had been killed.

Both brothers had been jailed in 2004 in a case of alleged extortion, money laundering and procuring sex workers, but were then released the following year due to a technical flaw that thwarted the case.

According to another source following the investigation, Jean-Pierre Maldera was shot from another car that then drove off.

Videos circulating online showed a white car stopped in the middle of the highway, its driver’s window shattered.

Le Dauphine Libere, a local newspaper, reported three to four gunmen riding in a stolen vehicle shot at him as he was driving, then gunned him down as he tried to escape his car on foot. The assailants allegedly used a military-grade weapon, such as a Kalashnikov rifle, to carry out the killing, BBC News reported.

Their vehicle’s scorched remains were found shortly afterward in a parking lot a few miles away, it said.

An AFP photographer saw the blackened ground of the parking lot after police removed what was left of the vehicle.

The so-called Maldera clan to which Jean-Pierre and Robert belonged was dismantled in 1984. At the time, their father was found to own around one million French francs (about $165,000) in treasury bonds.

A source who had investigated the Maldera brothers told France 3 that Jean-Pierre had been the brain behind their operation, while Robert had been the brawn, according to BBC News.