Giovanni Falcone, (Palermo, May 18, 1939 - Palermo, May 23, 1992) was an Italian magistrate who specialised in prosecuting the Sicilian Cosa Nostra. He was killed by the Mafia, together with his wife and three of his bodyguards, by a 350-kg dynamite explosion placed beneath the motorway from Palermo Airport to Palermo at the town of Capaci. His life story is quite similar to that of his closest friend Paolo Borsellino. Both shared provenance from a rather poor area of Palermo, had careers as Antimafia magistrates, and equally sad fates: both were killed (less than two months apart) in particularly audacious bomb attacks in 1992. In recognition of their efforts in the anti mafia trials, the pair were named as heroes of the last 60 years in the November 13, 2006 issue of Time Magazine .
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