He was one of the last ones still alive. There were only two left. Modestino Bosco, 35 years old, was the next to last and they killed him in a garage, Saturday, September 2.
The Licciardi clan had condemned him to death a long time ago. Theyd added his name to the ill-famed "list of the Resurrection." The names on the list attached outside the Church of the Resurrection, in Secondigliano, were those of the alleged assassins - according to the clan - of Vincenzo Esposito, the nephew of Gennaro Licciardi, "ascigna," shot to death at the age of 21, in the Monterosa district, in 1997.
On account of his relationship to the rulers of Secondigliano, Esposito, was known as the "little prince." He had driven on his motorcycle to find out why some friends of his had been beaten and since he was wearing a helmet he mistaken for a killer [Editors note: Most motorcyclists in Naples dont wear a protective helmet even though it is mandatory by law; in fact, according to popular wisdom, only killers belonging to the Camorra wear a helmet when theyre out on a hit, in order to hide their faces.] As soon as they realized their mistake, it is said that Espositos assassins had thought of killing themselves, since they realized it might be better than waiting for the Licciardis to carry out their revenge.
As expected, in just a matter of days, the Licciardis knocked off 14 people, all of whom had been connected, in one way or another, to the killing of their young heir. Someone attached a list of names outside the church. The parish priest tore down the list, but not before the locals had had the time to read all the names. The purpose of the list was to single out the culprits, to speed up the killings without having to start an all-out war that would have involved family members and friends, to invite the guilty to give themselves up in order to save their families, an invitation to the other families to hand over their "walking dead."
Even as the years go by, the clan still remembers. Modestino Boscos death sentence has been executed. He wasnt the last one to die. A few days later, a hail of bullets killed Bruno Mancini, a previous offender linked to the Di Lauro clan. The investigators have determined that gun used to shoot him was a caliber 9x21; a favorite with the bad guys down here who think its cool to match the color of their belts to the color of their pistol grips. A few hours later, another ambush: 56 year old Alfonso Pezzella was assassinated in the local quarters of the Italian Communists, dedicated to Antonio Gramsci. Pezzella was a carpenter; the investigators say he had decided to stop paying interest on his debts to the loan sharks.
And finally, another innocent bystander, killed during a stick up, the previous day. That evening, Salvatore Buglione, the 51-year-old owner of a news kiosk, had decided to close shop without the help of his relatives; his assailants wanted the days take and stuck a knife in his chest, next to his heart. Three murders in the same day. Until last Tuesday, the summers most popular crimes had been the scippi, purse snatchings, carried out in a violent and ingenious manner. One of the most popular techniques involves picking out the target inside a bank: the ideal mark is someone making a large cash withdrawal. The lookout alerts his accomplices by cell phone, who then pick up the victim as he leaves the bank and follow him until he reaches a quiet spot on the street. In most cases, there is no need to use weapons: the threat of violence is enough to convince most people to hand over the cash.
Then theres the classical panino, the so-called "sandwich method," that can be used when the victim is boxed in a narrow alley. And finally, there are the groups that specialize in stealing Rolex watches, having refined their methods for the internet-era. The first step is to carry out a search on Ebay to find out which models are in the greatest demand. Next, the scippatori set out on a search for the victims with the desired watches. The preferred "hunting" ground is the hotel district on the Lungomare, the scenic road in front of the sea; if necessary, the thieves are ready to shoot whomever might put up too much resistance. According to the police, in the months of July and August, in an area between Via Chiaia and Piazza Garibaldi, that includes Via Caracciolo and the Decumani - a maze-like network of streets and alleys originally built by the Romans, in the old part of the city - there were 765 purse snatchings and robberies, at a rate of more than 12 per day.
Criminal activity peaks in the summer: the streets bustle with activity and are full of Italian and foreign tourists, each of whom becomes a potential target; its almost as though, in the eyes of the crooks, they take on the guise of walking ATM machines.
Each new episode of violence sets of a familiar series of reactions that include bouquets of flowers sent to the tourists whove been beaten by the thieves, exhortations to continue their visits in "the wonderful lands of Magna Graecia" [editors note: the ancient Greek colonies of Southern Italy and Sicily, that include the region of Campania], and letters to the editors from those whove decided to abandon Naples because theyve decided they dont want to continue living in such a degraded situation. Other letters arrive from citizens whove decide to stay and try to resist and from tourists like the American tourist, Thomas Matthew Godfrey, who say theyve never been so scared in their lives. A few weeks ago, Godfrey was assailed by a group of thieves in an alley called Vico dei Maiorani, in the center of town, and when he managed to grab hold of one of them and started screaming for someone to call the police, the inhabitants of the district swarmed out of their houses and beat him severely so the crooks could escape.
Not much seems to have changed since 1996, when the legendary coke-snorting "Pippotto," a 14-year-old boy from Secondigliano, also know by the nickname "o terrore," became something of a local hero carrying out dozens of robberies in an hour.
In Naples, cocaine can be found everywhere and is extremely cheap; in the Rione dei Fiori district, in the Northern section of the city, a dose can be bought for 10 Euro. For many young criminals, cocaine is the ideal fuel to help them keep on the move and not give in to fatigue, to stay alert and select their targets.
Just a few days ago, in the space of one hour, a twenty-year-old youth robbed four different women, including one who was seriously disabled. He started out his day at 8.00 AM on the lungomare, and then moved on to Porta Capuana and the "Centro Direzionale," the new office and residential area near the train station in the center of Naples. The thief -whose father works in one of the many shoe factories in the basements of Via Foria - had no previous criminal record and worked as an apprentice in a barbershop. It was childs play for the cops to arrest him because hed used his own car to commit the robberies.
Many thieves are beating their victims instead of using a gun to threaten them; investigators say this is a sign of the fact their methods keep evolving. As mentioned previously, the Neapolitan thieves have a soft spot for Rolex watches. There are no official statistics, but according to the police, in recent years, at least 50-thousand watches have been stolen in Naples; the investigators say, in 2006, Neapolitans have robbed Rolex watches in Genoa, Riccione and Rome. The Neapolitan clans control the market for stolen Rolex watches throughout the entire country. According to a study carried out, in 2006, at the Monte di Pietà, the local families are able to re-insert the stolen watches back into the legitimate national and international circuits. Usually, it takes less than a week for a stolen watch to end up - with a new serial number and a new guarantee - on the wrist of a different customer.
The camorra has no interest in hiring all the young crooks that are looking for employment in the criminal-entrepreneurial market. Todays bosses have no interest in the project devised in the 1980s by Raffaele Cutolo, the boss of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata, who aspired to create Fiat-like organization of organized crime. Nevertheless, according to the anti-Mafia Prosecutors office in Naples, the camorra remains the European criminal organization with the most members. Compared to the Mafia, the Sacra Corona Unita and the ‘Ndrangheta, respectively, for each Sicilian mafioso there are five camorristi, for each "sacrista" in Puglia there are four Neapolitan affiliates, for every "‘ndranghetista" in Calabria there are eight camorra members.
The experts say the rise in small crimes in Naples is due to the fact that fewer individuals belong to the criminal organizations since the local clans have become smaller than in the past. Consequently, scores of individuals have been "let loose" to carry out purse snatchings and robberies all over the city. Additionally, the criminals have become more aggressive and since its become much harder to join a "family," many have decided to form their own groups.
Apparently, the camorras new strategy derives from the desire to concentrate on investing its illegal earnings, opening and closing all sorts of businesses, investing in the property market and keeping all their options open with regards to their financial investments, without having to exercise control over increasing amounts of territory or invest large amounts of energy and resources in establish deals with the politicians.
At the present time, the clans dont feel the need to constitute large armies of men, so any group of individuals can decide to create a gang, carry out robberies, break into stores, steal all kinds of goods and recycle them on the market; in the past, everyone knew that you either joined the mob or youd be ruthlessly eliminated, if you dared to invade their territory. The gangs that are on the rampage in Naples arent made up exclusively of individuals who want to increase their earnings so they can live well or buy a luxury car. Many of the individuals that are responsible for the increase in the number of robberies, thefts and aggressions are aware of the fact that by accumulating wealth they can become partners of the clans or share in their investments. For these men, participation in criminal activities has become another way of finding the financial resources necessary to become an entrepreneur.
In Naples, ferociousness is an optional feature. Many years ago, someone said that in a city where life is worth nothing, anyone can wake up in the morning and decide to organize a gang; in the best of cases, he may eventually become the boss of his own criminal family, in the worst of cases, hell be just another crook. And now, it seems as though the citys very fabric is being ripped apart, separating everyone into two camps: on the one hand, the individuals, the gangs that like parasites feed off of this violence that turns every living being into an entity that can be looted and, on the other, the clans, that are pushing their enterprises towards maximum levels of sophistication.
The bloodbath in Scampia has attracted a level of attraction regarding the camorras activities that had been missing for more than ten years. The old model of the two cities has been revived: one Naples is rotten, putrefying and criminal, the other is cultured, wise and visibly obscured by the "bad-Naples." On the one hand, the Naples of the bourgeoisie that is not ashamed to talk in dialect, Naples that considers itself a capital of beauty and the ability to love life, on the other the Naples of the neo-balladeers, of Tommy Riccio and the local radio stations that broadcast greetings to the inmates of Poggioreale prison. The "upper" Naples views the rising criminality, the slimy drug traffickers, the arrogant extortionists as degenerations of the "lower" Naples, as a waste-sack of poisons that it is unfairly forced to drag along behind itself.
But these opposite poles, these two radically different lifestyles have unclear and overlapping borders. In reality, these apparently distant worlds have many points in common. The fulcrum of the camorras economical might lies in its entrepreneurial strength, a power that has taken root in Northern Italys economy, spreading as far as Asia, America and throughout all of Europe. Meanwhile, the war continues in the streets of the suburbs and its soldiers are the desperate characters that are willing to work as killers for 2.500 Euro per hit, that earn monthly salaries of 700 Euro and hope that - one day - they will be able to earn the salary of a "military manager," the higher echelons who earn up to 20-thousand Euro per week.
The fortunes at stake are astronomical: the Di Lauro clans earnings are estimated to be more than 500-thousand Euro per day and, according to statements made during the hearings of the parliamentary Anti-mafia commission, in September 2005, the Casalesi clans fortune amounts to some 30-billion Euro, including possessions that have been temporarily confiscated. The camorra has transferred its finances across national and continental borders, through money transfers to Canada, Australia, Great Britain, Switzerland and has invested in the purchase of all sorts of large and small businesses, including stores, restaurants and hotels. The mobs business interests arent controlled by small time crooks in dark back alleys, but by top notch financiers and entrepreneurs who reside in Tenerife, Monte Carlo and Warsaw and travel to Beijing and Bogotá, investing in the USA, Germany and France.
These men are big time investors, out to conquer the world with the camorras money. Theyre aware of running some risks, but they know how to take advantage of any available short cuts. The so-called "indulto" or pardon law approved by the Italian Parliament last July, allowed the authorities to improve the desperate living conditions inside the Poggioreale prison, commonly known to be hell-like. Inside the Neapolitan penitentiary, 2300 inmates are locked away in cells meant to house 1100 people and in summer the temperature inside the cells regularly reaches 45 degrees Celsius.
The pardon law had other, far more beneficial, effects for the camorristi. The law was supposed to have been written in a way that prevented the release of convicted Mafiosi. Instead, in Naples they devised a simple strategy that allowed the Mafia bosses to elude even 416 bis. This is how Giovanni Aprea, the boss of San Giovanni a Teduccio, one of the districts where the camorra is most powerful, even though it encounters steady resistance from the population, made up largely of factory workers, managed to get out of jail. Apreas lawyers were able to disassemble his conviction: the first step was to have the two sentences - the first, for being a member of the Mafia and the second, illegal possession of a firearm - considered separately. The second step was to request the application of the pardon law for the second and lesser of the two charges. Once this request had been granted, his lawyer requested the application of a measure that allowed him to detract the period his client had already passed in jail from the period hed been sentenced for being a member of the Mafia. In the end, Apreas laywers allowed him to take advantage of a law that was not meant to benefit the Mafiosi. "Punt e curtiell," "the knife blade" as the boss is nicknamed - not because he knows how to use a knife, but because he played the role of a crook who used a switchblade in Pasquale Squitieris film, "I Guappi" - was able to walk free and return to taking care of his many business interests, foremost among them the house building trade.
Other bosses had been able to find a solution for their own judicial problems even before Parliament had passed the pardon law. Even the protagonists of the war in Scampia were able to find a way to get out of jail: it was sufficient to erase 15 lines in an official document to cancel 80 deaths, 80 bodies mowed down in a hail of bullets that had horrified the Italian President and the Pope. Last June, those 15 lines and a 30-minute delay, led to the release of Vincenzo Di Lauro, son of Paolo, the king of Scampia, whod been arrested in April 2004 in Chivasso, after being on the lam for many years. The 15 missing lines in the decree requesting protective custody were an essential part of the document illustrating the "concrete elements of proof," necessary to complete the criminal profile of Di Lauro. As a result of the incomplete document, the authorities ordered Di Lauros release. Not surprisingly, his men had been told of his release before the police and, in order to alert him, they sent Vincenzo a pair of shoes made by a company that has a knife in its logo. The carabinieri whod been sent to the prison, to wait for the boss and follow him after his release, arrived 30 minutes late and Di Lauro had already disappeared.
Other bosses had already left jail before Di Lauro, including Raffaele Amato, the boss of the so-called "Spaniards," the breakaway group that has created a second criminal empire in Barcellona; his lawyers managed to obtain his release thanks to a technicality regarding the "expiration of the term limits for preventive incarceration." Another boss, Giacomo Migliaccio had been released for health reasons. Investigators consider both of these men kingpins of the drug trafficking trade. Amato has already become a living legend because he got rich combining drug trafficking and rubbish: he used to transport his loads of cocaine hidden deep inside garbage trucks, knowing that the cops would have never stuck their hands inside the wastes.
These releases help the camorra find new recruits. The youngest affiliates, all beneath the age of 16, see that the smartest bosses manage to beat the law. They see that the men who set off a camorra war that caused more than 80 deaths, whove transformed Secondigliano, the largest Mediterranean suburb, into the most important drug market in Europe, outlet for members, have become so powerful they can even find a way to get out of jail. And make tons of money, as well.
The camorras financial investments move from Naples to the North of Italy and then, on to the rest of the world; at the same time, toxic wastes follow the opposite route. This is why the problem regarding the elimination of garbage and other wastes should not be considered a problem that regards only Campania and other regions in Southern Italy. Dozens of investigations have demonstrated that, for over 30 years, industries located in Northern Italy have used companies affiliated with the camorra to dump their toxic wastes, the non-metallic residues of automobiles, toner residues and all sorts of other poisons, illegally, thereby saving enormous amounts of money. In the South, throughout the years, hills of waste have grown in many areas that used to be flat; in several areas, people have built houses and villas on top of these hills.
Ten years have passed and no one has been able to solve the garbage trafficking problem in these areas, regardless of the fact that special government-appointed commissioners have been put in place, since most local managers and politicians are controlled by the camorra. Clearly, no one continues to believe the fairy-tale according to which the "garbage" issue was caused by Neapolitan inefficiency and a corrupt burocracy. The waste trafficking problem has led to the birth of a new, prosperous, group of industrialists that have established relations with the major Italian industrial groups; these same interests that are responsible for the devastation of the land are now blocking a solution to the problem. As long as the issue of waste management remains a problem for which no legal solutions can be found, the camorra can continue to bury the wastes of the rest of Italy in illegal dumps in Campania, taking advantage of the fact that the political class continue to allow the issue to drag on forever.
In these conditions, the special laws that have been invoked to deal with the situation in Naples appear to be a useless gesture. The problems of Naples are special because they should concern all of Italy and not just the Neapolitans. No one should be allowed to say: "Its not my problem." It is undeniable that the criminal activities and the related financial resources of Naples are tightly linked to criminal and financial activities in the rest of the country. As weve seen, the Neapolitan clans launder their money and reinvest their resources in the North, while the Northern industries use the camorra to dump their wastes illegally in the South. Hence, these camorra wars and the issue of illegal waste trafficking that too many Italians have preferred to consider a local issue, are acting like a cancer that originated in Naples but has already started to infect the rest of the Italy.
The time has also come for the authorities in Naples to admit that their attempt to encourage a renaissance of the city has failed. For far too long the progressive political groups tried to solve many ancient problems by hiding or denying their existence. In a most conservative manner, a proud city continues to represent itself in a manner that does not take into account its present reality. A certain nostalgia of what could have been but never was, has clouded the better judgment of too many politicians and businessmen who refuse to see that - in large measure - their own political and economical power derives from the resources generated by the camorra and its gangs that control the city and its suburbs. In conclusion, it must be said that this city that loves to imagine itself as mortally wounded, never really dies; in fact, this very representation is merely a sad reflection of its own hypocrisy.
