It took time, but Italy discovered that organized crime was never the exclusive province of men
Dawn breaks in the mental hospital in Aversa, in southern Italy. Everything is calm, routine, peaceful. Suddenly, in the middle of the day, a loud explosion shakes the sluggishness. Running, panic, desperation, no one knows exactly what the noise is. Maybe an earthquake, some think. Amidst the chaos, some thugs appear, wielding machine guns. They enter the wing reserved for wealthy patients thanks to the huge hole in the side wall of the building, made with a few kilos of dynamite.
It doesn't take long and the strange guys are already retreating, leaving the rubble behind. The mission had been accomplished. Powerful boss Raffaele Cutolo, leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizatta, the famous and bloodthirsty faction of the Neapolitan mafia, was free. The spectacular escape dominated the news that summer of 1978. Who, after all, would have had the audacity to remove the mobster from the hospital for the mentally ill where he was serving a sentence for more than a dozen murders, smuggling, drug trafficking and extortion?
A few days later, another scare. This time, not only within the limits of the asylum, but throughout Italy – from north to south. The explosion debunked a myth. Behind the bold action, according to the police, was Rosetta Cutolo, Raffaele's sister and the second most important name within the Camorra. In other words, the film scene had been directed by a powerful boss, something that the Italians never even imagined existed.
Machist Culture
For the country with a macho culture, organized crime was, until then, the province of men. The woman didn't even care. In films, books and newspapers, mafia women always appeared as helpless sidekicks, devoted wives of powerful cappi, dutiful mothers of murderous sons... “A judge in Palermo once declared that women could not be guilty of money laundering because they did not they had autonomy and were too stupid to take part in this type of business”, says English journalist Clare Longrigg, author of the book Mafia women, which tells the story of some of the most terrible mafiosas in history. “While Italian citizens, judges and police insisted on thinking in this reactionary way, they gained prominence in organizations such as Cosa Nostra and Ndrangheta.”
The myth that organized crime is a man's thing is confused with the history of the mafia itself. In its years of existence, the main role has never been, at least publicly, theirs. Not even Hollywood filmed this, let's say, feminine side of banditry. The mafia consolidated itself in Sicily in the middle of the 19th century. It all began around 1860, at the time of the tumultuous unification of Italy, until then a patchwork, divided into independent provinces.
To secure their large estates, landowners in the south of the peninsula called on sharecroppers to help them in the task of ensuring their property was intact. However, the overseers went well beyond their role: they began to control the entire region, exploiting, on the one hand, the peasants and, on the other, the landowners. Divided into clans, they did not respect local power and took justice into their own hands.
Violence and blood
By the 20th century, the mafia had become a well-structured secret society, almost as profitable as a large company. He openly extorted, in the face of the authorities, money from traders and farmers in exchange for “protection” – in other words, paying what was required to maintain his life. When thousands of Italians decided to immigrate to the United States, mafiosi also crossed the ocean.
In American territory – where, in fact, the expression Cosa Nostra was born, they created an extortion network that was supported by fellow countrymen who arrived from Europe. Later, with Prohibition, many big bosses – and big bosses – made fortunes by smuggling drinks and, later, trafficking heroin and cocaine. Everything filled with violence and blood.
As the mafia gained notoriety, mainly because of its internal codes of honor and strict rules that inspired a series of films, the cappi became increasingly famous. Names like Al Capone became legends around the world. Meanwhile, women acted behind the scenes, protected by machismo.
That's why reports like that of Sicilian Maria Grazia Genova are so rare. Born in 1909, she was arrested 22 times and was directly involved in a war between rival families that resulted in around 40 deaths. But the situation began to change in recent decades, when Italian justice began to combat organized crime more harshly.
To try to reduce crime, he had to accept the idea that there are, indeed, many women in charge of the mafia. “I learned a lesson when writing my book: not to underestimate women. They are ambitious, courageous and sometimes more cunning than men,” says Clare. You just need to read some of the biographies of some of them to know that “mammas” don’t play around on the job.
ice eyes
When he created, in the 60s, the Nuova Camorra Organizzata, which dominated the territories of the former Neapolitan mafia until 1983, cappo dei cappi Raffaele Cutolo did not call any trusted man to be his right-hand man. He summoned his older sister, Rosetta Cutolo, to the post, who became a kind of vice president of one of the bloodiest wings of the organization. Her coldness and dedication to business earned her the nickname “ice eyes”.
Rosetta never let her hair down, tied in a sloppy ponytail, and always wore men's shirts. No one has ever seen her accompanied, but they say she abandoned a great love in her youth to take care of her brother. While Raffaele was serving a 30-year sentence, she was the one who collected money from traders and dealt directly with other gangsters.
In 1980, for example, he represented Cutolo at an important summit meeting between the Nuova Camorra and Cosa Nostra to put an end to a war between their members. Rosetta was so influential and feared that even when she rescued her brother from an insane asylum, she was only imprisoned for a few days. According to the local court, there was no evidence to convict her.
During a raid on his home in 1981, the police came across a meeting of 15 of Cutolo's assistants. Most ended up arrested, except for Rosetta, who managed to mysteriously escape through the back. For ten years, she remained in hiding, heading the operations of several hideouts throughout Italy.
Rosetta and her brother's network of influence included judges and other powerful people. So much so that the mafia was miraculously cleared of the murder of Giuseppe Salvia, director of the Poggioreale prison in Naples. Giuseppe had denied Cutol perks such as eating only meals from outside the prison and, as a result, he died.
Rosetta also escaped unharmed from prosecution for the death of Vincenzo Casillo, the second man from Cutolo, suspected of embezzling money. She killed him with a car bomb. Not happy, she ordered her girlfriend to be buried alive in a cement pillar. In 1993, she turned herself in to the police. She was then 55 years old.
Cocaine Baroness
Few women have reached such heights in the world of drug trafficking as Patrizia Ferriero. At the end of the 80s, she alone commanded an extensive network that imported cocaine from South America and distributed it in Europe. Every now and then, she would personally visit various countries to deal with dangerous international traffickers.
Patrizia Ferriero being arrested/ Credit: Reproduction
Not even the police could deal with her. When her husband Raffaele Stolder was arrested, Patrizia managed to have him transferred to a luxurious hospital citing alleged kidney problems. It was all a farce. Every week, she put blood from a real patient into the dialysis machine to fool doctors.
In 1990, Patrizia built a true fortress in Naples. She had two steel doors installed in her apartment, an isolated garage with remote control and a false floor with a safe. Only she had the key to the place. When police raided the bunker in 1991, they found, in addition to cocaine, several panties scattered on the floor. It was later discovered that the mafiosa also used the hideout as a place for romantic encounters.
Bad Blonde
On Via dei Tribunali, in the heart of Naples, everyone had a poster of Tonino Capuano hanging in the room. The cappo controlled crimes in the region and controlled a profitable loan sharking scheme. After he was murdered by rivals from the Giuliano family, his wife, Teresa Deviato, assumed power.
She showed that she has a knack for business. Police officers used to say that Teresa had many more neurons than her famous companion. Due to her own merits, she began to be respected even by her rivals. His “working method” became known as stozzinaggio – or strangulation: the merchant who did not pay the monthly quota in exchange for “protection” was strangled and, of course, the family lost the store. Which, in fact, happened frequently, as many were unable to afford the high interest rates charged by the mafia with the blonde hair.
In 1995, Teresa had a telephone conversation tapped by the police. In it, she spoke without embarrassment about one of her debtors. “He came to tell me that he’s not going to pay me anymore. So I said: “And what do I do? Do I beat you up to get the money? I finished him.” She was arrested several times, between 1992 and 1996, for renting weapons (including to the Giuliano family, her husband's killers).
But the criminal suffered a series of family tragedies: her son Marco died of an overdose, and the other, Vincenzo, was convicted of armed robbery and attempted murder. Anna, the youngest sister, was shot in the head. It is suspected that she was shot by her own 16-year-old son.
The diva
Assunta Maresca owned the title of Miss Rovegliano, a village on the outskirts of Naples. She was enough to earn the nickname Puppetta (“little doll”). Also called The Diva, she is one of the most mythical mafia women in Italian history. Spoiled and arrogant, she grew up surrounded by the care of four brothers from the Neapolitan Camorra, who dominated the world of crime in the south.
So troublesome and cruel, the boys were known as the brothers Lampetielli (“lightning”), because of his incredible talent for handling knives. Despite being the family's favorite, Pupetta didn't have an easy life. At 18, she married cappo Pasquale Simonetti. Pascalone (Pasqualzão), as he was called, controlled the prices of vegetables and fruits in the region and demanded their share of sales from traders. One day, he was shot in the stomach by another mobster interested in the business. On his deathbed, he revealed to his wife the name of the killer.
Since the police preferred not to get involved in the case, the widow decided to act on her own: using the same revolver as her husband, she killed Antonio Espósito with a hail of bullets. “We had been married for eighty days when they shot my husband to death. Eighty days later, I finished off the man who murdered him. I was 18 years old and pregnant,” Maresca said in the book Mafia Women.
For the crime, Pupetta spent 14 years in prison. There, far from the pampering, she gave birth to Pasqualino. But the little doll was never able to control her crush on dangerous criminals: as soon as she got out of jail, at the age of 31, she fell in love with Umberto Ammaturo, a camorrista who trafficked, among other items, weapons from Germany to Libya. Once again she failed. Pasqualino and Ammaturo didn't get along well, until Pupetta's son mysteriously disappeared.
Even though she suspected her husband, she decided to stay married, helping him run his international trafficking network. The mafiosa became a celebrity in Italy when she took control of the business in a fight between Camorra factions.
In 1974, when Raffaele Cutolo, another powerful boss, threatened to kill the Lampetielle brothers, Pupetta summoned the press in a historic interview, in which he appeared in a tight leather suit and unbuttoned blouse, to the delight of the journalists. “If Cutolo touches a single member of my family, I will kill his henchmen, women and children. I will not hesitate,” she said. In retaliation, Cutolo had her framed for the death of a doctor, which cost her another four years in chess.
The bloodthirsty of Catania
The mysterious telegram was intercepted by staff at the Gazzi maximum security prison, in eastern Sicily: “My love, I can't wait to be with you. Don't worry about anything, the horses are safe in the stable because it's cold outside. I love you." It was an encrypted note for Antonio Cintorino, a mobster convicted of murder.
The author was his wife, Maria Cintorino, who took over her husband's business at just 24 years old. Intelligent and beautiful, she decided to become the leader of Catania's criminals, leading a band of men known for carrying Yugoslav pistols. Her courage gained fame in Sicilian lands, especially when a gangster known as Saro, her husband's former partner, tried to take power.
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