The Godmother, page 12
Ninetta has fallen silent since the death of her husband, though all of her assets—around $1.5 million worth—were seized in 2019, tied to her son-in-law’s alleged mafia affiliation. One of the Riina daughters, born while they were hiding out, married into a mob family, undoubtedly blessed not only by her father but by Ninetta.
“Women have long been invisible in Italian mafias,” Rossella Selmini, a professor of criminology and sociology at universities in Bologna and Minneapolis, wrote in a 2020 paper published by the University of Chicago. Like Mafia analyst Ernesto Savona, who argued that the rise of women in mafia ranks is a result of “sweet criminal organizations,” Selmini goes on to say that stronger law-enforcement tactics and tougher laws have forced the various organized-crime syndicates to “become more professional, smaller, more flexible, and less violence-based” and that means “the roles of women became more important.” Not only does that ignore the number of women who have blood on their hands and who are in prison for their crimes, Selmini concedes that the increased role of women also could be just a change in perception. Law enforcement is finally considering women as capable criminals rather than hapless arm candy.
Both Provenzano’s and Riina’s partners were questioned multiple times about what they knew, then always let go despite being the two people closest to the most wanted men in the country. Both live freely even today. But both lived with their mafia men on the run for decades, most of the time presumably alone, which begs several questions about life on the lam and whether they were protected and hidden. Neither have ever spoken publicly or to investigators about the dynamics, especially about the education of their children who spoke perfect German.
Gaetano Guida, a notable pentito against the Camorra, was the first to really pull back the curtain on women’s roles in the Neapolitan syndicate. While delivering information in exchange for his freedom from prosecution and a new identity, he told investigators that women were “on the front line” of the organization’s criminal activity. He gave crucial testimony against Maria Licciardi, known as La Piccolina and La Principessa, or the little one and the princess, the younger sister of a notable Camorra crime boss. At a distance, her closely cropped hairstyle made her at times indistinguishable from a man, especially in grainy surveillance footage. You might think, too, that her considerable crimes made her indistinguishable from a man, until you get close enough to realize that, as early as Pupetta, women have been playing far less subtle roles in mafia activity and vendettas than the stories of Ninetta and Saveria suggest. Maria, who is now in her sixties, famously avenged the murder of her nephew by ordering the deaths of fourteen rivals in a span of just forty-eight hours in the late 1980s, a veritable slaughter in contrast to Pupetta’s first murder. She also sent out lists of people who were on her death row, even reportedly posting death notices of rivals she intended to kill to warn them they were next.
She escaped capture many times, including once when police homed in on her hideout in a dilapidated farmhouse that was actually a lavish villa inside, complete with a grand piano, marble floors, and a hot tub. She was finally arrested in 2001 as she tried to escape town while hiding on the floor of the back seat of a car with a newly married couple still wearing their wedding best. She served eight years in prison, from where she still commanded the family. She also famously ordered the clans under her watch to not sell pure unfiltered heroin that came from Istanbul, Turkey, out of fear it was too strong and would kill off the clan’s client base. One of the groups under her watch defied her orders, chafing against a woman at the helm, and sold the heroin anyway, which killed dozens of addicts across Naples in a short period of time. Her punishment for those who betrayed her authority was making them use the drug, killing several clansmen, according to a turncoat who testified against her. The deaths were made to look like accidental overdoses, but in at least one case, Licciardi is said to have personally overseen what amounted to a forced overdose.
She was released from prison in 2009. An arrest warrant was once again issued for her in June 2019, but it was rescinded a month later and she remained a free woman despite her documented criminal past and rather impressive death toll. She was finally arrested on a new arrest warrant while trying to board a flight to Spain from Rome’s smaller Ciampino Airport as part of a sting operation tied to a massive raid on the Secondigliano Alliance. She was charged with running an extortion racket near Naples and, as of this writing, awaits trial.
“On more than one occasion, she transmitted her older brothers’ orders to kill,” Guida the pentito said about La Principessa. “The women took on all sorts of jobs on behalf of the alliance: They took messages to prisoners, distributed money to members, organized activities, especially numbers running and extortion rackets. In other words, they constitute the backbone of the organization.” [4]
Maria Campagna, a Cosa Nostra lady boss whom one turncoat called “a woman with balls,” [5] is a case in point of underestimation. Investigators initially thought Maria took over the reins after her husband, Salvatore “Turi” Cappello’s drug network that spanned from Calabria to Sicily to Naples landed him a life sentence in jail. But after a deeper investigation in 2017, dubbed Operation Penelope, sent thirty people to prison, it was clear that Maria and her husband were equal partners in the lucrative enterprise they launched as a team in 2012. Together they took the lives of around 150 people. Zia Maria (Aunt Maria), as she was often called, narrowly escaped conviction around the time the two were launching their criminal endeavor. Even then, well into the 2000s, police underestimated her criminal intent and let her go—which emboldened her to reach even greater heights in the criminal world and ultimately kill even more people.
Zia Maria was a flat-faced woman who wore her hair back like a schoolmarm and was almost always without makeup because her husband was almost always in jail. She moved from Catania in Sicily to her hometown of Naples, where she ran the I Due Vulcani (Two Volcanoes) pizzeria named for Etna in Sicily and Vesuvius over Naples. The ramshackle restaurant, which is now operated under new management, was not far from the train station and provided a perfect cover for Zia Maria’s criminal enterprise.
Initially, investigators assumed she had moved back home to Naples with her son to get away from the illegality. But in actuality, Sicilian foot soldiers under her control would travel to Naples to receive their marching orders. Basic instructions from Salvatore were hidden in elaborate doctored photos that he made on a prison computer and printer—instructions that she then made more specific. (Salvatore had gained access to the computer equipment while pursuing a sudden interest in obtaining a degree in graphic design. Zia Maria took the products of this “schoolwork” with her and mailed them out as greeting cards and thank-you notes.) Since she was on the outside, only she had the direct knowledge about what was really happening on the streets, how much money was being made and lost, and who needed to be killed or threatened. She and Salvatore could not speak about criminal activity in prison, since all of their conversations—as with many Italian prisoners—were being surveilled. So it was ultimately up to her to interpret what Salvatore wanted, and ultimately to determine whether her husband’s instructions were the right course of action to follow.
Zia Maria represents a growing number of women who have the controlling majority in mafia-run businesses. In her case, it was not just on paper, as is often believed. The Italian research center Transcrime found in a 2019 study that while only 2.5 percent of those who go to prison for mafia crimes are women, they are listed as sole owners of more than one third of all confiscated mafia assets. That’s twice as many women shareholders than in all of Italy’s legal economy, according to the group.[6]
Ample evidence points to the fact that wives have always played a greater role than just providing cover. When Pupetta’s husband was shot in broad daylight, he was immediately surrounded by associates who wanted to know who pulled the trigger. Those men ran when the police arrived, but Pasqualone would tell only Pupetta who his assassin was, which both transferred the responsibility of the vendetta to her and showed his collaborators that he trusted no one more than her. Based on their intimate complicity, it’s hard to imagine the sort of criminal enterprise Pupetta and Pasqualone could have achieved had he survived.
Anna Mazza, the “black widow” of Camorra kingpin Gennaro Moccia, whose territory extended to the city limits of Naples, evolved into one of the bloodiest and most powerful female bosses of her era. After her husband was murdered in 1976, she naturally supported her sons’ bid to avenge their father’s death[7]—it was eventually carried out by her thirteen-year-old son, Antonio. But then she went beyond just supporting her son’s vengeful foray. She also directed the clan’s bloodiest operations and was eventually convicted of mafia collusion—the first woman in Italy to be sentenced for such a crime—for which she served a mere five years in prison.
She groomed her sons in the image of their criminal father, and they made her proud. She managed the political relationships that are an integral part of the Camorra’s infiltration of government and legitimate enterprise, and she was relatively unhindered until her late seventies. A squat woman with a round face frequently hidden behind a signature pair of Jackie O sunglasses, she made her rounds with a fully armed female security detail. In the 1980s, she pretended to disassociate herself from the Camorra in a bid to spring one of her sons from jail. She died in her eighties in 2017 and her lavish funeral was attended by about a hundred guests in the Catholic church of Sant’Antonio ad Afragola outside Naples. Pupetta attended her funeral and called Anna a “family friend.”
Another woman who went beyond what was expected is Paola Altamura, who was born into a highly regarded criminal family in Taranto, Puglia, a dirty town that sits at the insole of Italy’s boot. Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita mafia is mostly dead by now, but factions of it sprout up from time to time. Taranto is known best for toxic pollution from the ArcelorMittal steel factory known as ex-Ilva, which has led to childhood cancer rates 21 percent higher than anywhere else in the region (though still lower than on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, where the Camorra plants toxic waste on the shin of Italy’s boot). The entire town wakes up each morning blanketed in a thin layer of toxic rust that floats down from the factory, but no one wants to close it because it employs so many people.
In a court case that landed Paola and seventy others in jail for mafia collusion, the streaky-haired blonde was described as a “determined, bloodthirsty woman” who was actively involved in the crimes—including murder—committed by her sixteen children who formed the Apesso clan. The group dealt mostly in drug and arms trafficking across the Adriatic Sea and beyond, and they dabbled in racketeering and extortion for good measure. The judge in the case determined that the matriarch Paola was the mastermind behind the arms-distribution wing of the clan, the one who decided who needed what weaponry depending on the job to be done. She was also involved in the packaging of the myriad drugs sold by the clan (and was notoriously frugal in her measurements).
But the most notorious of the mafia wives is easily Anna Addolorata De Matteis Cataldo, or, as her associates called her, Anna Morte, “Anna Death.” Born in Puglia in the ornate town of Lecce, often referred to as the Florence of the South, Anna Death and her husband were sentenced to life in prison for ordering the death of a rival by firing squad using Kalashnikovs. The court described their actions as driven by “despicable motives connected to conflicts for supremacy in the criminal underworld.”[8] She also devised a plan to rig up the door of a shopkeeper who refused to pay protection money, keeping him under constant threat that she could blow up the place with him inside at any time if he didn’t let her associates take goods without paying.
But it was her subsequent life sentence for the murder of Paola Rizzello and her two-year-old daughter for which she will be most remembered. Mrs. Rizzello apparently had secret information about Anna Death’s husband—at first as his secret lover and later as a witness to a murder he allegedly carried out. Anna Death could not risk the other woman going to the police, so she ordered a heinous hit, burning Mrs. Rizzello’s body and throwing it down a cistern. She also buried her baby daughter Angelica’s body nearby. The infant’s remains were found nearly eight years later. Anna Death’s husband, by then also incarcerated, was apparently appalled at his wife’s unbounded cruelty.
Pupetta was visibly shaken at the mention of the violence with which her successors in the underworld operate. She told me that while the murder she committed was hardly clean, it was “with good intention.” She wondered how women could order the killing of children. “It’s a step too far. There is justification under certain circumstances to seek revenge,” she said. “But there is never justification to kill a child. Never.” As she said this, I couldn’t help wondering if she was talking about the death of her first son and the man she continued to live with after the boy’s disappearance.
Sometimes Pupetta’s claims of moral high ground betray her. I could never help thinking that under the right circumstances, she, too, could transgress to a degree that would horrify even the male bosses in her criminal world. A heavily pregnant woman who can murder someone in cold blood has a certain edge of calm. While she was ultimately acquitted for the murder of Semerari, she was certainly capable of it and, at least for one set of judges who heard her case, guilty. But her criminal acumen goes far beyond violence. Pupetta remained incredibly skilled at manipulation, right up until her death.
In 1982, she summoned the press to a press conference that many thought might be about the missing Pasqualino. Instead she stood at the podium, a leopard print scarf around the collar of her tight dress, and made a death threat to her foe Raffaele Cutolo. “You know you have to leave me and mine alone, and you know that if you don’t, I will be able to exterminate your whole family,” she said, adding, “including the babies in the cribs.”
Her subtle manipulation was even more frightening. She was in complete control at all times, even when she was feigning weakness. She was masterfully dishonest. But it was in those moments when I felt Pupetta was being brutally honest with me, only to find out later she was lying about everything she said, that I both admired and feared her the most.
6
Toxic Parents
Police refused to let her attend her murdered toddler’s funeral, out of fear it could spark a gangland war if she showed up.
Pupetta’s surviving children never had a dependable father figure. But Pupetta’s relationship with her own father was formative. He was caught up in the trade of contraband cigarettes, and Pupetta remembered hiding his stolen goods in her dollhouse. He was not a top-tier crime boss, but he was well respected among the ranks of the Camorra. “I loved Papa dearly,” she said. “He was such a role model to us all. He taught us so much about what is important and how to read people.”
In Italy, the father-daughter relationship is a special one, with many fathers treating their daughters like princesses and fiercely protecting them from what they consider to be unqualified suitors. Like so many other facets of organized crime, the familial structures that exist in the larger Italian society provide the context for mafia families, too. It is no secret that Italian society also tends to embrace the mother-son relationship, with an abundance of thirty-year-old “mammoni” who don’t leave Mamma’s home until they can move straight into their wife’s, so they’ll never have to actually cook for themselves or do their own laundry. This holds especially true in mafia families.
Roberto, Pupetta’s son with Umberto, is a case in point. He had odd jobs, mostly thanks to family friends, and even owned a car dealership in Rome. But he had trouble keeping steady work, undoubtedly because of his family baggage. When Mom has been convicted for murder no less than twice and Dad’s a pentito, it is hard to get anyone to give you the keys to anything.
Pupetta’s only daughter, Antonella, was more of a confidante to her mother, at times living in her house and taking her to doctor’s appointments or bringing in groceries, and certainly protecting her in her old age, though it is hard to say exactly from what. Antonella wanted to monetize her mother’s notoriety. She would sell her mother’s interviews and tried desperately to stop her mother from talking to anyone unless there was a transaction of some sort.
Loyalty among daughters in mafia groups is often as unbreakable as it is easily manipulated. Jole Figliomeni, the daughter of the powerful Figliomeni crime family, with its tentacles extending from Calabria to Canada, is one of the best examples of how far a daughter will go to please her father.
Jole is a strong blond force to be reckoned with. Her social-media profile—when it was still available—was a bulletin board of glamour shots and selfies, often showing her on the arm of men in dark sunglasses or sitting on very nice cars. She has an international sense of style, mostly garnered from visiting family in the northern suburbs of Toronto, where she told me she spent at least some of her high school years, though finding a record of attendance at her supposed alma mater has proven impossible. She is multilingual, speaking English, French, and some Arabic, as well as Italian—rare for a girl from the unremarkable seaside town of Siderno, which hugs the arch of Italy’s boot and where her father, Alessandro, was a mob-tied mayor for many years.
