The Godmother, page 16
That suspicion would be proven correct when she died and the local police prohibited a public funeral. It is common for local police to prohibit mafia-tied men from being honored in death, but Pupetta was the first mafia woman to receive such a dubious honor. No other wife, mother, or daughter has been deemed so involved in organized crime as to have their funeral canceled.
When Umberto became a witness for the state, the Camorra swiftly murdered his brother Antonio and would have likely come after Pupetta and the twins if she had not already publicly cut ties with him.
Umberto’s testimony led to forty arrests in and around Naples. He is very likely still alive, living under Italy’s witness-protection program—which means he could be anywhere in the world. He had controlled the Camorra’s South American cocaine route and had few direct ties to the tightly knit clans in Naples, which made his jump from perpetrator to pentito considerably easier since he wasn’t in daily contact with other clansmen who might sense that he was under pressure—and threaten him if they sensed he might collaborate with authorities.
Pupetta swore she never once tried to get in touch with him after he left her to serve Dr. Semerari’s murder sentence alone. But police records from his own testimonies show otherwise, outlining the many times that Pupetta did indeed reach out to him in various ways when news spread that he had turned. She never asked to join him, nor did she ask him to offer her protection. She asked only if he was sure he knew what he was doing, and to think about the many lives his testimony would destroy.
During Umberto’s numerous post-pentito media interviews, he admitted to murdering and decapitating Semerari. In his most recently published interview, given to La Repubblica in 2017,[1] he was asked if he carried out the killing personally, to which he responded, “I cut off his head.” The interviewer asked why. Umberto replied, with an irony apparent to everyone but him, it seemed: “He was a traitor, and whoever makes an agreement and does not keep it is a traitor. We are talking about a criminal arena, aren’t we?”
In an interesting twist, he had told investigators that Pupetta had nothing at all to do with Semerari’s death, though they were never sure if he was telling the truth or attempting to clear her name as a bid for forgiveness. When asked in the 2017 interview what went wrong between them, he told a far different story than she did. “I was gone a lot,” he said. “Ultimately I went to South America. I met another woman with whom I had three children.”
Pupetta, who physically bristled at any mention of that interview and Umberto’s nonchalance about having children with someone else, told me that there was no “greater scum” than a turncoat. I wondered if she was in fact hiding her personal pain behind the less personal betrayals. It was hard to understand if her hatred stemmed from him testifying against the criminal group they so prospered in—or if it was really because he killed her son and cheated on her. As I got to know Pupetta, I tended to think she truly was angrier over the criminal betrayal than the personal one, having taught herself at an early age not to dwell on emotional pain. “In any walk of life, betrayal is unforgivable,” she told me. “It would have been better for him to commit suicide than to ruin the lives of so many people by confessing.”
During my conversations with Pupetta, I asked her about the lives that the Camorra has ruined, the many murders and destruction of livelihoods that the criminal enterprise carries out even today. But like all those who believe in their syndicates, Pupetta truly did not see the irony of her anger at the turncoats for ruining Camorra livelihoods. She believed in the moral integrity of everything she had done and blamed any judgment of her lifestyle on misconception—not fact—despite the thousands of organized-crime members currently rotting away in prison and thousands more of their victims buried in family tombs or never to be found again because they were literally flushed down drains along with the acid they melted into.
Pupetta’s disdain for pentiti is echoed by many mafia mavens. None so much as Giuseppina “Giusy” Spadaro and Angela Marino, the wives of Cosa Nostra boss Pasquale Di Filippo and his brother Emanuele, who together turned state’s evidence in 1995 against the Sicilian mob. The brothers were arrested and facing charges for murder, among the many crimes that would have easily landed them in jail for the rest of their lives. Giusy and Angela were interviewed for potential involvement as well, but it was just a formality.
During one of the questioning sessions, a detective told Giusy that her husband had decided to break the omertà and cooperate with police, offering her protection and an opportunity to safely join him under a new identity in another country. Giusy instead called Italy’s ANSA news agency and gave a scathing interview, in which she called Pasquale her “ex-husband” and detailed how she believed that he and his brother were disgusting. “We disown them,” she said. “Better to have dead men than pentiti. For us, the bastard pentiti don’t exist anymore.”
The Di Filippo brothers’ mother, Marianna Bruno, also publicly disowned her sons, as did their sister Agata, calling them in other interviews “vile things wreaking tragedy.” [2] The women of the family then carried out what amounted to mourning rituals, closing themselves up behind the heavy shutters of the family home in Corleone and wearing black when they went out, which was only for Mass, acting as if the men had died and not just done what for many was the right thing. So deep was the wound for Agata, whose own identity was tied to being an integral part of a successful criminal family, that she attempted suicide. In the end Giusy, however, turned state’s evidence and now lives under protection.
One of the most prolific pentiti in Sicily was Giuseppe Laudani who, at seventeen, was destined to take over a Cosa Nostra cosche, or clan, after his father’s brutal assassination at the end of 2015. Giuseppe’s father was murdered by rivals within the Cosa Nostra and his corpse fed to stray dogs; DNA from his gnawed bones was used to identify his remains some months after he disappeared. But instead of embracing the opportunity left in his father’s wake, or even the urge to avenge his father’s death, the younger Laudani went to the police to testify against the three women who raised him: Maria Scuderi, fifty-one, Concetta Scalisi, sixty, and Paola Torrisi, fifty-two, who he said were the real masterminds of the brutal and deadly Laudani gang. Concetta, his aunt, had been given the lead role after she was narrowly saved from an assassin’s bullet by Giuseppe’s father in the early 2000s. Giuseppe’s father gave her and the other women—all with mafia pedigrees—the gift of raising his son. The three “queens of Caltagirone” were immediately tapped the mussi di ficurinia, “prickly pear–lip ladies,” in what seems a mixed reference to both their personalities and facial hair.
Laudani’s testimony spurred a massive raid in the Sicilian port of Catania in February 2016 when 500 heavily armed officers carried out arrest warrants for 109 people, including the prickly pear–lip ladies who ran the Laudani group for Giuseppe’s father. The three were taken into custody for mafia association, extortion, drug trafficking, and illegal arms possession. Of the 109 people targeted by warrants, 80 were captured and 23 were already serving time. The remaining 6 are still at large at the time of this writing.
The information provided by the teenager led to the uncovering of a budding alliance between the Cosa Nostra factions near Catania and the cocaine smugglers of the ’Ndrangheta just across the Straits of Messina. He also told investigators how the group run by the prickly pear–lip ladies had acquired two bazooka rocket launchers to complement their considerable weapons cache, intended for killing anti-mafia magistrates. Police were able to corroborate his testimony with another informant, and the rocket launchers were located in a garage on the slopes of the often-erupting Mount Etna. A cache of weapons and ammunition was also found not far from the volcano’s most active crater, which, had lava flowed in that direction, could have set off an incredible explosion.
The young man also testified against his brother Pippo and half brother Alberto Caruso, as well as his ninety-year-old grandfather, Sebastiano. While the haul was massive in terms of justice, it paid dividends in information as well. Laudani provided compelling details about how these three women wielded power and were far more sinister in their punishments and vendettas than many members of the group who had far more power and influence. The women referred to young Laudani as a “prince” who would become king, but in preparing him, they used a sort of tough love that included torture and what he described as borderline sexual assault.
His testimony was particularly harsh against the patriarch of the family, Sebastiano, who, he told investigators, “wanted to kill every enemy the family had.” Laudani explained how the old man sent messages to underlings and foot soldiers through the family lawyer. “He has always commanded from prison,” the grandson said.
Giuseppe Laudani is currently living under Italy’s witness-protection program under an assumed name.
Such hatred for pentiti might at first seem like a contradiction. Women inside the mafia are often described as painfully loyal to their husbands, fathers, and brothers, following their orders and maintaining for the most part a submissive role unless empowered to do more. If those descriptions are truly accurate, it would be natural for them to automatically follow when their husbands disappear into witness protection.[3] But the fact that they are so offended by those who turn against the organization—which we are constantly told women are not allowed to officially join—suggests they are more than mere cheerleaders on the sidelines.
Having a husband side with the law also strips from them the prestige and protection they enjoyed as a mafia wife within their home communities. If a mafioso is killed or imprisoned, his wife maintains certain rights and honors and is taken care of by the organization. If the husbands or sons become turncoats, the women have to leave the organizations by default—organizations many such women played an integral role in expanding.
Farther south, in the depths of Calabria, the toe of Italy’s boot and one of the country’s most beautiful regions, the power that ’Ndrangheta women wield is the topic of fierce debate. Roles are still traditional, and local folklore suggests that men won’t even allow their wives or lovers on top during sex because of a perceived allusion to female dominance. However, every woman—whether a turncoat, prosecutor, or mafia expert—to whom I ever posed the question of sexual positions and mafia affiliation found it a ridiculous legend that had little truth to it. Domestic violence rates in this part of Italy are among the highest in the nation, and rape is often used as a weapon between warring families. Punishing a rival by raping his daughter means she will never be able to marry beyond a certain level of criminal society.
There are fewer turncoats in the ’Ndrangheta than in the Neapolitan Camorra or Sicilian Cosa Nostra, in part because of Calabria’s demonstrably corrupt legal system, which has seen its share of members inside the police forces tried for mafia collusion. Judges, too, tend not to stay in place very long in the local tribunals due to the threats on their lives, making it an uneasy environment to foster the sort of trust you need to get members of syndicates to turn.
Blood ties are also hard to break in the far south of the country, an area long forgotten by many national social programs, and where rampant poverty has left many with no choice but to join the superrich criminal group. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in Calabria, where women in general have a less prominent role in society. In the deeply traditional families of this region, daughters, mothers, and sisters exist in such close proximity to whatever business their sons, fathers, and brothers are involved in, there’s little chance they don’t assume a critical role in it. Given that so few opportunities exist outside these crime families, there is never a choice for them not to be directly involved.
One such shining example is Maria Serraino, a member of one of the ’Ndrangheta’s most successful crime families.[4] She spearheaded their cigarette-smuggling business in Milan, where they controlled the criminally infested area around Piazza Prealpi after moving there from Reggio Calabria in the south during the 1960s. She took on the traditional Italian criminal family matron role behind closed doors, raising her sons to be skilled car thieves and international drug barons, which was easier in the wealthier north of Italy. But she was also the boss of the clan outside the home, too, managing the ’ndrina’s affairs with the quick wit and finely honed skill of a seasoned criminal.
Eventually her own daughter Rita, who has been mentioned earlier in this book, turned against her after the young woman was arrested with a thousand doses of ecstasy she had been forced to smuggle for the family business. Rita spent her childhood stuffing heroin into shampoo bottles and hiding cocaine in the side panels of cars on her mother’s orders. She told police everything: how her mother was the true boss of the clan, even though everyone assumed the group answered to her brother Emilio, who was based in Spain to run drug-smuggling corridors from Morocco to England and from Colombia to Milan.
“She’s got it right there in her blood, in her veins,” Rita told police, according to court transcripts. “My mother had all the power, because if she decided some job shouldn’t be done, then the job wasn’t done.”
Rita spoke with mafia expert Ombretta Ingrascì about women’s “hidden but substantial power in Calabria,” describing one of her aunts as a “general in a skirt.” Rita said her aunt was as bad as her mom, and “capable of killing a person with her bare hands.” [5]
Among the many nicknames Rita said her mother answered to were Nonna Eroina, “Grandma Heroin,” and La Signora, “The Lady.” Another of the daughters’ husbands, also a turncoat, testified that Grandma Heroin ran the drug enterprise with an iron fist, even ordering the murder of a key smuggler who was trying to set up a freelance drug trade on the side. Ingrascì’s work to unpack Grandma Heroin’s reign of influence uncovered a series of tapped phone transcripts, including one between the matriarch and her son Antonio in which she warns him that she’s about to kill his brother Emilio, the presumed boss, if he doesn’t bring in more money from Morocco. “Don’t fuck with me. If I cancel out Emilio, for me he is done for, because I am already pissed off,” she said, essentially threatening that her own child is expendable if he steps out of line.
Grandma Heroin also ran an arms trade, procuring weapons from easily corruptible police and running them to her dealers, often personally. She died in 2017 while serving a life sentence for murder and mafia association.
Not all daughters who want out of their criminal families leave as successfully as Rita, who was able to never look back after collaborating with police. In 2012, Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso[6] ran a horrifying exposé about the triangle of ’Ndrangheta territory near the infamous Gioia Tauro port, a massive harbor outside Reggio Calabria on the Tyrrhenian coast through which everything from drugs to stolen antiquities passes.[7] The area around it is thick with thieves who pilfer the spoils that come from the port. An estimated 2.5 tons of cocaine pass through the port each year. I have visited the port for a number of stories, including in 2019 when some of that stash of cocaine was smuggled in 144 crates of underripe bananas. The port is poorly controlled, with holes in the perimeter fences through which smugglers’ vehicles easily come and go. Side streets lead up to access points and people are milling around on both sides of the fence. Those in uniform are easily as corrupted as those without.
Gioia Tauro is also the epicenter of honor killings, and the L’Espresso article paints a gruesome picture, highlighting twenty deaths in the span of just a few years. Some of the young women who were killed were caught engaging in romantic relationships online rather than dating from the local pool of criminals. One was the widow of a prestigious boss; she had started dating again without permission. Several had died by “suicide,” often forced to shoot themselves or put the noose around their own necks and jump off chairs at gunpoint.
The main source of the exposé was Giuseppina “Giusy” Pesce, whose story has been told earlier and whose family remains among the deadliest in all of the ’Ndrangheta circuit. Giusy had once brandished a knife to protect her husband after he was shot early in their courtship, which won him over. But as her husband was drifting in and out of jail, Giusy, at the age of thirty-four, became the ’Ndrangheta’s first woman to become a witness for the state. In Giusy’s case, she escaped, but her three children, ages fifteen, nine, and five, paid a terrible price in the form of torture, starvation, and violence as a ploy to get her to change her mind and return home.
The idea was to brainwash the children into believing that the abuse they endured was due to their “bad mother” and her choices to betray the family. They were fed only with eye droppers, which eventually caused the five-year-old to suffer developmental issues from malnutrition. The nine-year-old boy was habitually beaten up by the children of other ’Ndrangheta families, who all stood by and watched him get pummeled. And the fifteen-year-old daughter was forced to write her mother letters of anguish in an attempt to convince her to stop collaborating.
