THE BLACK HAND FORUM

Russians were not in Italy in WW2, maybe he was sent to eastern front, that would leave some marks on him for sure, Battle of Stalingrad had more casualties than whole western front combined , after you survive shit like that well... def helps in organized crime. But he was charged in 1939, 1940 and 1944, so he was in Italy for most of time during ww2, i have no idea.

Link is now working , thanks!

[quote=Strax post_id=269325 time=1697823938 user_id=186]
[quote=motorfab post_id=269318 time=1697813811 user_id=5417]
[quote=Strax post_id=269315 time=1697812075 user_id=186]
This is amazing , thanks again. I had no idea he ever gave interview, they usually try to stay under the radar , especially 'Ndrangheta.
[/quote]
My Pleasure! I was also very surprised, especially since he did it twice! The funny thing is that there too I did not know that it would once again be an interview, I thought it would simply be an article on his life. But when I opened the magazine and I saw that it was another interview ...
[/quote]

I would have thought that after first interview others would give him a warning and tell him to stay away from newspapers and keep a low profile. I can't imagine someone who is high ranking in organized crime giving 2 interviews in Sicily in 1975. That would be a death sentence back in 1975 in Sicily , actually that would be dead sentence even today.

Video not available anymore?
[/quote]

Well, as he was about to die for the second ITV, I guess he didn't care. But he was also one the most powerful mafioso of that era, so maybe it's another factor

The previous link doesn't work ? Maybe try this https://youtu.be/bd6i_tvs6JI?feature=shared

[quote=motorfab post_id=269318 time=1697813811 user_id=5417]
[quote=Strax post_id=269315 time=1697812075 user_id=186]
This is amazing , thanks again. I had no idea he ever gave interview, they usually try to stay under the radar , especially 'Ndrangheta.
[/quote]
My Pleasure! I was also very surprised, especially since he did it twice! The funny thing is that there too I did not know that it would once again be an interview, I thought it would simply be an article on his life. But when I opened the magazine and I saw that it was another interview ...
[/quote]

I would have thought that after first interview others would give him a warning and tell him to stay away from newspapers and keep a low profile. I can't imagine someone who is high ranking in organized crime giving 2 interviews in Sicily in 1975. That would be a death sentence back in 1975 in Sicily , actually that would be dead sentence even today.

Video not available anymore?

[quote=Strax post_id=269315 time=1697812075 user_id=186]
This is amazing , thanks again. I had no idea he ever gave interview, they usually try to stay under the radar , especially 'Ndrangheta.
[/quote]

My Pleasure! I was also very surprised, especially since he did it twice! The funny thing is that there too I did not know that it would once again be an interview, I thought it would simply be an article on his life. But when I opened the magazine and I saw that it was another interview ...

But on a few documentaries available on YouTube you can see Piromalli in his hospital room talk to journalists (see here around the 23rd minute https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd6i_tvs6ji&list=wl&index= 1 & ab_channel = prisondocumentaries)

But yes it is really surprising and quite unusual

This is amazing , thanks again. I had no idea he ever gave interview, they usually try to stay under the radar , especially 'Ndrangheta.

You're welcome guys, glad to share these pieces of history

[quote=Eline2015 post_id=269298 time=1697783411 user_id=533]
Interesting. So he was fight with russians together with nazis in WW2?
[/quote]

The way I understand it, he served in Russia but not with the Russians, but as he was part of the Italian Army, he was with the nazis. In the other interview from 1975, he said he also served in Montenegro

I would love to find out who were the Americans & Canadians representatives at his funerals

Regarding Salvatore Giuliano, he was a young Calabrian who extorted sellers from Gioia Tauro. He was found dead in January 1978. To be more specific, they only find his legs as he was probably fed to the pigs... In one of their books, Antonio Nicaso & Nicola Gratteri report a conversation between Mommo and his wife while Piromalli was hospitalized:

[i]“Mommo, that caminau speech tonight.” "Which?" asks Piromalli, and his wife explains: «That one! The one du porchiceddu [of the piglet] from fifteen days ago." The boss understands and asks: «Ah, yes! Did they find him?". And the wife, without getting too upset, replies: «Yes, the anchi suli [just the legs]». “Up there?” the boss asks again, and the wife replies: "Yes."[/i] [Storia segreta della 'ndrangheta page 172]

Just, I don't understand the word "Caminau", so if an Italian passes by I'm all ears (I looked but couldn't find the meaning). Anyway, no surprises it seems that Piromalli was not as innocent as he claimed ...

----

And I made at least 2 mistakes in the translation. I wrote "boss" instead of bosses" and at one point I wrote "flying" instead of "stealing". These 2 words are spelled the same in French, and as I first translated into French before to do it in English, I simply forgot to correct that. My apologies...

Interesting. So he was fight with russians together with nazis in WW2?

Great find, thanks for posting!

[quote=motorfab post_id=268444 time=1696342725 user_id=5417]
You're welcome guys, glad you enjoyed it. I also ordered another magazine with Piromalli, this one from 1979, but it hasn't been sent yet. If there are other interesting details to translate I will post it here
[/quote]

So I just received the magazine. It's Oggi magazine again, and again it's an interview with Piromalli, this time the interview was done in a hospital a few days before he died in February 1979.

Oggi issue 9, March 2, 1979

[b]LAST INTERVIEW WITH THE BOSS OF BOSS: PIROMALLI A MAFIOSO DOES NOT DIE LIKE THIS[/b]

Until the end, Girolamo Piromalli, whom we approached shortly before his death, tried to maintain an aura of respectability. “They know everything about me: I have nothing to hide” “For crimes like Cristina Mazzotti, I would reinstate the death penalty.” But his CV had it all: murder, drugs, extortion and kidnapping


GIAN PAOLO ROSSETTI
Gioia Tauro(Reggio Calabria), February

This is an exceptional document. This is the will of Girolamo Piromalli, the "boss of bosses" of the 'Ndrangheta, the infamous Calabrian mafia. This was the last interview the elderly and ailing godfather gave before his death. Piromalli was 61 years old. Officially, he was citrus trader, but in the plain of Gioia Tauro (which, so to speak, "was" the fifth steel center) he was called "Don Mommo the Almighty" because any business, whether dirty or clean , had to receive his imprimatur in order to succeed. Of course, he denied possessing this immense power. "I'm just a poor guy persecuted by justice,” he said. And he got very angry when someone pointed out to him that in Italy there was no mafia-type episode with which the name of the mafioso was not associated. “Mafiosi die of Lupara indigestion,” he says, “I am not a mafioso and I "I will die in a bed". His predictions came true, although it proves absolutely nothing. Don Mommo died on the evening of Sunday February 11 at the Gioia Tauro hospital. Acute pulmonary edema killed him, the last of "a long series of illnesses that had undermined his strong physique. But death did not surprise him. Don Mommo had already understood this for several weeks but his fate was sealed. He told the defender Armando Veneto, the famous lawyer criminal lawyer who has been fighting for years to obtain his release: “Lawyer, stop wasting time. This appeal to the Supreme Court is no longer necessary. From now on, only the Eternal Father can give me my freedom." And when the lawyer tried to answer "What is happening to you? Where has the always irreducible Don Mommo gone? ", he limited himself to saying a phrase which now sounds like an omen: "Shut up, lawyer, Don Mommo is no longer here." Even among us in Oggi, he had the reaction of a man who " has the impression" of dying. He was still hospitalized at the Piedmont hospital in Messina. "What do you want? " he murmured, lifting himself slightly on the bed. “Have you come to check on my agony?” His face was swollen, his eyes sunken. “I feel so bad,” he added, “that even the guards responsible for watching me took pity on me.” Cirrhosis of the liver, combined with an infection, progressive damage to the muscles in his right leg and a glaucoma in the eye left transformed it into a larva. “Let me die in peace,” he exclaimed. But later he calmed down and agreed to answer our questions. “On the condition that you leave before my little girl arrives,” he clarified, referring to his daughter. "Cettina must not be involved in this matter. I have always kept her out of my life. She goes to the riding school, attends university and is engaged to a good young man who will marry her. The man, Tonino , is also a good boy. He does the commercials, I would give everything I have for him to graduate.

[b]HELP EVERYONE[/b]

[b]-What do your children know about you?[/b]
Everything !

[b]-And it's?[/b]
That I am innocent. What else should they know?

[b]-But all these accusations cannot come from nothing. Investigators say you are involved in cigarette smuggling, drug trafficking, kidnapping and controlling construction activities. They also accuse you of being the instigator of the assassination of a certain Salvatore Giuliano, a "Picciotto", of the same name but unrelated to the famous Sicilian bandit, who had rebelled against authority.[/b]
These are slanders, infamies. They also said that I made billions by subcontracting the steel center that was to be built in Gioia Tauro. What billions? This is simply absurd. The house where I stayed, yes, he had it built, my wife got it with the money that was sent to her father in America. Our income consists first of all of the children's rent that we receive for three apartments and the income from my rent, my salary and a small farm. Drugs and kidnapping are not for me. There are other ways less dirty to make money. If my children doubted that half of the things attributed to me were true, they would have already repudiated me. As for Salvatore, why should I have him eliminated? He was my “boyfriend”. I had kept it “for confirmation” and I considered him like a son. Even his father said he would never believe I was guilty."

[b]-Do you think you are a mafioso?[/b]
Absolutely not. People come to me for advice because I am always ready to welcome anyone

[b]-How?[/b]
To be of service, to prove right to those who are right and wrong to those who are wrong. And above all by punishing those who make mistakes, if necessary."

[b]-But it's the mafia, Don Mommo...[/b]
We say it when we come from the North. If hating abuse and defending the poor is the mafia, well I'm a mafioso, otherwise no. Here in Calabria it doesn't take much to affix this label. When I was confined in Asinara, I lived with 150 suspected mafiosi. They were almost all poor things. They ate slices of inedible donkey meat without protest and slept piled on top of each other in an old hospital.

[b]-Don't you want us to believe that there are only people honest in prison?[/b]
No, but there aren't as many criminals as you think.

[b]-Have you made friends with any inmates?[/b]
Yes, with Freda and Ventura, two good children...

[b]-Do you think like them politically?[/b]
Do you want to know if I'm a fascist? Faced with certain crimes, I regret the laws of the past regime. The murderers of Cristina Mazzotti, for example, I would have put them against the wall. When I think that they also accused me of this kidnapping, it gives me chills.

[b]-And what can you tell us about Paul Getty?[/b]
They acquitted me for lack of sufficient evidence, but they should have acquitted me with a total acquittal. There was no evidence.

[b]-But you must be the unluckiest man in the world. They are always looking for you when something happens.[/b]
Today, in Italy, you cannot arrest someone for criminal conspiracy without linking them to the name of Piromalli. They have “associated” me with everyone now. But I do not have nothing to reproach me for. I paid for the evil I did, they are old stories.

[b]-What stories?[/b]
When I came back from the war (I had been in Russia with the Decima Mas) I went flying to feed my parents who had lost everything during the bombings. I got out of prison on January 1, 1950. In April I got married and bought a threshing machine. But a few days later, a strange guy came to visit me. “From now on, you will work for me,” he said. “I won’t give you a cent, but in return you will save a lot of trouble.” I sent him to hell, but he, in revenge, ambushed me. Three of them came to shoot me, but I was faster than them and killed one. During the trial, I was acquitted due to lack of sufficient evidence, but on appeal, the judges changed the sentence and sentenced me to 10 years and 4 months in prison. The rest came by itself. For public opinion, I became a mafia member, then president of all the mafias.

[b]“FRIENDS OF FRIENDS”[/b]

Thus ended our interview. It is clear that, despite his protests, Don Mommo has not succeeded in convincing us of his innocence. Too many things showed that he was a real "boss ". And now he has had the funeral honors of the “boss”. His funeral was impressive, noisy, full of festoons and bad taste, as is customary among mafioso. The whole city was behind his coffin, starting with the Christian Democratic mayor and the communists. And, with the city and the musical fanfare, there were emissaries who came from far away, from Canada and the United States, to confirm to the family or to those "in charge" that even if the godfather was no longer there, certain alliances remained. . If he could have seen them as they crowded around his widow during the dismissal" (the traditional condolence ceremony), Don Mommo would have left more satisfied. He cared about these things. “What is life without friends?” he asked. “Shit”. There were many at his funeral, but among them, we don't know how many "friends of friends"

[img]https://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/dc2c19c86dfeee60d6fb051158ff0050.jpg[/img]

[img]https://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/37a40fae00ec636f2d2127d2e3b2698c.jpg[/img]

[img]https://theblackhand.club/forum/ext/dmzx/imageupload/files/10993b9875ec804233765031c6bd1ce2.jpg[/img]

I hope I translated everything correctly

You're welcome guys, glad you enjoyed it. I also ordered another magazine with Piromalli, this one from 1979, but it hasn't been sent yet. If there are other interesting details to translate I will post it here

This is an amazing find! Thank you so much for sharing and translating Motor!

Amazing, thanks!

Excellent work.

You're welcome guys !

[quote=Dwalin2014 post_id=268322 time=1696059841 user_id=122]
Thanks, a very interesting article!
By the way, which crimes did Mommo Piromalli did 13 years for? If he got acquitted of the murder charge; I think I read in some article he did 9 years for some other murder related to the feud with the Carlino family in the 1950s, but I couldn't find this article anymore unfortunately, so I am not sure about whether I remembered the information correctly...
[/quote]

I asked myself the same question. A few months ago I tried to search in newspapers to see what I could on his past, but I had not found much pre-1973 and the kidnapping of Getty. For what is worth, the English Wikipedia on Piromalli says that he had a conviction for murder in 1950 and quoted a book by Pino Arlacchi as a reference, Mafia Business Page 20. I haven't read the book, but if he has had a 13-year conviction (or 9) is probably for this. I guess he was acquited during his stay in prison or he was sentenced at first but acquited later. In short: I'm not sure lol

On another note, something that marked me when I read the interview, is that he said he served during WWII in the Borghese X Mas division. We now know that the 'ndrangheta got closer to Borghese for his coup attempt and that according to some informants, this would have been on the initiative of Giovanni de Stefano who was imprisoned with several friends of Borghese. It was also one of the point of the Montalto summit in 1969.

As we know that Piromalli secretly supported De Stefano's brothers during the First War of the 'ndrangheta (1974-1977), I wonder if in fact it is not mainly Piromalli which favored the borghese/'ndrangheta rapprochement

This was very interesting read , thanks a lot for sharing!