Rise&Fall of Raffaele Cutolo

[furiofromnaples]

November 4, 1941 - Raffaele Cutolo was born in Ottaviano, a municipality in the hinterland of Naples, in a family without ties with the Camorra.

February 24, 1963 - At the age of 21,he committed his first homicide. He killed a man whose girlfriend had been slapped by Cutolo due to an alleged insult. In the ensuing fight, Cutolo pulled out a gun and shot him to death. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, reduced to 24 years after appeal.

During the during the imprisonment Cutolo had established himself as a ringleader, when Antonio Spavone, known as "'o Malommo" (The Badman), was transferred to Poggioreale prison. He challenged Spavone to a knife fight in the courtyard (a practice called 'o dichiaramento, the declaration), but Spavone refused. The challenged boss allegedly limited himself to a reply: "Today's young men want to die young by whatever means." Spavone was released from prison shortly after this event. From his prison cell, Cutolo ordered the murder of Spavone. A hitman, allegedly Cutolo's friend, shot Spavone in the face from short range with a shotgun. Spavone survived the ambush, but the shotgun blast left considerable damage to his facial structure, which required plastic surgery. Spavone immediately resigned from his highly visible role as a Camorra boss.

In prison, Cutolo creates the NCO aka Nuova Camorra Organizzata that has a vertical and pyramid structure Raffaele Cutolo called the gospel as boss; Among the first affiliates are the inmates Raffaele Catapano, Pasquale D'Amico, Giuseppe Serra, Giuseppe Puca, Michele Iafulli . The degree of sanctity (right hand of Cutolo) is achieved only by entrepreneur Vincenzo Casillo, Pasquale Barra, Davide Sorrentino, Antonino Cuomo and Giuseppe Puca; to which are added Alfonso Rosanova, NCO's economic mind, and Rosetta Cutolo the NCo's street boss.

February 5, 1978 - Cutolo escape from the criminal asylum of Aversa, where he had managed with false appraisals to be hospitalized a year earlier, thanks also to Giuseppe Puca's work violently: a nitroglycerin charge placed outside the building broke through the walls allowing the boss to escape.
During the latitancy, he started relations with Apulian criminals, with the 'ndrangheta, with the Lombard bands of Renato Vallanzasca and Francis Turatello for the trade of cocaine. With the false name of Prisco Califano, Cutolo goes to Ottaviano to the mayor Salvatore La Marca. In a short time, the NCO penetrates all sectors of the bell economy and, thanks to the conviction and the assent of local politicians, is able to benefit from CEE funds for conserve producers.

September 13, 1978 - Pasquale Cappuccio,a Municipal councilor in the Socialist Party lists, repeatedly denounces the collusion of politics with the underworld in reference to procurement and real estate speculation in the heart of the criminal empireof Raffaele Cutolo.
He was killed in an ambush,while he iwas in the car with his wife, only slightly injured.

May 5, 1979 - Cutolo is caught in a cottage in Albanella in the province of Salerno.

January 31, 1980 - Antonino Cuomo was killed in Poggioreale Prison, the man wanted to become indipendent and then later deal with the New Family's anti-cutolists.
His wife Carla Campi, the first woman killed by the Camorra in the Neapolitan area, was killed because she had learned from her husband all the secrets of the NCO. The killers killed him just as he was leaving the magistrate, in Castelcapuano. Her one year old son Anthony Junior survived the ambush and Cutolo dedicated him a poem.

November 23, 1980 - an earthquake struck Irpinia and other areas of southern Italy; that night, the prison of Poggioreale is the scene of a mortal fight between NCO and NF inmates: the toll is of three dead (Michele Casillo,Giuseppe Clemente,Antonio Palmieri) and eight wounded.
Organized crime fight to intercept the money allocated for reconstruction (estimated at 50,000 billion lire). In December of that same year, Cutolo ordered the assassination of Marcello Torre, mayor of Pagani, that stopped the assignment of a rubbish removal contract to an company tied to the NCO.

The NCO's growth brought the Camorra families of naples to join another group called New Family. At first attempts were made to mediate so Cutolo would have the province and NF the city of Naples but Cutolo's attempt to impose a tax on every smuggling cigarette case and then on every drug charge led to a war that from 1978 to 1983 made more than a thousand deaths.

December 10,1980 - Marcello Torre mayor of Pagani was killed; few month after the boss of Pagani Salvatore Serra was forced to suicide in jail.

In early 1981 Cutolo got transferred to the prison in Marino del Tronto in Ascoli Piceno, on April 27 of that year, the politicians Ciro Cirillo - postseismic reconstruction administrative officer - is kidnapped by the Red Brigades, directed by Giovanni Senzani. At that time, the boss met with some DC representatives and representatives of the Italian secret services who asked for his collaboration; in particular, requests would be received by Giuliano Granata (then Mayor of Giugliano in Campania), Silvio Gava, Francesco Pazienza, Flaminio Piccoli, Francesco Patriarca, Vincenzo Scotti and Antonio Gava. Testimonials of the meetings in Ascoli Piceno were the director and chaplain of the prison, the lieutenant of Cutolo Vincenzo Casillo and Alfonso Rosanova.

May 30, 1981 a bomb explodes near Raffaele Cutolo's villa, probably by Antonio Bardellino's order.

April 14, 1981 - Giuseppe Salvia, deputy director of the Poggioreale Prison was killed in order of cutolo because he had tried to counteract his influence in jail and Cutolo,during a search which he didn't like, tried to slap him.

Summer 1981 - at the Nuvoletta's farm there was a meeting between the Sicilian Cosa Nostra, present the head of the Corleonesi Toto Riina and NF bosses to stop the slaughter,a truce that Cutolo does not seem to want to accept. In fact, after a while the Cutolians kill Salvatore Alfieri and the war resumes. For this reason, the prisons are divided into two separate sections, one for the Cutolians (in larger numbers) and the other for the New Family affiliates, considered militarily better organized; but still some argue that the decisive factor for the war was actually the gradual loss of political support by the Cutolinas.

15 July 1982 - the assistant chief Antonio Ammaturo, has always been involved in the fight against the Camorra, he is killed by the Red Brigades as a favor to Cutolo

July 24, 1981 - Through the information of Brigatists Luigi Bosso and Sante Notarnicola, Cutolo learns the names of Cirillo's jailers: Pasquale Aprea and Rosario Perna, led by Senzani. Cutolo pay a ransom for the politician liberation.
Everything settles in a mutual exchange of favors among DC men, secret services, NCOs, and Red Brigades.Cutolo makes a number of requests that will never be accepted (the partial infirmity of mind and some preferential treatment for themselves and affiliates).

August 17, 1981 - Badu 'and Carros prison in Nuoro, Francis Turatello boss of the Little Milanese is killed by Pasquale Barra called the animal: Barra wounds the man with forty knives and squats him,bitting some internal organs with the help of Vincenzo Andraous.

27 December 1981 - Alfieri’s man Giuseppe Romano and his son Antonio Romano killed at the command of Cutolo because he was Cutolo's sister Rosetta Cutolo's lover.

The 1982 is the year in which the greatest number of murders in Campania are recorded, 284, a sign of the permanent instability of the relations between camorristian groups. And it's from 1982 that begins the decline of Cutolo and the rise of Alfieri.

March 16,1982 - Until that day no one was aware of the negotiations for the liberation of Cirillo, until the journalist Marina Maresca published in the newspaper the Unit an article of the eloquent title:"La DC trattò con le Br. Due esponenti da Cutolo per il riscatto Cirillo" aka "The DC came to terms with Br. Two representatives to Cutolo for Cirillo's ransom ".Other services will be followed by the names of the personalities "visiting" the Ascoli Piceno prison .The news is based on a document (a Minister header) that will prove to be false.although the content will be found in the work of Judge Carlo Alemi who, on 28 July 1988, files a judgment of 1,531 pages in which it is believed that some members of the DC started negotiations with Cutolo. Only after 12 years from the kidnapping, an appeal judgment is right to Alemi.

April 15,1982 - The mother of the inmate Antonio De Matteo was killed by blows of machine gun. The woman received the orders of Cutolo through her son Antonio. The next day Antonio's brother, Mattia, was found burnt in his car.

April 18,1982 - Antonio De Matteo was hanged in his cell by Marco Medda and Pasquale D'amico, because Cutolo was afraid he would start talking.

April 19, 1982 - Alfonso Rosanova,the NCO's economic mind is killed in the small room of a hospital in Salerno.

May 12,1982 - Raffaele Catapano kills Camorrista Mario Vangone for killing his brother.

August 31, 1982, Albert Bergamelli was mortally stabbed by Paolo Dongo a thirthy yaers old lifer.
Bergamelli, was one of Raffaele Cutolo's trusted men with the delicate task of administering the "surplus" aka how much each prisoner can spend for extras.

Because of the clamor and scandal created by Maresca's articles,the President of the Republic, Sandro Pertini,ordered in the middle 1982 to transfer of Cutolo to the high-security penitentiary at the Asinara prison, which was reopened exclusively for him and where he spent a couple of years as a single prisoner , causing the fall of the influence of the boss. Here he will be completely isolated; affiliates begin to dissociate or repent: their revelations allow the maxi-blitz of June 17, 1983, which provides more than 1,200 capture warrants against the Cotolians; although some members of the organization like Pasquale Scotti have tried in vain for a reorganization.

Late 1982 - Andrea Pandico the brother of Giovanni Pandico gets shot to death during an ambush. Andrea Pandico's widow Filomena Schiavone gets killed in 1983 at his grave by Alfredo Guarneri at the command of Giovanni Pandico because she had a member of Nuova Famiglia as a lover.


January 29, 1983 - Vincenzo Casillo aka 'o Nirone" (The Big Black) the second in command of the NCO was murdered by a bomb planted under the pedal of his car;Pasquale Galasso chief of the Galasso clan and member of the rival Nuova Famiglia headed by Carmine Alfieri, was responsible for the blast.Galasso claimed that he killed Casillo in order to free Antonio Gava and other Christian democrats from Cutolo's threats.In June 1996, the Sicilian Mafia pentito, Francesco Di Carlo claimed that Vincenzo Casillo together with another Camorrista, Sergio Vaccari were responsible for the murder of Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano who was dubbed the "God's Banker".Casillo once confessed to murder of the bankrupt financier to Enrico Madonna,Cutolo's lawyer.
Together in the car with Casillo there was Mario Cuomo his right arm that survived but remained mutilated in the lower limbs.

in Ascoli Piceno Cutolo fell in love with the sister of his lieutenant, Immaculate Iacone, nineteen years old, known during his visit to prison. They marry on May 26, 1983. The Iacone, interviewed by Vanity Fair: "The first kiss came after six months of engagement, in a speech spreading the body over the glass ... The wedding day in jail is the only time I saw my husband in full, from shoes to hair, without bars or dividing walls to separate us. "

June 16, 1983 - Many of the men of Cutolo were arrested (among them the well-known Enzo Tortora, that was innocent) among them: Mariano Santini, Rosetta Cutolo, Antonio Sibila, Felicia Cuozzo (Bergamelli's girlfriend) Francesco Gangemi, Bruno Spiezia, Errico Madonna, Salvatore La Marca, Renato Vallanzasca, Mario Astorina, Gianni Melluso, Pierluigi Concutelli, Nadia Marzano, Giuliana Brusa, Aldina Murelli, Franco Califano, Antonio Faro, Sante Notarnicola,Anna Mariniello (wife of Afragola boss Luigi Moccia), Fiorella Piconzi, Stevan Cosa and Mario Mirabile (of Salerno). Later, they decided to collaborate with the judiciary Michelangelo D'Agostino, Gianni Melluso, Mario Incarnato, Pasquale D'Amico, Salvatore Sanfilippo, Pasquale Barra, Luigi Riccio, Andrea Villa, Vincenzo Esposito, Guido Catapano and Giovanni Pandico.

February 2, 1984 - Casillo's woman, Giovanna Matarazzo, known as Dolly Peach, is founded in a concrete block.

July 5, 1988 - Luigi and Aniello Rosanova, sons of Alfonso, 28 and 24 respectively, were killed at Sant 'Antonio Abate.

February 7, 1989 - Giuseppe Puca aka the Japanese was shot to dead in front of a bar in Sant'Antimo,his birthplace.

October 11, 1990, at 10:30, a commando of killers entered the apartment-bunker of Mario Cuomo, through a trusted man who betrayed him by opening the door. Two pistol strokes stole the life of the last of the cutolines of respect left in Naples. Not least the last available testimony of the negotiation for the release of the councilor Cirillo.

December 24, 1990 - Roberto Cutolo son of Raffaele was killed at 28 y old in Tradate a city near Verese.The murder had been ordered by Mario Fabbrocino, the boss of the Fabbrocino clan, as revenge for Cutolo ordering the death of his brother, Francesco, in the 1980s. Fabbrocino was eventually convicted of Roberto's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005.

October 1993 - Enrico Madonna,Cutolo's lawyeras later murdered in October 1993, three days after telling a journalist that he was willing to tell a parliamentary commission all he knew about the Cirillo kidnapping affair.

October 30, 2007, after another artificial insemination attempt, Denise, daughter of Raffaele Cutolo and Immaculate Iacone, was born. "When he grows up maybe someone will tell her things. She will know who her father is, she will know her past, but Raffaele is my husband, the man I love. I could never imagine my life without him "(Immacolata Iacone).

Rosetta Cutolo (b.1937) is still alive.

[johnny_scootch]

Any books written about this Cutolo???

[furiofromnaples]

In Italian: Marrazzo, Giuseppe (1984/2005). Il camorrista. Vita segreta di don Raffaele Cutolo for sure Cutolo and the NCo was cited in english books on camorra.

[JeremyTheJew]

so....he started the NCO. then the NF stArted to chAllenge the New Camorra Org


so what was the original and regular camorra doing at said tkmei?

[furiofromnaples]

so....he started the NCO. then the NF stArted to chAllenge the New Camorra Org


so what was the original and regular camorra doing at said tkmei?

The NCO had a pyramidal hierarchy with one boss and variuos capos while the NF was just an alliance of the clans against Cutolo without a hierarchy. If Cutolo wouldn't so greedy in campania would had a commission like the sicilian mafia.

[JeremyTheJew]

ok but like i said... what was the regular camorra doing during NCO and NF?

[furiofromnaples]

Sorry JeremyTheJew but I don't understand what do you mean with "regolar camorra",can you explain me ?