‘We need to end slavery in Calabria’

When Maria Concetta Cacciola’s husband held a pistol to her head, she fled to her parents’ house and begged them to protect her. Her father told her: ‘He’s your husband, you stay with him for the rest of your life.’ A new book by Sicilian journalist Lirio Abbate, Fimmine Ribelli (Rizzoli) describes the stories of …

Finally, an antimafia priest. Reader, they shot him

Padre Pino Puglisi, or 3P as he styled himself for his young followers, was murdered with a bullet to the back of his head, twenty years ago, at the door of his parish church. Confronted by his killer in the street, he didn’t try to run. He responded simply: ‘I was expecting you.’ Don Puglisi …

Paranoid padrino: inside the mind of the mafia

They are obsessed with secrecy and symbolism, arcane codes and structures, they have messianic tendencies and are prone to extreme violence. Clare Longrigg asked psychiatrist Corrado De Rosa, don’t you need to be a bit mad to be a Mafioso? ‘Ask Giovanni Brusca what he was thinking when he pressed the button to blow up …

Faking it: madness and the mafia

The mafia uses madness both as a get out of jail card, and to discredit their enemies. Psychiatrist Corrado de Rosa has studied several cases for his book, Mafia da Legare (Mafia Fit To Be Tied), and notes that a smart boss can make capital from looking a fool. In March 2012, prison guards watched …

Mafia boss’s daughter ‘honoured’ to bear his name

‘I’m sorry for the victims, but I am honoured to carry my father’s name.’ An interview given by Lucia Riina, daughter of the former Cosa Nostra boss, has outraged antimafia campaigners and relatives of Totò Riina’s many victims. ‘I love my parents,’ Lucia, 33, told a Swiss TV programme, ‘and I imagine that any child …

Why mafiosi make good neighbours

Whatever Domenico Rancadore may have done in his career in organised crime, his neighbours in suburban London considered him an exemplary chap. He wore good suits, after all, so he must have a job. And he drove such a variety of high performance cars, they thought he might be a chauffeur. The only person living …

The courage to rebel

Lea Garofalo has become one of the celebrated rebels against the ‘Ndrangheta. Tragically, during her short lifetime, no one celebrated her rebellion. The authorities found her information unusable and kicked her out of the witness protection programme. Her husband vowed to murder her for telling family secrets. Marika Demaria is a campaigning journalist on the …

Bosses’ secrets exposed in mafia heartland

At the Tabularasa festival, staged annually in Reggio Calabria by the online news site Strill.it, Fabio Cuzzola joined a panel discussion on the ‘Ndrangheta. The evening, which entertained a well informed and engaged audience till late, began with a screening of the documentary The Mafia’s Secret Bunkers, produced by the History Channel, which was broadcast …

Going on holiday in southern Italy?

Here’s how to avoid supporting the mafia with your holiday cash. If you’re travelling to southern Italy this summer, you might occasionally wonder whether the bar where you’re enjoying your apero is owned by the local boss. Now you can make sure that your holiday budget doesn’t got straight into the mafia’s pocket. Five years …

Palermo hangs out its sheets in protest

It’s exactly 21 years since the violent death of anti-mafia judge Paolo Borsellino, who was blown up, with his bodyguards, as he called on his elderly mother in Palermo. I was rooting through old files in the attic, trying to find a particular set of cuttings (trying not to bash my head on the rafters) …