The Good Mothers

by Alex Perry

  Then the carabinieri got lucky. Massimo Sabatino, thirty-six, was a career criminal with a long list of convictions for robbery and drug dealing. When he was served his indictment for the Campobasso attack, he was already in San Vittore prison on a charge of dealing heroin after being arrested in December 2009. Slow and poorly educated, Sabatino handed the charge sheet to his friend and cellmate Salvatore Sorrentino, who had been picked up in Milan in January for absconding from house arrest at the end of a five-year sentence for robbery. While Sorrentino digested the document, Sabatino explained to his friend that for a few years he had been working for an ’Ndrangheta boss in Milan called Carlo Cosco. His connection to Carlo was through his sister Rosi, who was engaged to Rosario Curcio, one of Carlo’s crew.

  One day in April 2009, Sabatino said, Carlo had offered him €25,000 to drive to Campobasso and recover a drug debt from a woman living there. Carlo later refined the plan, saying Sabatino should go disguised as a washing-machine repair man and tie the woman up, drag her to his van and take her to Bari on Puglia’s east coast, where Carlo and his brothers would be waiting. Carlo had also given him 50 litres of sulphuric acid to carry in the back of the van. Sabatino said he had done as instructed but failed to kidnap the woman because her daughter, who wasn’t supposed to be there, had appeared from nowhere and jumped him.

  Sorrentino said that according to the charge sheet, Sabatino’s fingerprints had been found on the washing machine in the apartment. Sabatino agreed that was possible: he’d worn latex gloves but torn them in the struggle with the women. Sorrentino continued that the woman Sabatino had been trying to abduct was a Garofalo, a name familiar to anyone in the ’Ndrangheta. Sabatino claimed he’d never known the identity of the woman. Sorrentino said that according to the indictment, Lea had not only been Carlo’s wife but also a pentita who had testified against him.

  It began to dawn on Sabatino that he was in real trouble. He told Sorrentino that he knew of a second, successful attempt to kidnap Lea in Milan on 24 November. Though Sabatino stressed that he had played no part, he assumed Lea was now dead. He added that he had no alibi for either May or November.

  Sorrentino agreed it looked bad. Sabatino had to be looking at life. Sabatino swore. Carlo was a motherfucker, he said. He hadn’t paid him for the Campobasso job and had refused even to give him money for a lawyer when he was arrested in December.

  Sabatino didn’t know what to do. But his cellmate Sorrentino did. A day or so later, he sent a letter to the Milan prosecutor investigating Lea’s disappearance, offering to relay everything his friend had told him in return for a reduced sentence. The prosecutors, sceptical at first, were reassured when Sabatino was moved to a different cell and his new cellmate made a statement confirming many of the same details. When a prosecutor confronted Sabatino, he lied so badly – initially claiming he was meant to recover a debt from Lea, then claiming he was robbing her, then admitting he was trying to kidnap her – that he managed to solidify the case against him and Carlo.

  To the investigators, the case was beginning to look conclusive. But Sabatino had given them something else, too. According to Sorrentino, Sabatino claimed that the Cosco brothers had also killed two Garofalo men in the past. Sabatino even named Giuseppe Cosco as the shooter in the first killing, which he added had taken place in a Milan apartment block in 1995. Allowing for the distortion of jailhouse hearsay, this seemed to be corroboration of Lea’s allegation that Giuseppe Cosco had shot dead Antonio Comberiati at No. 6 Viale Montello in May 1995. The allegation that the Coscos had killed a second Garofalo seemed to refer to the 2005 death of Lea’s brother Floriano, a killing which was unsolved. Here, finally, was the evidence to substantiate Lea’s allegations. Disbelieved in life, she was being vindicated in death.

  There was still the mystery of what had happened to Lea, however. In Catanzaro, down on the coast below Pagliarelle, the prosecutor’s office had informed Annalisa Pisano that her former client had disappeared. ‘They told me clearly that it had to be lupara bianca,’ she said. Though she and Lea hadn’t spoken in a year and a half, Annalisa still felt a strong bond with her. That night, said Annalisa, ‘I dreamed of Lea. She was in a warehouse, surrounded by flames and she was asking me for help. She was calling me by my name. “Annalisa!” But everybody was telling her “No!”’ And every night from then on, to the day years later when Lea was found, Annalisa had the same recurring dream. ‘People would ask me: “How do you know she has been burned?” And I’d reply: “Because I see her. You can believe me or not.” And I am not the kind of person who believes in these things. But I saw her. Almost every night. She was on a chair, in a warehouse, surrounded by fire, calling for me. And at that point, I would wake up.’

  For Denise, Carlo’s arrest only sharpened the questions over her mother’s death. How had Carlo killed her? Did he shoot her? Suffocate her? Slit her throat? Did he have one of his men do it? Did she scream? Was it quick or did he draw it out? Did he torture her? At what point did Lea know she was going to die? Would Denise know when her own time came?

  While Carlo’s arrest should have come as some relief, in Pagliarelle it just made it harder for Denise to maintain the lie. In mid-February, on the eve of her first visit to see Carlo in jail, the surveillance team picked up a text message from Denise to Carmine. Denise was losing her mind. The situation was impossible, she said. How could she keep on pretending when her father was in jail accused of trying to kill her mother? How could she face him? ‘Carmine calmed me,’ Denise said. ‘He made me laugh. He made me feel good.’

  The respite was temporary. When Denise went to Catanzaro jail the next day with her uncle Vito, she wept throughout. Vito tried to be sympathetic but didn’t seem to know how. ‘Crying when your father is in prison and your mother is missing is only natural,’ he said blankly.

  Carmine was waiting for Denise when she returned. Once inside her aunt’s house, she collapsed. ‘It was an hour of crying and eating at the same time,’ she said later. ‘I was so desperate. I wasn’t thinking about who I trusted and who I didn’t. I was desperate for some affection. I cried. I ate. I was shouting out: “Leave me alone! I have to go to a place where I don’t want to go, live in a place where I don’t want to live, with people that I suspect? What do you want me to do? Laugh?” What I suffered, nobody can understand.’ In the end, Carmine just held Denise. They hugged for what seemed like for ever. Then they kissed.

  Over the next few weeks, the surveillance team watched as Denise and Carmine became inseparable. ‘She fell in love with this guy and he with her,’ said Enza. ‘She was able to open up to him, to speak with him and cry with him.’ But Denise was also mindful that Carmine was a member of Carlo’s ’ndrina. She would ask him over and over again what he knew about what had happened to her mother. ‘He always said he didn’t know and didn’t want to know,’ said Denise. ‘I never had an answer.’ Adding to the pressure on Denise, her affair with Carmine was something else she had to keep secret. ‘Carmine told me to say absolutely nothing to anyone,’ she said. ‘If my father knew, he’d be furious. He’d given Carmine the job of accompanying me and controlling me, not dating me. No one could know we were seeing each other. We would meet at midnight in the meadows outside Pagliarelle so that no one would find out.’

  Unable to express almost any of her thoughts and on constant guard against letting her true feelings show, Denise took to staying silent for most of the day. ‘I couldn’t shout [about] what they had done,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t cry out: “You are all killers!”’ When the Coscos asked her to write to her father in jail in early March, she agreed, then found she had almost nothing to say.

  To Dad

  Even if you are away from me, you are still close to me.

  I love you,

  Denise

  PS Don’t worry about me.

  PPS I could get you some wild boar if you want. As you can see, like you, I am someone of few words. But what I write here is what I could never say to you. I just want
you to be fine.

  On 25 February, in a public demonstration of her loyalty to the family, Denise signed a formal waiver giving up her right to witness protection. Secretly, however, she re-established contact with Enza and other activists in Libera, asking if they could hide her if she left Pagliarelle. On 5 March, she also clandestinely met the carabinieri a second time and gave a further statement. For the officers, Denise’s new evidence filled in most of the remaining gaps in Lea’s life, right up until the last few hours. But for Denise, reliving that night only increased her stress. She couldn’t shake the thought that seemed to be getting ever louder in her head: that she should run away from Pagliarelle like her mother.

  In early April 2010, when her aunt went away for a few days, Denise seized her chance. She took the bus to Crotone, then jumped on a long-distance train to the north. After a day, she arrived at a Libera safe house near Turin. ‘I had to go,’ she told her hosts. ‘They wouldn’t let me live.’ Initially, the Coscos didn’t notice Denise was gone. But when one week became three, there was no hiding it any longer. On 23 April, Vito Cosco drove down from Milan and confronted Marisa and her husband, demanding to know where Denise had gone.

  That afternoon, the surveillance team tapped a series of calls between Marisa and Denise. ‘Vito’s been here!’ Marisa said. ‘Wherever you are, you have to be here tomorrow! They say they just want to talk to you. Afterwards you can go off wherever you want.’ Failing to return would be sending a message to the ’Ndrangheta to go screw itself, said Marisa.

  ‘I know I have to go back to talk to these assholes,’ replied Denise.

  ‘Look, they just want to feel relaxed,’ said Marisa. ‘They want to know that you know what you have to do.’

  ‘What I have to do?! What I have to do?!’ shouted Denise. ‘I have to keep quiet! I have to be stopped!’

  ‘So fuck them all!’ said Marisa. ‘But we’re all so sick of this mess here. And I think once they know where you are and what you’re doing, they’ll calm down. Vito was going to see your father but he didn’t go because he didn’t know what to tell him. Right now, they’re afraid that you’re back in the programme.’

  ‘The programme your sister was in!’

  ‘They’re just afraid, Denise,’ said Marisa. Denise shouldn’t over-think what she had to do. She shouldn’t imagine the worst. ‘They don’t care where you are or how you are. They only care about themselves. They only care that no one speaks the truth.’

  Denise returned to Pagliarelle the next day. Vito, apparently reassured, flew back to Milan. Denise had to wait a week before visiting her father in jail. The prospect of speaking to Carlo once more terrified her as much as it had the last time. She turned to Carmine once again. ‘I have to wait a week,’ she texted him. ‘I know what you think – that I’m wrong – but I just want to have the chance of a different life.’

  ‘This is the week you can change things,’ Carmine wrote back. ‘No one’s standing in the way of the life you want. Just do things right, and the others will relax.’

  The reality, as Enza discovered years later, was precisely the opposite. Carlo’s brothers had kept him closely informed of Denise’s behaviour. She wasn’t getting any better, they told him. When Denise had disappeared, Carlo told his brothers that he had made a decision. If and when she reappeared, she had to die. Carlo added it would be easiest if Carmine did it.

  Carmine, ever more in love with Denise, had been half-expecting the call. He had already decided to disobey. But now that it had come, the clock was ticking. The boss had given the order that his only daughter, whom he loved, was to be killed. It wasn’t a decision he would have taken lightly. But it was one that, given Denise’s erratic behaviour, he would have concluded was unavoidable. Carlo had to protect the ’ndrina and the ’Ndrangheta. He had to enforce the code. Women were the organisation’s property and the repository of its honour, to be cherished or disposed of as duty required. Now he had made the decision, he would want his orders carried out as swiftly as possible. As Carmine’s betrayal became apparent to Carlo over the next few weeks and months, he knew Carlo would make him pay dearly for it.

  XI

  Barely a day after Denise returned to Calabria’s east coast, Alessandra made her first strike against the Pesces on the west. In the early hours of 26 April 2010, in simultaneous raids in Rosarno, Reggio, Milan and Bergamo, codenamed Operation All Inside, hundreds of carabinieri moved in on the Pesce empire. They arrested a total of thirty people. Ten warrants were issued for ’ndrina members on the run. Among those accused was clan boss Antonino Pesce, Giuseppina’s uncle, who was already in jail. His nephew and protégé, Giuseppina’s brother Francesco Pesce, was arrested in Rosarno. Reflecting Alessandra’s convictions, seven of the detained were women. They included Giuseppina’s mother, sister, cousin, grandmother and great-grandmother, as well as Giuseppina herself.

  The charges against the Pesce family included extortion, money laundering, loan sharking, drug smuggling, mafia association and two counts of murder.1 The range of accusations indicated how, inside their dominion of Gioia Tauro and Rosarno, the ’Ndrangheta’s hegemony was total. ‘They completely control their territory and their government,’ said Michele Prestipino. ‘People who live there accept that to get something they have to knock on the door of the mafia and that there is no future other than what the mafia sees.’ The mafiosi’s power in Rosarno was at its peak. In a town of 15,000 people, the authorities had identified 500 ’Ndrangheta members and hundreds more associates. That crushing dominance meant a strange kind of peace prevailed. ‘There is not much need for a lot of violence,’ said Prestipino. ‘Everybody knows that if these people want to use violence, they can. They achieve consensus without firing a shot.’

  The range of assets seized during Operation All Inside was further evidence of the Pesces’ reach. While the prosecutors promised heftier hauls to come, even on this first pass they confiscated vehicles, properties and businesses worth €10 million from one of the poorest areas in Europe. Pesce businesses included a petrol station, a car dealership, a food distribution company and a chocolate distributor whose company documents named Rocco Palaia, Giuseppina’s husband, as its owner. A Rosarno radio station, Radio Olimpia, was particularly interesting. The carabinieri had discovered that jailed bosses and picciotti were using Olimpia’s request show to communicate with each other. Prisoners would ask their family a yes/no question – Is my appeal successful? Were my orders carried out? – and the families would reply by calling in and requesting one of two songs to relay the answer. Giuseppina’s fugitive uncle Vincenzo would also call in from time to time and ask the presenter to use his nickname and describe him as a listener ‘at large’. In other words: I am still in the area; I am still free.

  Giuseppina was charged with mafia association, money laundering, extortion and running messages. She faced more than a decade in jail. That wasn’t what troubled her, however. The Calabrian newspapers had reported that she had been detained with a man. Three weeks earlier, she had been warned by her Uncle Vincenzo that her family suspected she was having a relationship with Domenico Costantino. Her cousin Francesco had had her followed day and night. Now that she had been found with Domenico in the middle of the night, their suspicions would be confirmed. The family’s punishment would far exceed the state’s. ‘In my family, those who betray and dishonour the family must be punished by death,’ said Giuseppina. ‘It is a law.’ ‘She was going to die and she knew it,’ said Alessandra. ‘She accepted it.’

  What Giuseppina could not accept was the sudden implosion of her three children’s future. She had never been apart from Angela, fifteen, Gaetano, eight, and Elisea, three. Now they were with Rocco’s family. With Giuseppina headed for a lengthy sentence, or execution, and probably both, one way or another her children were going to be raised by the ’Ndrangheta. Her son Gaetano was a gentle boy especially unsuited for the life now before him. Ahead were years of brutalisation. Giuseppina’s father Salvatore used to jo
ke that when a cousin was giving birth, he’d send flowers for a girl and a .38 for a boy. A few years back, when an uncle had asked Gaetano what he wanted to be when he grew up and the boy, in all innocence, had replied ‘a policeman’, his uncle beat him, then promised to get him a gun to remind him who he was. Giuseppina’s fear, she wrote later, was that ‘they will put a gun in his hands anyway. When I get out of jail, my son could already be in a juvenile detention centre. And my two daughters will have to marry two ’Ndrangheta men and be forced to follow them around.’

  Giuseppina vented her frustration by starting a hunger strike and refusing to talk to prosecutors. But at other times, her spirit seemed broken. She tried to hang herself in her cell a few days after she was arrested. Three months later, by which time she had been transferred to San Vittore prison in Milan, she slashed her wrists with a razor. ‘There were times when I wanted to die,’ she said later in court. ‘I couldn’t stand the thought of my children without me. They’d always been with me. I wanted a way out. I felt like I was watching my world collapse in on me.’2

  The prosecutors were largely unsympathetic. If an ’Ndranghetista was feeling guilt or paying some other price for her crimes, then they had done their job. This was war. Prosecutors had begun finding gun cartridges leaning up against their windscreens. One bullet sent to Pignatone in May 2010 was accompanied by a note which read simply: ‘You’re a dead man.’ Two of his staff found their cars’ wheels had been loosened. Nor could the prosecutors rely on much public support. The same day as the raids on the Pesce clan, police in Reggio arrested Giovanni Tegano, an ’Ndrangheta boss on the run for seventeen years. As he was led from the city’s central police station to a squad car to take him to jail, Tegano was cheered by a crowd of hundreds. ‘Giovanni is a man of peace!’ shouted one tearful seventy-year-old woman, to which Tegano smiled and waved back.3