by Alex Perry
In an editorial, Calabria Ora’s editor-in-chief, Piero Sansonetti, decried the prosecutors’ conduct. ‘The fight against the mafia, like all exercises of justice, must be conducted within the rules, strictly within the rules, totally within the rules,’ he wrote. ‘Otherwise it might land a few blows on the mafia but inflict far greater damage to our legal system and society.’ Three days later, 29 April, which happened to be Alessandra’s forty-first birthday, Sansonetti gave a television interview in which he repeated Madia’s allegations, demanded a parliamentary inquiry and accused Alessandra of extortion and blackmail.
It was the start of a year-long campaign by Calabria Ora against Alessandra and the other anti-mafia prosecutors. Throughout Giuseppina would be described not as an individual who had made her own choices but as a disturbed and weak woman who had been used by the prosecutors and manipulated into betraying her family. A week later, Sansonetti wrote another editorial in which he appeared to justify breaking the law and to characterise the ’Ndrangheta as victims of oppression. ‘To tell the truth, I actually don’t care for lawfulness,’ he wrote. ‘To respect the law is not always, in my opinion, a merit. I have never sided with the law. Disobedience is a virtue. I tend to think it’s right to stand for the weak whoever they are, and whether they’re good or bad, guilty or innocent.’ Over the next few months, Calabria Ora published a string of stories castigating the prosecutors. One was an interview from prison with Salvatore Pesce, Giuseppina’s father, who criticised the way his daughter had been treated. Giuseppina’s uncle, Giuseppe Ferraro, also spoke to Calabria Ora, accusing Alessandra of blackmailing his niece by having the carabinieri kidnap her children and forcing her to make statements under the influence of psychotropic drugs.
It wasn’t clear how much of this the Pesces actually believed. The intended audience seemed to be the citizens of Rosarno as much as Alessandra and the state. Still, the judiciary had to respond. The head of Italy’s anti-mafia directorate in Rome first denied any wrong-doing, then summoned Alessandra to the capital, where she was ordered to make out a report and explain her actions. A prosecutor in Catanzaro was even deputed to investigate Alessandra for extortion. ‘This slander campaign went on and on,’ said Alessandra.
Alessandra knew she was becoming a liability to the judiciary. Even to colleagues who backed her, she was in danger of becoming a cautionary tale: the spectacular rise and fall of the woman prosecutor who flew too high. She had the backing of Pignatone and Prestipino. But no prosecutor could tolerate criticism for ever, least of all one on the front line of a war against the mafia.
Alessandra’s only hope was to change Giuseppina’s mind again. It seemed improbable. But in the months that followed, Alessandra began to fixate on the last conversation she had had with Giuseppina, going over it in her mind time and again. The letter in Calabria Ora, in which Giuseppina withdrew her statements, was clearly written for her. But when Alessandra had challenged Giuseppina to declare that her evidence was lies, Giuseppina had refused to speak. She became convinced Giuseppina was trying to tell her something. Refusing to sign wasn’t recanting. Giuseppina might only be refusing to sign her statements at that moment. Who knew what kind of pressure the ’Ndrangheta was putting on her?
In early May, Alessandra was passed transcripts of bugged conversations between the Pesces. The contents seemed to support the idea that, contrary to Giuseppina’s letter, she was far from reconciled with her family. In one exchange on 5 May, caught on video, between her brother Francesco Pesce and her grandmother Giuseppa Bonarrigo, Francesco reassured the family matriarch that the Pesce family itself had ‘nothing to be ashamed of. If she [Giuseppina] screwed up, she did it alone, without anyone else from the family.’ Besides, Giuseppina’s evidence wasn’t all that damning, said Francesco. The family had found experts who would testify that she was mentally ill. ‘She’s crazy, crazy,’ agreed Giuseppina’s grandmother. ‘She did it for the children. Imagine!’ Francesco added that Giuseppina’s testimony was, in any case, mostly hearsay. Women weren’t like men, he said. They just stayed in the home and listened to men talk. All Giuseppina had been able to pass on was what she had heard. It was a problem made in the home, said Francesco, ‘and we’ll solve it in the home. We just have to try to get her home. We just have to try to get her home. I’m trying to approach to tell her I have nothing against her, that I love her.’ At the words ‘solve it’, Giuseppina’s seventy-eight-year-old grandmother clasped her neck as though she were being choked.
That conversation would stay with Alessandra. Giuseppina’s motivation for talking had always been to give her family a better life. That maternal compulsion meant all was not lost. Giuseppina would still want a new life for her children. She hadn’t disavowed her statements, merely set them aside. If she was planning to take her children back to Rosarno, it would only be until she thought it was safe to leave again. Over the months they’d worked together, Alessandra had grown to trust Giuseppina, to care for her and to respect her. Giuseppina was resilient and resourceful. The more Alessandra thought about it, the more she was convinced Giuseppina was executing a plan by invoking her right to silence. ‘She’s being clever,’ she told her staff. To the ’Ndrangheta, Giuseppina was trying to appear as though she had been successfully brought to heel. But to Alessandra, Giuseppina was indicating she remained true to the cause. She was still planning to cooperate. She was just biding her time. ‘She’s telling me that what she had said in all those months of interviews was true,’ said Alessandra.
Still, time was not on Giuseppina’s side. As her grandmother’s gesture indicated, her family would likely kill her as soon as they could. Since Giuseppina had stopped cooperating, the witness protection service would soon eject her, as they had done with Lea Garofalo – and if Lea’s fate was any indication, Giuseppina’s death would follow swiftly. However Alessandra was planning to save her star witness, she needed to act now.
XV
Even as she struggled to find a way to rescue Giuseppina, Alessandra found her pentita’s example was inspiring another ’Ndrangheta woman to follow suit.1
In June 2010, anonymous letters began arriving at the yellow two-storey house in Via Don Gregoria Varrà, Rosarno, that Maria Concetta Cacciola shared with her parents. The letters claimed that Concetta was having an affair with one of her Facebook friends. The accusation was absurd. Her friend had been in Germany all the time that Concetta had known him. But Concetta’s father and brother, Michele and Giuseppe, didn’t hesitate. Shouting ‘You filthy animal!’ they grabbed Concetta, punched her to the floor and kicked her until they cracked one of her ribs. Desperate to avoid any public tarnishing of the family name, the two men then refused to let Concetta be treated in hospital. Instead, they arranged private visits to the house by a doctor related to the Pesces. All this happened in front of Concetta’s three children, Alfonso, fifteen, Tania, twelve, and Rosi, six.
It was three months before Concetta was well enough to step outside. Even then, one of her cousins followed her wherever she went. Finding herself alone in the house one day, Concetta called a women’s refuge on the other side of Calabria but hung up before anyone answered. Then on 11 May 2011, the carabinieri summoned her to the station in Rosarno. Alfonso’s scooter had been confiscated for a minor driving offence and Concetta needed to pay his fine before it was returned. The twenty-minute walk to the station was the first occasion in months that Concetta had been allowed out of the house on her own.
Concetta entered the carabinieri station and asked to speak to an officer. From the moment Officer Carlo Carli led her into an interview room and closed the door, it all just tumbled out of her. Concetta first asked if Carli knew the reputation of the Cacciola family and her husband Salvatore Figliuzzi. When Carli said he did, Concetta told him her family had kept her a virtual prisoner at home for the eight years since Salvatore had gone to jail. The situation had become intolerable in the last eleven months, she said. She told Carli the saga about her Facebook friendship, the po
ison pen letters and the beating. Her family now never let her out of their sight. As if to underline the point, Concetta’s phone soon started ringing. It was her mother, Anna Rosalba Lazzaro, asking where she was. Concetta said she had to leave. At the door of the interview room, she predicted that one day her family would murder her. ‘If they find out I’m here saying these things, they’ll kill me for sure,’ she said.
Officer Carli wanted to know more. Using Alfonso’s scooter as an excuse, he summoned Concetta back to the station four days later. This time, she spoke to a female officer and, feeling less inhibited in front of a woman, told the officer she now wanted to escape her family and Rosarno. She had bought tickets to northern Italy several times but never had the nerve to go through with it. She’d even ripped up her ticket once when one of her cousins followed her into the travel agent’s. The thing was, Concetta confided to the officer, her family was right. Calling herself ‘Nemi’, she had begun a second online relationship with ‘Prince 484’, a Reggio man called Pasquale Improta.2 Initially, it had been innocent. But now it was starting to evolve into an affair. Pasquale was living a few hours away in Naples. When she’d told him about the beating, he’d urged her to go to the carabinieri to ask them to protect her. Concetta wanted to be with Pasquale. She had told her mother she wanted to divorce Salvatore. After all, he had never loved her and had only married her to assist his rise inside the ’Ndrangheta.
Concetta said her father would never let her divorce her husband. But it was her younger brother, thirty-year-old Giuseppe, who really scared her. He had been raised as a true believer, she said, and knew nothing outside the ’Ndrangheta. She had had to warn friends to stay away from her in case Giuseppe suspected they were helping her. The only time she could relax was when Giuseppe went away on business or once when he vanished for a few days immediately after a murder in Rosarno. Even then Giuseppe’s wife had taken Concetta aside and whispered to her not to speak freely inside their house because Giuseppe had had the place bugged. ‘Giuseppe gets these rages,’ said Concetta. ‘He could do anything. He could make me disappear.’ He was just waiting for proof that she was having an affair, she said. ‘Sooner or later, he’ll come to me and say, “Come with me.” Then he’ll make me disappear.’
On 23 May, Concetta returned to the station and spoke to Officer Carli again. With each successive visit, she seemed to be building up her courage. This time she gave more details about how her father and brother beat her. She added that she was thinking of leaving for Naples. On 25 May, she went to the carabinieri station in Gioia Tauro. On this occasion she ended the conversation by saying she was prepared to make a statement about her family in return for witness protection. When she returned to Gioia Tauro station the next day, her fifth visit to the carabinieri in fifteen days, she found Alessandra and Giovanni Musarò waiting for her.
Concetta told the two prosecutors she could talk for a maximum of ninety minutes. ‘It was a complicated interrogation,’ said Alessandra. ‘We had to know who we had in front of us, why she was talking to us, what she was able to tell us and whether she was lying. And she was very scared. She had told her family that she had to go to the carabinieri to pay a fine. That gave her more time than usual away from home. But she was worried. She kept looking at her watch.’3
The prosecutors quickly concluded Concetta was credible. Her knowledge of the Rosarno clans was extensive. She told them details about the murder of Palmiro Macri, sixty-two, shot in a clan feud by a gunman using a Kalashnikov in July 2008 as he drove through Rosarno in his Fiat Panda. She described how a boss called Umberto Bellocco had killed Salvatore Messina, his wife’s brother, then blamed the murder on Concetta’s cousin, Gregorio Bellocco, something which caused a rift between the Belloccos and the Pesces for years. She told the story of how the Belloccos had extended their protection rackets inland to the town of San Ferdinando. She pinpointed the location of at least two bunkers, buried under an old factory in Rosarno, and explained how they were equipped with televisions and refrigerators stocked with food and champagne. The bosses’ hypocrisy seemed to outrage Concetta. Hanging on the wall where ‘these men without honour shut themselves up like beasts’, she said, would be an image of Saint Pio of Petrelcina. ‘I’m speaking about murderers,’ she added, people who ‘butcher wretched people that thought they were friends, men they invited to dinner, not killed for honour or the family’s sake but just for money and power’.
The two prosecutors were struck by Concetta’s resolve. ‘I was very impressed,’ said Giovanni. ‘Very often, people like her who go through pain and suffering – they are conflicted. Concetta was terrified but she was also very resolute.’4 When Alessandra asked her whether she would want to take her three children with her into witness protection, Concetta demurred. ‘I don’t want my children to weaken my resolve,’ she said. ‘I need to find my strength in the choices I make. After I’m in the programme, you can go and find my children, tell them what I’ve done and why, and they can make their own decision about whether to join me or not.’5
But something about Concetta’s story bothered the two prosecutors. Giovanni zeroed in on the reason her father and brother had beaten her. He asked her to explain the anonymous letters. They couldn’t just have appeared from nowhere. ‘Giovanni was pressing her a bit,’ said Alessandra. ‘He could see she was lying. She was hiding something.’
Concetta said nothing. But when the two prosecutors called a short break, Concetta waited until Giovanni and a male carabinieri officer were talking, then approached Alessandra. ‘If you wish, I can tell you about my relationship with Pasquale,’ she said, ‘but I’m too ashamed to talk in front of the men.’ Even inside a carabinieri station, negotiating her exit from the ’Ndrangheta, ‘Concetta was still a victim of the mafia system,’ said Alessandra.6
Four days later, on the night of 29 May 2011, Concetta stole out of the family home in the middle of the night and ran to a waiting carabinieri car. In her room, she had left a letter for her mother.
Dear Mama
I do not know where to start. I can’t find the words to justify this action of mine. Mama, you’re mama! Only you can understand a daughter. I know the pain that I’m causing you. By explaining everything to you, then at least you can explain to everyone else. I didn’t want to leave you without saying anything. How many times have I wanted to talk to you? How much did I want to spare you pain? But I failed. And all this pain, I turned it into aggression, and I took it out on the person who, above all, I love the most.
That’s why I’m entrusting my children to you. But one thing I beg of you. Don’t make the mistakes that you made with me. Give them a better life than I had. Paired off at thirteen, I thought marriage would give me a little freedom. Instead, I ruined my life. Salvatore never loved me nor me him. You know that. So don’t make the same mistakes with the children, I beg you. Give them space. If you shut them away, they’ll start to behave badly because they’ll feel trapped by everything. That’s how you treated me.
I can’t write much more. I just wanted to ask you to forgive me, Mother, for the shame I’m bringing you. In the end, I realised that I was alone – alone among everyone. I’ve never known luxury and I never wanted money. But now I have the peace and love and the satisfaction you feel when you make a sacrifice. This life has given me nothing but pain. The most beautiful thing in my life is my children. I keep them in my heart. Give your strength to them. Don’t let their father have them; he’s not worthy of them. Take care of Alfonso. He suffered as a boy and that’s why he is how he is. He’s not strong. You need to watch him closely.
I will live as long as God allows but I have to try to find some peace in my heart. Mama, forgive me. Please pray for forgiveness for all the harm that I’m causing. I’m going to a place where I can find some serenity. Don’t look for me or you’ll get into trouble. I can’t speak to you any more and I can’t hug you, I can only write – but I couldn’t leave without telling you I was going and wishing you well. I have
only you and my children in my mind’s eye. I love you, Mama. Hug my children as you always have and don’t talk about them to anyone who’s not worthy of them. Ma, farewell. And forgive me. Forgive me if you can. I know I’ll never see you again. This is how it must be with a family of honour. That’s why you have lost your daughter. Goodbye. I will always love you. Forgive me, as I too pray for forgiveness. Goodbye.
On the dashboard of the family car, Concetta also left a brief note for her father and her brother. ‘I’m going over to my friend Giusy’s,’ she wrote.
Formally admitting a witness to the protection programme took months. But Concetta needed immediate protection. The carabinieri took her to a secluded holiday resort, the Colle degli Ulivi, near Cosenza, in the hills above the coastal town of Sibari, two hours’ drive north of Rosarno.
The Colle degli Ulivi was a safe, nondescript place, generally used by northern Italian families on holiday. It had three restaurants, a bar, a solarium, a jacuzzi and a giant pool, and offered its guests horse riding, mountain biking, tennis, archery, karaoke and walks in the hills or down to the beach. At meal times, giant buffets would be laid with fruit, salads and cold meats, or you could order à la carte, and there was every type of wine. Concetta’s protection officers stayed on site but otherwise let her roam as she wanted.
Concetta loved it. She could walk into town or down to the shoreline whenever she chose. In the hotel, as the temperature rose with the onset of summer, the rooms slowly filled with guests: young families, old couples, foreigners. No one knew her. No one knew the meaning of the name Cacciola. There was no shame and no punishment. And Concetta realised that at thirty-one, for the first time in her life, she was truly free.
