Mafia Princess

by Merico, Marisa

  I was among the last to go on trial and Romanelli wanted more glory headlines. They were talking about twenty years. That was to frighten me. They gave me ten years. Lara would be sixteen when I got out. I’d be thirty-seven. I couldn’t bear that thought so I changed my plea to guilty and was sentenced to six years. In that plea bargain I retrieved four years of my life.

  That Christmas of 1997 I saw Lara for the first time in nine months. Mum put her on her passport and they came over for two weeks. I was allowed one two-hour visit a week so I had four hours with them altogether. It was wonderful and horrible at the same time. Kissing Lara goodbye was terrible because I didn’t know when I’d see her again. They couldn’t afford to keep visiting.

  In January 1998 they gave me a release date of 2003. Frank was due out in 1999. I worried that he wouldn’t wait around for me for four years. He hadn’t even met me, for goodness sake!

  Under Italian law you are not fully convicted until you have exhausted every appeal. I needed a last straw to hang on to and one of the family’s lawyers, Vincenzo Minasi, found it. He discovered the Italians hadn’t handled my extradition properly. When I was re-arrested outside the gates of Durham prison I should have been interrogated within five days by Maurizio Romanelli, the prosector. It didn’t happen.

  Minasi told me as only an Italian lawyer could, hands waving in the air: ‘This is not right! We will not have this!’

  And he didn’t. Lo and behold, he got me out. It was Saturday, 13 June 1998, exactly four years and twelve days after I’d been arrested in 1994. The Italian legal teams had been going through Minasi’s appeal and arguments and worked through to the weekend searching for rebuttal. I’d had so many knock-backs I thought it wouldn’t happen, especially on a Saturday.

  The senior officer that day at Vigevano was a nice lady; she was quite short and had a squeaky voice. The prison knew the appeal was in and she stayed with me in case I tried to kick off or even kill myself if the decision didn’t go my way. It was a hot day.

  ‘Di Giovine?’ she said from my cell door.

  I murmured something.

  ‘Pack your stuff, you’re going.’

  I nearly passed out. I felt dizzy. My head was all over the place. I just remember sitting down hard on a chair and she said: ‘Di Giovine? Are you okay?’

  I burst into tears.

  ‘Come on, Di Giovine. Get your stuff.’

  I couldn’t get out quick enough. I was in shock. All I had were a few items of clothing, some curtains and a gas burner – you had a gas burner in Italy so you could cook in your cell. I said goodbye to Silvia and gave her a kiss through the slot in the cell door. She started crying. For me, and for herself. I felt sorry for her and left her most of my stuff. I put the rest in a bin liner and walked down the corridor in the clothes I stood up in. The prison authorities gave me about twenty quid and that was it.

  I walked out of Vigevano for the first time – I’d always been taken by armoured van before. Outside the gates there was a car park, and at the end of it there was a bus stop and a phone box. From there, I called Bruno and Silvia’s mum. After she’d finished having hysterics, I said I’d meet her in the centre of Milan. I wanted a drink, and I wanted to get out of there. There was no shelter. There was no place I could get in the shade.

  I got on the first bus that came along, carrying my bin liner, and the other passengers must have thought ‘prison’ but I didn’t give a shit. I paid and I felt weird even doing that, having money. For four years I’d had no money in my hands. I’d used a pay phone but with a card, not money. There was nobody opening doors for me. Nobody. Four years. It’s a long, long time. When you’re on the outside it might not seem that, as the change happens gradually, day by day. I had to swallow it all in one hungry gulp. You know those flashbacks in the movies? For me it was the other way around but just as surreal. I’d stepped into the future.

  I got off the bus near the train station and went into a nice, shaded café with a phone. Mum was at home. It was my friend Naima’s wedding that day but she hadn’t left yet.

  ‘Mum, it’s me. It’s me, Mum. I’m out.’

  I could hear the sigh of relief all those hundreds and hundreds of miles away. I talked to Lara for ages and then to Mum again. We babbled all sorts of arrangements. After that, all she wanted to do was get to the wedding and tell everybody, to share her happiness.

  Frank had given me a number for his friend Barry and I called him with the news to pass on to Frank.

  I took a moment to catch my breath at the café while I waited for Bruno’s mum, listening to the rattle of cups and saucers and glasses clinking in the washing-up bowl, the squeal of the espresso machine and high-pitched voices – just another day in Milan. I’d survived prison in Italy and in England. I coped with it, got on with it. I thought then about Nan and Dad and all their brothers and sisters, the family on the Piazza Prealpi, how I’d started life in an environment where you had to be strong, had to stand your ground yet follow the rules. I realised I’d had private tuition that prepared me for years in prison. If you didn’t fight your corner and give off a positive vibe you were stamped on, pushed out of the way. You got no respect. And that meant you got nowt.

  I’d been stoic and strong and I was determined to stay that way to survive on the outside. Yet at first, leaving the institutionalised systems where your every moment is accounted for, I was a little lost. Bruno’s mum and her brother took me back to her house. It was odd. I couldn’t really eat, I was so emotional. I lost about half a stone in a week. Today I’d be ecstatic about that, but at the time I didn’t really notice.

  I was free, released on a technicality. My passport was in England with Customs and Excise. They had extradited me with no passport. Mum kicked up a fuss, got on to her MP and made a wonderful nuisance of herself. When Lara’s school finished for the summer holidays she flew over on her own, escorted as an ‘unassisted minor’ on British Airways. She was with me for five weeks and it was lovely. We went away with Bruno’s mum to the seaside, to Calabria, where once again I could take in the sweetness of the orange blossom, the aroma of the South.

  But life behind bars was never far off. I visited Bruno every week once I got out, and I took Lara along to see him as well, but it was four years since we’d all been together as a family and we’d moved on. I was in love with Frank now. He couldn’t phone me because he was Category A and was banned from making international calls but he was writing to me at my mother-in-law’s house. Although that was awkward, I’d explained to her that I wasn’t in love with her son any more. She knew the situation.

  Lara went back to England for school just before her seventh birthday on 11 September. I was upset I was going to miss her birthday but I was still stuck in Milan. Mum had been berating Customs and Excise about my passport and eventually they got in touch with her old friend Roger Wilson, the guy who had had the frustrating job of interviewing her back when we were first arrested.

  Mr Wilson probably, and quite happily, thought he’d heard the last of Patricia Di Giovine. He hadn’t. He was brought into the whole confusing situation and at last they forwarded my passport to the British Embassy in Milan for personal collection. I picked it up on 16 September. I also got some cash – and itchy feet. There was nothing for me to hang around for. There was no point in having freedom if I couldn’t be with my little girl.

  On the same day Dad was involved in another mini-trial, charged with murder for the killing committed by the Mafiosi from the Camorra, the one he and Nan had sanctioned way back in 1988 when I had just moved over to Milan from England. The day I got my British passport back he was found guilty. I felt sick with the stress of it all. I was outside when they brought him from court and he smiled and waved. This time I blew him a goodbye kiss. I had no idea when I would ever see him again.

  Bruno was in a different court later that day. He saw me and mouthed: ‘Are you coming to visit me?’ I shook my head. I saw the panic in his eyes because he knew I was going.
He knew I was out, he knew Lara was in England, he knew what I was going to do. He had this horrible look of despair on his face. He was sad because he liked seeing me, but he wasn’t my priority any more – neither was my dad. I thought they’d both had enough out of me. My daughter was number one in my life. And freedom, no matter how flimsy, was the only way I could be with her.

  I was off. But not by plane. I couldn’t afford the air fare. Bruno’s mum drove me with my few belongings, a refugee’s bundle, to Milan Central Station. I didn’t get the sleeper on the night train, because that was too expensive. I looked like a student hitchhiker returning from the summer away. There was a young English couple in the compartment and I sat with them. At the Swiss border they just glanced at our passports and thought we were all together.

  At Paris I changed trains and had a shower at the station. Time had moved on; before I went inside there were no public showers there. After we set sail from Calais I tried to phone Mum from the ferry but there was no answer. At Dover they glanced at my passport and that was it.

  I was in England. And free in England. I looked around at the green fields and trees and they were all blurred by the tears in my eyes. I got on a train north, counting every minute until we reached our destination. I caught a taxi from the station to Mum’s house and rang the bell.

  ‘Who is it?’ she called.

  ‘Father Christmas,’ I replied.

  But I was the one getting the present. Lara came running to the door and gave me a huge hug, and that was the only gift I ever wanted. I couldn’t stop staring at her as she showed me all her favourite toys and clothes and chatted about her friends and what they were doing at school. That night I sat and watched her for ages after she went to sleep. I couldn’t get enough of just looking at her.

  The next day I got some funny looks when I took her to school. It had been in the papers that I was freed in Italy. Someone told Radio Lancashire I was home and the local papers wrote about me. Hordes of journalists were on the doorstep but I said nothing to them.

  They wrote their so-called ‘interviews’ anyway. One guy reported in the Sunday Mirror that I had a nice bum so I didn’t complain about the quotes he used that I hadn’t given. I wasn’t interested. I hadn’t said more than a couple of sentences publicly until I decided to clear the air and tell the true story with this book.

  But I talked to Frank.

  I’d never heard his voice ‘live’, only on the tapes he sent me. He was in Hull prison and got permission to ring me at Mum’s house. It was weird and awkward. But wonderful. There was kismet about it. I’d been arrested on 1 June 1994 and he was arrested on 1 June 1990, for the raid on the Blackpool jeweller’s.

  He said he wanted me to visit but as he was a Cat A I had to be vetted, and I wouldn’t easily get a visiting order. I wasn’t in hiding. The UK authorities knew I was back. I had no money because all my assets, including my house, had been seized. I was on benefits, I’d applied for and been given a council house. I was in the system. The Italians were the only people who could make trouble because I’d served my time in England. I took the risk and applied for vetting.

  Frank told me he was going to court again for breaking a prison guard’s jaw. The first time I saw him in person he was behind a bulletproof screen. I met his family, his brother John and his dad’s wife Debbie, in Leeds and went to the Hull court with them. Frank looked around the court and we locked eyes. It was the first time we’d ever seen each other in the flesh. He looked tired but nice, although I’m sure the warder who’d had to have his jaw pinned back together wouldn’t agree. Frank did it but was found not guilty as there was no evidence.

  It was November before I was given clearance to visit. By this stage he was in maximum security at Whitemoor prison in Cambridgeshire. As a Cat A he was segregated in a closed-in area with a special officer on guard. When I first saw him, he was shaking with nerves and I was nervous as well. He looked pale and he’d lost some weight. He gave me a hug and a kiss. Not a proper kiss – we were still getting to know each other – but I could smell his skin, and I liked the smell.

  I was wearing a figure-hugging chocolate knitted dress. I’d gone on a sunbed before the visit. My hair was long and blonde and nearly to my bum. I tried to make the most of what I had available.

  We talked and talked, not about anything important, but just because we could talk to each other without a tape. We kissed at the end of the visit and that’s when it began. I went to see Frank every week after that. He’d act up and be moved from one place to another. He used to hate the young officers coming in and telling him what to do with no respect, so he’d kick off. They put him in jail all over England, in with nonces, with the sex offenders, and down in the cages, with the highest security possible. The only place he didn’t go was Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight – but he’d been there in the past. Wherever, whenever there was trouble, Frank’s name would be on it. They hated him in that system. They absolutely hated him. He was almost as notorious as Charlie Bronson.

  When he wasn’t kicking off, he was writing to me or phoning me. We carried on like that until 15 October 1999, a Friday morning, when he was released from Doncaster prison. He wanted me to go and pick him up at 7 a.m. I’d bought him a rose but I accidentally left home without it and had to turn back and then I was behind schedule. When I got to the prison Frank was waiting outside in the cold in only a white T-shirt and trousers. I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t watch him come out. He was waiting for me! I felt terrible. I gave him a hug and a kiss and said sorry to be late:

  ‘I went back to get your rose,’ I explained.

  He was laughing. He always had a quiet smile, a twinkle in his eye that told you when he was happy. This morning it was as if he’d showered in glee. I didn’t think anyone could grin that much. He opened the boot of the car to put his stuff in and there was a big bunch of flowers for me. He’d got his cousin Dennis to buy them and hide them in my boot!

  It was only 8 a.m. and I drove to a motorway service station where there was a hotel and café. He tucked into his first ‘free’ full English breakfast in years. We looked at each other, took photographs, hugged and kissed, but that was as far as it went. Later he told me: ‘I was dying to take you into that hotel, but I felt it was too cheeky.’

  I wanted him as well but my period had come on the night before, which was a blow. I knew I wanted to have a baby with Frank – I’d come off the Pill with that in mind – but for that morning I had to put seduction out of my mind. It was sexual stalemate.

  On the drive to my home we stopped at his brother’s in Leeds. John had bought him a whole new wardrobe, nice tops and jeans, and he gave him £2,000. And then friends and relatives arrived to give him a big homecoming welcome, which made him feel overwhelmed.

  He dozed and talked on the drive to Blackpool and my council flat in Poulton. On the Saturday we got up late and, like a little boy, he wanted to go to a toy shop. He bought Lara loads of stuff and then got himself a remote control car, an American Warrior Wagon that cost a couple of hundred quid. It seemed this armed robber was just a big kid.

  When we talked about having a child together, he said he’d always wanted to become a dad but thought it wouldn’t happen. He’d had a girlfriend Nicola for a long time before he went inside and they left it to nature but she never got pregnant. He thought it was him. I said we’d see what happened, and the very first month he was home I got pregnant. Frank told everybody instantly – exactly what you don’t do. Three days after the positive test I started bleeding as though I had a really bad period. It was a miscarriage. I was distraught and Frank was as well, but the doctor said there was no reason not to try again.

  Anyway, we were a family with Lara. Frank began spending four days a week with us and the rest of the time over in Leeds. All his friends and family were there. He liked going to a café at Roundhay Park, and once the DJ Jimmy Savile walked in, all loud and cigar smoke. Frank and his mates were sitting chatting and Jimmy Savile looked ar
ound and asked, ‘All right, the Leeds Mafia. Are the gangsters in?’

  Little did he realise that they were. Frank replied, ‘If you want to keep running your marathons, Jimmy, you’d better sit down and shut up.’

  Apparently, Jimmy Savile went a little pale and did both.

  The problem was that Frank had come out to a lot of gang tensions and rivalry. When he went into prison he’d had a partner called Mark McCall who completely dropped him and didn’t help while he was inside. Frank could have grassed him up but he didn’t, and Mark made a lot of money. When Frank got out, Mark wasn’t happy about him coming back to Leeds. Frank wanted to go it alone, and have nothing to do with Mark. He told him: ‘I’ve let you be for nine years. You’ve made your money, you never bothered with me. You never bothered with my family. You haven’t looked after me, nothing. I’m out now. I’m trying to get on with it. You leave me alone, I’ll leave you alone.’

  It didn’t happen that way, though. The situation started getting heated. I knew things weren’t good when Frank started wearing a bullet-proof vest. It was a wake-up call for me. Did I really want to be involved in the gangster lifestyle again and risk getting caught up in crime myself? I couldn’t face getting caught and being taken away from Lara. I’d said to Frank in our letters in prison, ‘I don’t want to get involved in anything like that again. I don’t care if we live on a rubber dingy at the end of the pier, I don’t want that life.’ And I meant it. I had to keep my nose clean now.

  On my thirtieth birthday, in February 2000, we were planning to see a movie rom-com called The Love Letter and then have dinner. I was getting ready when Frank telephoned.

  ‘Right, we’re going to Birmingham.’

  ‘You what? I thought we were going to the cinema.’