Raffaele Cutolo

Raffaele Cutolo behind bars in 1986.

Raffaele Cutolo (born December 20, 1941) is an Italian crime boss and the charismatic leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. His nickname is "Il professore" (the professor). Apart from 18 months on the run, Cutolo has lived inside maximum-security jails or psychiatric prisons since 1963. He is serving multiple life sentences for murder.

Biography

Early years

Cutolo was born in Ottaviano, a rural village in the hinterland of Naples, in a family without powerful ties in the Camorra. His fatherless youth was spent in a close-knit Catholic environment. A bad student, violent and inattentive, at 12 he was already roaming the streets with a gang of teenagers, committing petty burglaries and harassing shopkeepers. As soon as he could drive he bought a car, both for prestige and because it allowed him greater mobility in his raids.

At the age of 18, on February 24, 1963, he committed his first homicide. He was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, reduced to 24 years after appeal. He was sent to Poggioreale, Naples’ prison. Entering the prison world on a murder conviction made Cutolo a “tough guy”. In prison Cutolo learned the rules of the criminal world: he became a man of honour, paid respect to more powerful inmates, and started gathering personal prestige because of his striking personality. He never lost sight of his ambition and his desire to become one of the biggest bosses of the Neapolitan underworld.

Nuova Camorra Organizzata

From within Naples' Poggioreale prison Cutolo built a new organisation: the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO). He began by befriending young inmates unfamiliar with jail, giving them a sense of identity and worth, so much so that when they were released they would send Cutolo ‘flowers’ (i.e. money), which enabled him to increase his network. He helped poorer prisoners by buying food for them from the jail store, or arranging for food to be sent in from outside. In such ways Cutolo created many ‘debts’ or ‘rain cheques’ which he would cash at the opportune moment. As his following grew, he also began to exercise a monopoly of violence within a number of prisons, thus increasing his power. Another key bond Cutolo created was regular payments to the families of NCO members sent to prison, thereby guaranteeing the allegiance of both prisoners and their families.

What is unusual about Cutolo is that he has a kind of ideology, another factor that appealed to rootless and badly educated youths. He founded the NCO in his home town Ottaviano on October 24, 1970, the day of Cutolo’s patron saint, San Raffaele. In such a way Cutolo created the most powerful organization ever to exist in the Neapolitan hinterland. Using his personal appeal and almost magic charisma, he was able to achieve this single-handedly. Cutolo had strong ties with the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. According to some pentiti, Cutolo’s career started with is affiliation with the 'Ndrangheta, supported by important bosses such as Piromalli, Paolo De Stefano, and Mammoliti. Cutolo based his organisation of the NCO on the model of the 'Ndrangheta, its internal codes and rituals.

The NCO strongholds were the towns to the east of Naples, such as Ottaviano, and Cutolo appealed to a Campanian rather than Neapolitan sense of identity. The organisation was unique in the history of the Camorra in that it was highly centralised and possessed a rudimentary form of ideology. For example, he publicly declared that children were not to be kidnapped or mistreated and allegedly arranged the assassination of at least one kidnapper. Perhaps the most potent ideological weapon was the cult of violence, which sometimes bordered on a kind of death wish, as Cutolo once wrote: “the value of a life doesn’t consist of its length but in the use made of it; often people live a long time without living very much. Consider this, my friends, as long as you are on this earth everything depends on your will-power, not on the number of years you have lived.”

Cutolo openly supported the young inmates, who were confronted with abuse, brutality, physical aggression and rape. He provided them with advice and protection from the brutalities of other inmates. At the same time they learned how to behave as a good picciotto, the lowest entry level into the Camorra. Cutolo challenged the old Camorra bosses and gave the youngsters a structure to belong to: “The new Camorra must have a statute, a structure, an oath, a complete ceremony, a ritual that must excite people to the point that they would risk their lives for this organization.” Cutolo was revered by his soldiers. They called him Prince and kissed his left hand as if he were a bishop.

Sister running the business

In Poggioreale, where on average there are 25 prisoners to a cell, Cutolo managed to get a cell to himself with a shower, while his own personal cook occupied the cell next door so that he could serve up dishes on request. Cutolo referred to the prison as “the state of Poggioreale”. As a prisoner, he dressed impeccably with ties and designer shirts, a gold watch and shoes of crocodile skin. As Cutolo spent most of his time behind bars from where he sends out his instructions, the everyday running of the enterprise was entrusted to his sister Rosa Cutolo.

Rosetta, a grey-haired, pious-looking woman, lived alone for years, tending her roses. She ruled in the headquarters of the organisation: a vast 16th century palace with 365 rooms and a large park with tennis courts and swimming pool. Brilliant with figures, Rosetta Cutolo negotiated with South American cocaine barons, narrowly failed to blow up police headquarters and was glamorised in a film, Il Camorrista. In 1993 she was charged with mafia association: prosecutors alleged she had been running her brother's organisation. Rosetta had persuaded the authorities she was harmless, and her frumpy image definitely helped.

Raffaele Cutolo decided to expand the Camorra to Apulia. The final outcome was not what he had planned. At first local criminals were managing the illegal trades while the Camorra lent financial resources and support demanding 40% of all profits derived from illegal activities. This arrangement proved to be an unstable one: soon the local criminals tried to free themselves from the masters. In 1981, one of them, Giuseppe Rogoli, founded the Sacra Corona Unita, a new Mafia invoking the regional Pugliese identity against the intrusion of the foreign Neapolitans.

Camorra war

The NCO spread like wildfire in the crisis-ridden Campanian towns of the late 1970s, offering alienated youths an alternative to a lifetime of unemployment or poorly paid jobs. Initially, the main specialisation of NCO gangs was extorting money through protection rackets from local businesses; they later moved on to cocaine, partly because it was less subject to police investigation than heroin, but also because the Sicilian Mafia was less involved in the cocaine trade.

At the end of the 1970s two different types of Camorra organisations were beginning to take shape. On one side there was Cutolo’s NCO, which dealt mainly in cocaine and protection rackets, preserving a strong regional sense of identify. On the and the business-oriented gangs linked to the Mafia like the clans of Michele Zaza and Lorenzo Nuvoletta, who dealt in cigarettes and heroin, but soon moved on to invest in real estate and construction firms.

Cutolo’s NCO became becoming more powerful by encroaching and taking over other group’s territories. The NCO was able to break the circle of traditional power held by the families. Cutolo’s organisation was just too aggressive and violent to be resisted by any individual families. Other Camorra families initially were too weakened, too divided, and simply too intimidated by the NCO. He requested that if other criminal groups wanted to keep their business, they had to pay the NCO protection on all their activities, including a percentage for each carton of cigarettes smuggled into Naples. This practice came to be known as ICA (Imposta Camorra Aggiunta – or Camorristic Sale Tax), mimicking the state VAT sale tax IVA (Imposta sul Valore Aggiunto).

However, no hierarchy between Camorra gangs or stable spheres of influence had been created, and no gang leader was likely to agree to be subdued by Cutolo without making a fight of it. In 1978, Zaza formed a ‘honourable brotherhood’ (Onorata fratellanza) in an attempt to get the Mafia-aligned Camorra gangs to oppose Cutolo and his NCO, although without much success. A year later, in 1979, the Nuova Famiglia was formed to contrast Cutolo’s NCO, consisting of Carmine Alfieri, Zaza, the Nuvoletta’s and Antonio Bardellino from Casal di Principe (the so-called "Casalesi"). From 1980-1983 a bloody war raged in and around Naples, which left several hundred death – and severely weakened the NCO. Between June 16 and June 19, 1983, police arrested a thousand members of the NCO.

Cirillo kidnapping

Cutolo has been instrumental in obtaining the release of Ciro Cirillo, the Christian Democrat member of the regional government of Campania ("assessore") in charge of Urban Planning, who had been abducted by the Red Brigades in April 1981. He was released within three months because, so rumour has it, the Christian Democrats paid Cutolo to use his influence with the Red Brigades.

Publicly the Christian Democrats had refused to negotiate with terrorists, but privately leading politicians and members of the secret services visited Cutolo in prison and asked him to negotiate with imprisoned members of the Red Brigades. A large ransom was paid to win Cirillo’s release. In return, Cutolo allegedly asked for a slackening op police operations against the Camorra, for control over the tendering of building contracts in Campania (a lucrative venture since Campania was hit by a devastating earthquake in November 1980) and for a reduction of his own sentence – as well as new psychiatric test to show that he is not responsible for his actions. Both these last concessions were granted.

Decline

After the 1980-1983 Camorra war, Cutolo’s power declined. His sister who ran the business was arrested in 1993. He was moved the a prison on the island Asinara, far away from Naples and his ability to communicate with the outside was severely restricted when the harsh 41-bis prison regime was imposed upon him.

In 2005, he asked for clemency in a letter to the Italian President. “I am tired an ill. I want to spend my last years at home.” More than two decades after being jailed for life without the right to conjugal visits, Cutolo fathered a daughter. A six-year legal battle allowed Cutolo the right to father a child through artificial insemination.

Personality

Through his book of, Poesie e pensieri (Thoughts and Poems) and his many interviews with journalists, Cutolo was able to create a strong sense of identity amongst his members. Even though his book was impounded by magistrates within days of its publication, many prisoners, alienated from society both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ jail, wrote to Cutolo and other NCO leaders asking for a copy.

Cutolo thought of himself as a predestined man with supernatural powers, able to heal the wounded and raise the dead. Various psychiatric examinations assessed him to be a psychotic, an hysteric and a megalomaniac. He thought that he had been sent to earth to save the Neapolitan people: “I saw four knights with lance and buckler, black capes around their shoulders. They saw me and smiled. At that moment I understood that I was given the task of rebuilding the Camorra on new and more efficient bases, so that the tradition of our fathers would not be lost. I am the reincarnation of the most glorious moments of the Neapolitan past, I am the messiah for the suffering prisoners, I dispense justice, I am the only real judge who takes from the usurers and gives the poor. I am the true law, I do not recognize the Italian justice,” he said during a trial in 1980.

Biography and film

• Template:It icon Marrazzo, Giuseppe (1984/2005). Il camorrista. Vita segreta di don Raffaele Cutolo, Naples: Tullio Pironti, ISBN: 88-7937-331-5
• Il Camorrista (1986), directed by Giuseppe Tornatore. Vaguely inspired to the real story of Cutolo. Cutolo is played by Ben Gazzara.

References

• Behan, Tom (1996). The Camorra, London: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-09987-0
• Haycraft, John (1985). The Italian Labyrinth: Italy in the 1980s, London: Secker & Warburg
• Jacquemet, Marco (1996). Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials, Cambridge University Press ISBN 0521552516
• Template:It icon Sciarrone, Rocco (1998). Mafie vecchie, mafie nuove: Radicamento ed espansione, Rome: Donzelli Editore ISBN 88-7989-435-8
• Stille, Alexander (1995). Excellent Cadavers. The Mafia and the Death of the First Italian Republic, New York: Vintage ISBN 0-09-959491-9

External links

• Template:It icon Processo Raffaele Cutolo, Rai Tre on youtube.com
• Template:It icon Raffaele Cutolo and the NCO, Rai Tre on youtube.com