Betwixt The Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society - Mafia Women

Episode Date: September 2, 2022

Who was Pupetta Maresca? And what did she do to become the first woman in Italy to be prohibited from having a funeral?In this episode, Kate chats to Barbie Latza Nadeau, a journalist and author who has lived in Italy since 1996, and who, to find out more about the women of the Italian mafia, actually went to meet some of them.We find out why these women are just as dangerous as their male counterparts, and how their roles have changed through history.*WARNING there are naughty words and discussions of crime and murder in this episode*Produced by Charlotte Long and Sophie Gee. Mixed by Thomas Ntinas.Betwixt the Sheets: The History of Sex, Scandal & Society. A podcast by History Hit.For more History Hit content, subscribe to our newsletters here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts, and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!You've been listening to a History Hit podcast. Please take a couple of minutes to fill out this survey with your feedback, we'd really appreciate it. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Sign up to join me in locations around the world and explore the past. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello, my lovely bit twixters. This is Kate Lister. I am just prefacing this episode as usual with a fair-doos warning. Fair-dos, it's going to contain some adulty themes. We're talking about the Italian mafia today.

So we're talking about there'll be sex, they'll be violence, they'll be swearing, and unfortunately there might be me attempting to do an Italian accent, which is a warning that everybody needs. I'll try my best to behave myself. So, if that sounds like something that you can get on board with, let's do it. If this one isn't for you, then don't you worry.

I'll see you next time. On the 4th of August, 1955, a member of Naples' foremost criminal organisation at the Camorra was shot in broad daylight in the streets of Naples. He'd actually been shot 29 times. His killer? Well, she was known as Popatomeresca. Sorry, right, I won't do that. as Puppetta Moresca.

She was 18 years old and she was pregnant and she went on to become one of the most ruthless bosses in the Italian mafia. Today, betwixt the sheets we're going to find out about Puppetta and the women

of the mafia. What do you look for in a man? Oh, money, of course. You're supposed to rise when an adult speaks to you. I make perfect confidence of whatever my boss needs by just turning it up

and pushing the button. Yes, social cooking. does make a difference. Goodness, my beautiful damn. Goodness has nothing to do with it, Derry. Hello, and welcome back to Betwixt the Sheets, the History of Sex Scandal and Society, with me, Kail Lister. Do you think that you're brave enough to spend time with known killers?

People who have actually proven that if they think it necessary, they will pull the trigger on a rival. Actually, not even rivals, people that they quite like even sometimes. Well, I'm joined today by Barbie Latsa Ndow, who is that one. brave, and that's considerably braver than I am, who has interviewed a number of women from the Italian mafia, including Madame Camorra Puppetta herself. So what were these women like? Were they really the lipstick-bearing, gin-swilling, hair-sprayed mulls of gangster movies? Or were they committing these crimes of their own volition? Were they far more capable than we often give them credit for?

And how has this changed? Oh, and thank you so much to buy. Barbie Lats and Addo for joining me today, Twix the Sheets. Thank you for having me. Your work is fascinating. You research women of the mafia. That's right, because I think you can't tell the whole story of the mafia and the whole history of the mafia without including the women who are often overlooked. What brought you to this?

What was the journey to this? What was your first encounter with that this is what I need to research this? We need to know more. Well, you know, I've been in Italy. I'm an American. and I've been in Italy since 1996, working as a journalist. And almost every story I've ever covered has taken me in one way or another to the mafia to organize crime. And I wrote a book a couple of years ago about sex trafficking of Nigerian women on the migration trail.

And it was all set in this little horrible town south of Rome, north of Naples. And there was this really interesting beach house there. And I was with an undercover police officer who was saying to me, oh, this has such an interesting story. this house used to belong to Puppeta Mariska, Lady Comora. And now it was sequestered by the state. It was given over to Nigerian victims of trafficking. And he was showing me how they were keeping their material and all of these sorts of things, their fabrics,

in the place where Pupetta Maraska used to hide fugitives and where she kept the drugs and all these sorts of things. And the house was palatial and beautiful and everything. And I thought at that time, I want to know the woman who had this house, who built this house. Yes. And that's what led me discovering or to researching women who are involved in the organized crime syndicates. We'll get to Puppetta in just a bit because she is unbelievably fascinating and terrifying, all in the same breath.

But I think what's really interesting is that when you think of women in the mafia, coming at it from a completely perspective of having, I know nothing about the mafia other than what I see on TV and Goodfellas and the Sopranos. But when you do see that kind of representation, they tend to be the girlfriend, they tend to be the long-suffering wife or the mistress, the gumar. They tend to be cooking meatballs somewhere. They're not actually part of the criminality, the kind of more accessories to it. That's right. And I think that there's a great misconception with that.

And you have to look at that from a lot of different factors. You have to look at the context in which this is set. Italy. Italy is a very patriarchical society. Women in the legal sector don't always get the due that they do. deserve. And within organized crime syndicates, I think for many, many years, women flew under the radar because the law enforcement and judicial system didn't think they were smart enough or mean enough or bad enough to actually do any of these sorts of crimes. And at the end of the day,

though, they are bad enough. And they really did fly under the radar for a long time. And, you know, that's why it seems to be sort of a new thing, but it's not. They're just being taken seriously now. Can we go right back, like, a proper starter question, because just one that I'm not really aware of the answer to, is like, where did the mafia come from and what is it? Like, I think I know, because I've seen Hollywood movies, but that's not the reality. No, the real mafia has nothing in everything, let's say, to do with the glamorization of it. You know, you look at the Godfather trilogy or you look at the Sopranos. Carmela Soprano doesn't exist in the real underworld. She doesn't exist.

There's no one like that in the actual organized crime syndicate. But organized crime in this country goes back, you know, all. almost 200 years. And it started really with a vacuum in the state where the state wasn't taking care of the people or the people didn't trust the government. And so the mafia came in sort of as a Robin Hood. And they decided, well, we can help the people. We can give you the loan. We can take care of the, we can fix the prices. We can do all of these sorts of things. And as a result of that, it's almost all in the southern reaches of Italy where the poverty is felt, I suppose, to the greatest effect, that these organized crime syndicates have been allowed

to grow. That's where you see the most corruption. That's where you see the most corruption within the government entities and the mafia. There are five major organized crime syndicates in Italy. Everyone knows of the Sicilian mafia, the Cozonos. But there's also the Neapolitan Comorra. There's the Calabria in Drangeta. There's the Roman Mafia Capitale. There's the Sacra Corona of Puglia.

All of these groups work basically in competition with each other for drugs and arms trading, for sort of infiltration of governments, for fixing contracts, all these sorts of things that damage this beautiful country so much. much. Is it still in force today? I've known nothing about it at all. Is the mafia still holding power over great spades of Italy today? Oh, absolutely. In many, many ways, it's evolved into less of a deadly organization or deadly tentacles. And it's much more infiltration in governments and infiltration in sectors like the garbage sector in Naples in and around Mount Vesuvius, you know, very active volcano. There's toxic waste that's buried there at the hands of the Comorra. You see anytime

there's an earthquake in Italy, you have this devastating damage because the mafia in organized crime has infiltrated the construction sector. And so they're not using the right materials. A building will fall down and they'll find beach sand instead of gravel in the cement. All these sorts of things play a role in the strength of the mafia here. Wow. I don't know why I'm so surprised. I suppose organized crime is everywhere. But okay, so tell me about the history of women in the mafia. Who's some of the earliest players that you've found? Well, I mean, Pepetta Moreska, who's a lot of, who committed her first murder when she was 18 years old and six months pregnant. Wow.

She's really the first woman who was recognized to be as bad as she is. When was this? When was she born? The murder took place in 1953. So this was, she died a couple days before New Year's last year to migrate sadness and relief to some extent. Last year. Oh, very recent. Okay. But she was the first one. woman who was disallowed to have a funeral because of her mafia affiliation. No one in the history of the mafia female had been prohibited from having a public funeral. That's a lot of men

are a lot of mafia dons, these bad guys are. But she was the first woman that they prohibited this funeral. And I think she would have loved it. She would have loved that notoriety. So I'm going to fall into the trap now of like kind of glamorizing and having respect for these people. But we have to keep remembering it's they are criminals and they caused a lot of damage. but it's hard, like, not to have this kind of, like, begrudging respect for when a woman especially rises up, manages to have that much power. Is that something that you found in your research? Yeah, I had, I really struggled with that because I know these are bad girls. These are bad ladies. And in fact, when I started researching the book where I had the idea for the book, I thought, I'm going to

focus on the women who have turned against her families, the good women. But right away, I realized, that's not nearly as interesting as the bad ones, sad to say. But I don't think it's glamorizing organized crime. I think that writing about it shines a light on it. And I don't think that anyone who reads the book would come away from it and say, wow, I love the mafia. They would say, wow, they do terrible things. But within the context of that, these women, maybe they would have been in banking or finance, they would have been amazing. They would have crashed through the glass ceiling, no matter what sector they might have been in. And so the fact that they're in organized crime, we have to recognize their courage and their intelligence and their drive and their will.

We don't need to appreciate what the end of that is, but we have to recognize that they are able to do things that a lot of Italian women aren't able to do. So tell me about Papetta Moreska. Tell me who she was. She was an interesting woman. Her father was a criminal and she married into a crime family, let's say, that was of a higher ranking than hers. And her husband, Pasquolone, was sort of the king of prices. He was during the time right after the war, able to help farmers get back on their feet through price fixing and through sort of, not allowing large tomato producers to come into Naples to buy up all the land. He would do the price fixing through threats and extortion and all of that to keep the farmers sort of under his in his wheelhouse or under his umbrella. And so he was in jail.

They started courting each other. She was a beauty queen. She'd won a beauty contest. She'd come to the right kind of family. He liked her. Okay. He thought she's the right one for me because of her criminal background, basically. And she was a beautiful woman and remained a beautiful woman until the day that she died to a large

extent and knew how to exploit that beauty, but we can get to that later. But he was kingpin. He was a big deal. And through a variety of reasons, he was murdered by a foe. And she knew immediately who ordered the murder. And she went to police. And she said, I know who ordered the murder of my husband. I'm pregnant. I just got married. I know who did it. And the police, as they often do in this country, said, well, that's an internal matter. You in the organized crime, we're not going to get involved in that. And so Puppetta thought, if I don't avenge this murder, then someone who kills the man who killed my husband is going to get me. I'm going to be the prize of that because I'm the wife. I'm carrying the baby. So she did it herself. She took the gun that he owned. No. And she carried it with

her until she saw the man outside of a coffee bar in Naples on her, waited the cemetery to put flowers on her husband's grave, bulging with pregnancy. And she took that gun out and she pumped 29 bullets into him. And he died. Wow. And was there any repercussion for that or was there? Well, she went to prison where her child was born in prison. She served 13 years, four months of an 18-year sentence. She had become such a star during the trial. People loved her.

She hears this woman who'd done something a man should have done. You know, she was Lady Camorra. She was all these wedding proposals and flowers. They were through flowers on the paddy wagon when it drove through the town because everybody loved the idea. And she fit the part. During the trial, she would scream out. I killed for love, you know, her defense lawyer saying, trying to say, well, let's not, let's not go there, you know. But she was a character.

She was such a character. She was no Carmella soprano. I have to get back to that. She was fighting a real battle because the state and the system failed her. She had to do it herself. That's, it sounds as well like that, I mean, I don't know the ins and outs this, but it sounds like a lot of that was motivated by fear is that I have to kill this person or someone's going to kill me. And then when you kind of look at it in that context, it suddenly seems a bit more not forgivable. But I get what you're doing there, Perpeta.

I understand. Well, that's exactly right. And so many of these women, you get what they're doing. Because, you know, when you're born into an organized crime family, as a woman especially, you can leave in a police car or you can leave in a coffin. You can't just walk out of it. No. There's no in between. And as a result of that, she did what she had to do.

And that's why, you know, a lot of these women did what they had to do or what's their all It's not necessarily always fear that drives them so much as it is necessity is to stay alive or to keep their children alive. So she goes to jail for 13 years, a bit of a celebrity. Then what happens to her? Well, during the 13 years, she gave birth to her child. And in the Italian prison system, at the time, she was allowed to raise a child in her prison cell for the first four years of his life.

So her son, Pasquale, was in the prison cell with her. When she got out of prison, she ended up marrying or she didn't actually marry him. She ended up hooking up with another mafia, so a man who hated the clan in which her dead husband was in. And she had twins with that man. And then on the 18th birthday of her son that she had with a man whose murder she avenged, that son disappeared and she feels very much that her second partner is the one who killed the 18-year-old boy because he was becoming too much competition. And he didn't want someone else's child in the house, especially over the age of 18.

And he disappeared on a construction site when they were building the ring road around. And almost everyone thinks, including her, that he was buried under one of the pillars, because they were pouring cement on the day that he disappeared. Oh, that's painful. Oh, dear. So did she stay with the man that she thought, wow, okay. She stayed with the man that she believes killed her first son, and she had these two children with him. And then the two of them were convicted of murdering someone in a brutal decapitation and bloodletting of a former ally. and they were convicted of this murder and her partner left. He left her to serve the crime alone and went off to Brazil and married another woman

and had children with the other woman. So he betrayed her. Yeah, he was a good guy, you know. What a creep. He was a creep. She hates him. And then he became a turncoat. But she didn't hate him as much

for killing the son and for leaving her as she did for betraying the organized crime syndicate. To her, that was the real crime. That was snitches, wear stitches. That's absolutely right. Yes, or end up under concrete somewhere. Oh, God. Okay. So then you said that that was her first murder. That was her first murder. The decapitation of the ally was her second murder. And then, for which she was eventually

acquitted on some sort of technicality, which often leads people to believe that the judge was threatened or someone. God, could you imagine being a judge trying to look over a trial like that? Oh, that would be, I can understand why no one would want to do that. No, exactly. And the thought of the judiciary here is very, very honest in Italy, but it's complicated. And some people, within that, like in every judiciary, there are people who are corrupted by the system or who are affiliated with organized crime. Then she was accused of another murder many years later, but that was basically dropped because all the witnesses ended up dead. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Wow. Okay. Any more murders that she was involved in until last year, or?

Just the three. Just the three. That anyone knows of. Oh, my goodness. So what was her role? in organized crime. It can't have just been killing people. Like, what function did she serve? She was very much a power broker. She was able to command an audience of sorts. She was able to organize people in a way

that would set them against people who were a threat to her criminal enterprise. And her criminal enterprise, of course, is money laundering, extortion, all these sorts of things that go hand in hand. And often she would call a press conference or something like that. And in the press conference, because she was such a charismatic person, everybody went.

You know, she's got all the world, you know, all Italy's media there. And she would make blatant threats to the foe in which her people would be threatening. Wow. And all the press would report it because here's Puppetamarek in a leather, tight dress with a choker, talking about what she wore and how she looked and then they put a quote in there. But that quote then sent a message. And it sends a message that she could have never disseminated, you know, on her own. And so she co-opted the media because people loved her because everybody, you know, everybody's captivated by this.

Myself included, and obviously anyone listening to this wants to know more. Let's hear more. Yes. We're a part, I suppose, complicit in the glamorization of it, even as we try to say we're not. I say for myself. I speak for myself. So she was pretty adept at handling the media then, that she had a brand that she was able to use. That's pretty skillful. can only imagine what she would have been like in the age of social media. She would have been incredible. Oh my God, but like if she was on Instagram or Twitter. She would have been quite an influencer,

but she didn't need it because she knew how to get the media interested in her, because she understood the weakness of the media on some level. I'll call this press conference. Everyone wants to hear from me. I committed my first murder when I was 18 and pregnant. Everybody knows who I am. And I always think when she died, the world's press wrote about her. She was in the news all over the world as Lady Camorra, the first female, real female mafia person. And her funeral was prohibited and all of that. And I think she would have loved it.

I think she would have loved that. I just think she must have just thought, yeah, finally. I get the last word, yeah. The notoriety. Wow. I'll be back with Barbie after this. Airplanes, space suits, condoms, coffee, plastic surgery, warships. Over on the patented podcast by History Hit,

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can only have been eliminated by Thomas Edison, who at the time is arguably the most famous person in the West. And look backwards to understand technologies that are still in progress. You know, when people turn around to me and say, oh, why would you want to live forever? Life's rubbish. I just think that's a bit sad. I think it's a worthwhile thing to do. And the thing that really makes it worthwhile is the fact that you could make it go on forever. So subscribe to Patented from History Hit on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. to catch new episodes every Wednesday and Sunday. This is a difficult question because it's subjective,

but did she do good things? I know that's really vague, but I'm assuming she can't have just got up every day and just been horrible and wicked. Was there any kind of like Robin Hood thing about it? Did she help people? That was, like people were obsessed with her and they wanted to know about her, but was she liked?

Did they like her and why? Yeah, yeah, for sure. I mean, she was a grandmotherly lady. She was, I think I write in the book that she was a cold-blooded killer and a manipulative liar. But if you could look beyond that, she was really delightful. She's lovely once you get to know her.

Well, no, I mean, she sort of was. Also because she was extremely good at manipulating anyone came within her reach. But does any, you know, I think it's a big struggle. When you wonder why organized crime is allowed to continue in this country, you have to look at the failure of the country. I talked to this wonderful female prosecutor who is fighting against the mafia. And she said to me, the mafia, an organized crime doesn't exist. in spite of good Italy, in spite of legal Italy, it exists because of it, because of the failures

of that state. And I think that's absolutely right. And to understand the long history of the mafia and to understand why we're still talking about it today, you have to understand that it is part of the DNA in many ways of this society, of this culture. What do you think that the failings have been, the failings of good Italy, as you said there? I suppose the failings of good Italy are corruption and bureaucracy and government that make it impossible. We saw that a lot after the pandemic, which if we are, in fact, after the pandemic, it's hard to define where we are in the pandemic.

It is, isn't it? Yeah. It is. But, you know, you look at a lot of the benefits that were going to people who lost money during the lockdown didn't ever make it to them. One, because a lot of people didn't pay their taxes the way they were supposed to, so they didn't show up legally on the books.

They weren't allowed anything because they weren't paying taxes on the income that they were really making. And so you had organized crime filling the vacuum, Loaning money to companies, handing out food, making sure people that were taken care of, that their bills were able to be paid. Of course, the interest on those loans is incredible.

The price you pay to be helped by organized crime. But the government wasn't able to help the people. And so organized crime, we really saw it that. And lots of experts warned that, wow, the mafia is going to take advantage of this. And you see it every time there's a natural disaster in this beautiful country. Every time all the walls come down in a city like Lachwila or, I mean, Matrice a couple of years ago, the first people in there to try to rebuild are almost always affiliated with organized crime. Slightly cheaper, less bureaucracy, we can do it faster. We'll get your

hotel back up. We'll get your restaurant back going. That's how they fill in the gap that the state. One of the problems in Italy, which is no secret, is the lack of continuity in the government. Governments fall here like dominoes constantly. And when you look at that, how can the state be reliable when it's not dependable? That's a very good point. I'll just, thinking about how, like the state the UK is in at the moment with soaring bills and energy prices. And if there was organized crime to step in to kind of take control of that, I can see how that would work, actually. It does work also because there's a history of it here, because there's a precedent here,

because it is sort of always been. And it's also, you know, you look at the strength of the Catholic Church and you look at the ties between organized crime and the Catholic Church, you know, all of the worst people in the world go to confession every week. their sins are forgiven by the church whose coffers are filled by the, you know, the contributions in almost every small town in Italy in a mafia country, those churches are wealthy because the organized crime families continue to donate money and things like that. As a result, they get the funeral. The babies are baptized. The children are educated. You know, it's a continuing cycle.

Pope Francis tried to say that all mafiosi should be excommunicated, but boy, that would be hard to do. That would be hard to do. Wow. And in your research, obviously, you've not just researched women, in the mafia, but the history of the mafia. Have you seen the types of crime changing throughout history? I mean, presumably they have, but what have been the types of crimes that are being committed? Has that changed? It has changed.

The organized crime syndicates in Italy right now are far less bloody than they were 50 years ago, let's say, when they couldn't get the point made without blowing up judges or without, you know, destroying, you know, beautiful places. In the country, now there's a lot of infiltration. There's a lot of infiltration of government. There's a lot of infiltration of banking industries and hacking, and they've become quite savvy. And a lot of the reason that women are finding a place within these syndicates is that often women are better at those types of white-collar crimes, let's call them.

Although I don't know, white-collar crime's not really accurate in a bloody organization. But women tend to be more educated. A lot of them are sent abroad to get their education, and then they come back and they're able to apply those skills to the family and to help them in that way. So there is an evolution of organized crime, certainly with technology. just easier all around. I mean, I think all crimes, whether they're organized crime in Italy or even narco-trafficking in Central America, you know, there's a certain element. Technology has made their jobs a little less bloody and a little more successful, streamlined, let's say. And you have interviewed and spoken with people that are still in the mafia today, particularly

women that are in the mafia today. What was that experience like? First of all, how did you find them? Presumably you can't put like an ad out on Facebook saying, anyone in the mafia? Fancy having a chat? How do you access people? Well, the best way to access people like that is to latch on to these organizations that help people when they get out of prison. Because nine times out of ten, you know, when they get out of prison, I found this group in Naples. And I was slightly naive. I'm always slightly naive. And then I always think, oh, this is probably not the smartest thing to be doing.

But nonetheless, there was this group that were helping people in the Comorra as they got out of prison. And I thought the group was helping them get back, you know, rehabilitate, get back on their feet. But in fact, there was. they were kind of helping them get their bearings again. At any rate, so I was able to make a connection with a number of people through this group and follow women around and interview them. And in most cases, they ask you to change their name if they've just come out of prison and I'm very honest about where I change names and things like that.

It's difficult to interview criminals, though, in the sense that you don't really know how to believe them because they're criminals. They can tell you anything. And then you go check on it and you think, oh, my God, every single thing she told me is wrong. or a lie or manipulated or or in some way exploitative. But that's part of the story too. That's definitely part of the telling of the tale is that sort of nothing happens in a vacuum, I guess.

Everything happens because of something else and all the factors that play into why someone tells a lie, whether it's because they want that lie to become the truth or whether it's because they can't tell the truth because it's too dangerous for them. It's all complicated that way. But the women, you know, I talked to a couple of people who had left the organization who were living under protection. Their lives were horrible. They're living in constant fear that they'll be found. They're living, you know, under, they're living lies too.

You know, they're living under an assumed name pretending to be someone they're not because someone will kill them. That's not really living honestly either, is it? No. No, that's, I can't even imagine what that must be like. Were there sort of common threads in some of the stories of the women that you interviewed? Like how, I guess there's a million ways it could happen, but how. How do you end up in organized crime? Well, you're usually born into it or you marry into it.

So, you know, it's not a man can sort of approach a group or be recruited into a group. A woman will probably be married into it. Or in some cases, maybe she's offered as a marriage as a truce or something like that. This doesn't happen as much as it did maybe 30 years ago where women were, two clans would be arguing or having some sort of battle. And one would offer the daughter to the other one. And then they would, you know, cross-pollinate, as it were. but it's very rare for a woman who's not at all affiliated with an organized crime family to be accepted as a bride into that.

And in one case of the story I told in the book, there was a young woman in Florence who met a man that she fell in love with when he was in university, who happened to me, the son of a major kingpin in the Andrangata in Calabria. And his family didn't want him to marry her, to be with her, but he loved her, which doesn't count because if the family doesn't approve, love means nothing. And so she ended up trying to get him and successfully to turn against his family. And he did because he thought, oh, I want to have this normal life. I want to live in Florence with this affluent family and everything's going to be great.

And the family killed her. Wow. And never found her body. But he, the boyfriend, who then went back to the family, is in jail for her murder. So the stakes are incredibly high. They're incredibly high. And it's a lot more than, you know, you look at a lot of pop culture on this. And everyone's sitting around a back room talking about something that they might

might do or organize, you know, the reality of it is death and extortion and threat and fear. And, you know, I interviewed a woman who tried to leave the Casamonica family, which is a criminal family here in Rome. And she told me the story about how when she was going to try to leave the sort of godmother of the family, they had these vats of acid in the basement of these houses where they, you know, disintegrated people, essentially. And she described how at one time to threaten her that they singed her hair. And so they dropped her hair in it. She described the smell of her hair in the acid,

kind of saying, if you don't straighten up, it's going to be the whole body. That's terrifying. She ended up leaving the family. She ended up leaving, but at great cost because her kids are still there, and they could get her at any time. How does somebody leave that? I mean, especially if you're born into it, it would be incredibly difficult to say that I don't want this life.

I don't want to do this. But there have been people that have left. What's the process for that? You have to turn the state's evidence. You have to go to police and testify against your family. And that's not as easy as it sounds either because someone can want to leave or go to a prosecutor or go to a detective and say, I want to leave. And so they have to give all this information. And if that information can't be corroborated, those ladies, those women, those sisters, mothers, wives, whatever, are sent back to the family because the police will assume they were just sent as a trap, you know.

And so it's very dangerous. And it takes a long time to corroborate with other turncoats and people who've confessed. if these things are true or not. So it's difficult. And then once they leave, once they're under protection, witness protection, every four years they look at the case to see if their witness protection is still, you know, applicable. Did they have contact with the family?

Are they going against, you know, are they going back? And a lot of these women leave without their children, right? So maybe they do want to have contact with their children. Or someone who's still in the family will sort of dangle the children saying your children are being tortured and threatened and starved to death every day until you come back. And so are they going to go back? And then they go back at what happens to them. The punishment for that, for leaving is incredible. It's a cycle. And as they say, you leave in a coffin or a police car. And if you leave in a police car, you're never safe. You're only at peace

if you leave in the coffin, probably. Oh, my God. Are there still, oh, presumably there are, but women still playing a significant part in organized crime today. Yeah, I think playing even more of a role. There are more women in prison for mafia-related crimes today in 2022 than there have ever been in the history of Italy's judicial system. And that's 145 or 144 because someone either died or got out. I have the list. But that's a lot of women being taken seriously, a lot of bad women, it's finally being taken seriously.

Because they really did fly under the radio for a long time. There would be these cases where all the property is under the woman's name, but the police or the investigators never believed that the woman could be involved. Oh, she must be just a pawn. And in fact, she was running the business, but they just didn't give her credit. So they've always been there and they've exploited this kind of assumption that women can't do it and that women are gentle and that to basically further their own interest. Absolutely. I mean, that happens in the legal society here as well. There's a very misogynistic thread to the Italian society. I've lived here for a long time. I say that firsthand. And a lot of times exploiting that blatant sexuality is the only way you can succeed, you know, or to. to not accept it. You can never accept that sort of thing, but you can find a way to reckon with it, I guess.

It's much different within the organised crime family, but it exists in the legal sector of this country as well. And have you done any research around the Italian-American community in organized crime there? Yeah, you know, there's always been a tie to the Sicilian mafia and some of these crime families in New York and Chicago and places like that. And those are historic, very historical relationships. And what's interesting, though, is how the Andrangutan Calabria is making inroads now into North America and into Canada. And so they're forging all these new ties, kind of creating new connections. And this is mostly for international drug trade and extortion. I mean, extortion goes with it.

Extortion is part of any, it's sort of where the small change comes from in order to run these criminal enterprises. But those historic relationships are by now well-traum. read that been investigated, people know who's tied to who, but it's the new ones that are really interesting. And the Andrangata, which is the deadliest most powerful organized crime syndicate in the world right now, is one I think a lot of people haven't quite unraveled yet. Do you get scared being a journalist research and this stuff like, because you must have quite a close proximity to it. Do you ever like feel, tell from talking to you that you're very brave or maybe you don't see yourself as being in danger, but I just wondered at a moment,

It's where you're, because these dangerous people, these are dangerous people. No, I know. I think if you are a journalist and you do this sort of work, not just organized crime, but any work, say there's an earthquake, I always go to the earthquake, sit there, stand there in front of a building that's going to collapse. I am never afraid about it until, like, something falls off the building. Then I think, oh, this could be dangerous. I think it's very similar when you're investigating these sorts of things.

You think, listen, these women are, you know, all this is documented, everyone's been arrested. I'm not necessarily exposing names that haven't been exposed before, but I think in anything you do, no matter what it is, the minute you feel fear, you don't do a very good job. So it's just better not to. When I was working on the book on Sex Trafficked Women, I was staying with these little old lady nuns

that were trying to rescue the women. And I was staying in their shelter and things like that. And I kept thinking, wow, if they can do this, I can't be afraid. You know, there are far more brave people. than I am. I'm just a witness. I'm not the prosecutors who could be killed or blown up in their cars who have to have round-the-clock police protection. Those are the brave people. I'm just an observer. I'm just telling the story. Do you think that they'll ever be a mafia-free world? Do you think that's even possible? I think the only way to combat organized crime, let's say in a country like

Italy, would be to start at a very young age where you have to infiltrate the preschool. So because all of these families start young and that like many times the mothers in the family their job is to indoctrinate the children to be bad they're not taught right from wrong they're taught wrong from right they're taught that actually don't turn the other cheek get revenge you know that's you know daddy's in jail because he was protecting us or you know all of these sorts of things that sort of the legal society looks at one way organized crime it looks at the other way and when that starts in the womb essentially in the cradle in the home unless you try to to combat it there. Unless you try to have programs and schools, you know, enlighten these kids to

what they're really living in, I don't think you'll have a change. I really don't. There has to be a will to change. Do you think there is a will to change? No. If there was, I think you'd see more efforts. I think there's a very strong anti-mafia force here at Italy. There are arrests all the time. There are investigations all the time. But there are a lot of really big people living undercover, or living, you know, mafia people who are able to sort of roam freely. Every now and then they catch one. But you have to think on some level that the legal system or the detectives are watching what's going on.

They're not capturing all these people because they want to know how the circuit works. And you see this time and time again, when they do a big arrest, you know, it's got 200 cops and helicopters and all these sorts of things. Well, you know they've been watching these people for years. But in watching these people and maybe infiltrating the organized crime syndicate, they're able to trace where the drugs are coming from, where they're going to go to, where the arms are going, maybe they're going to exploit some of these groups instead of disrupting them so that they can keep an eye on what's really going on. There has to be a will

to wipe it out entirely. And I don't know that there is anywhere in the world a will to wipe it out entirely. A lot of money is made off these groups. A lot of pockets are filled with this blood money. Oh, Bobby, you have been incredible to talk to you. You are so fascinating. If people want to know more about you and more about your research, where can they find you? I have a website. I have my Barbie Nadu.com. And I, you know, everything I write, I try to put there. And, you know, I'm always looking for ideas too, new things to write about.

And of course, the book, The Godmother, Murder, Vengeance, and the Bloody Struggle of Mafia Women. That's right. Comes out September 6th. Yes, please go and buy a copy now. And don't be getting any ideas, anyone who's listening to. Stay away from this. Thank you so much for joining me today. You've been just amazing to talk to.

you so much for having me. A pleasure. Thanks for listening and thank you so much to Barbie for coming on and introducing us to the women of the mafia. Obviously, how good was she? I could listen to her all day. If you like what you've heard, please don't forget to like, review and subscribe wherever it is that you get your podcasts. Because we're family and as. All right, I won't do it. I'll stop. I promise. Just give us a like and a review and subscribe and don't mention the Italian accent, please. Join me again betwixt the sheets, the history of sex, scandal and Society, a podcast by History Hit. This podcast includes music by epidemic sounds.