The Underworld Podcast - The Camorra Clans of Naples: Italy's Most Violent Criminal Organizarion

Episode Date: September 5, 2023

The origins of Naples' feared criminal clans known as the Camorra go back hundreds of years to the days of rural banditry and villa owners with private armies that lived by a code. Now, having access and control to one of Italy's most active ports and corrupt governments has paved the way for their growth but unlike the Sicilian Mafia or the Calabrian 'Ndranghetta, there's a whole lot more parallel groups as opposed to a hierarchical structure. From making tens of millions of dollars smuggling black market cigarettes to running street level coke sales, the clans have emerged as the most violent groups in Italy, constantly warring with each other and everyone else. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. Occupied Naples, Italy, in 1944. Norman Lewis is in his early 30s, a member of the British Intelligence Corps with the Allied forces, and he's stationed in the city during the Allied occupation after pushing Mussolini out. And it's rough going. The city is a mess. It's bombed out. The people are suffering, and he's even

called malaria, as the swamps nearby still have mosquitoes that carry it. Water rationing has gotten so bad people are cooking with seawater. Women and children go to the fields to find edible plants. Orphan beggars are everywhere. Some women sell themselves for tins of food. Soldiers are looting while rooting out fascists and collaborators, and there's also always rumors of German spies, German counter-attacks, all that sort of stuff. It's almost as bad as Naples, Florida. Writes Lewis, quote, It is astonishing to witness the struggles of this city so shattered, so starved, so deprived of all those things that justify a city's existence, to adapt itself to a collapse into conditions which much resemble life in the dark ages. That's nothing to save the vendettas or blood feuds some of the locals are still engaging in, using the soldiers that carry out their bidding. One thing in Naples, though, is blossoming and growing, like weeds from shattered pavement.

Lewis functions as a police officer during the occupation, and eventually he's put in charge of a number of nearby towns and the countryside. As he quickly learns, this is Zona de Cammara, gangster's territory, the Cammara zone. And they're getting a huge boost these days as goods and guns for the allies flood the area and the black market thrives. A local explains to him, the Camura is a system of self-protection and secret resistance against the tax collectors and bullies of the successive foreign government. that ruled Naples for centuries. The people in this territory lived by their own laws with secret courts. Omerta was the rule of the game. Those who opened their mouths or traitors were sentenced to death.

That makes Lewis's job of restoring order quite the challenge. Mussolini had cracked down to the gangsters from Naples to Sicily, but the Camorra were hard to put down. The thing is, in the old days, there was a moral code, but now it's completely lawless. The Cameristas are criminals, and they prey on what they can in the anarchy of post-war Italy, taking everything, and they plunder like pirates.

They also have some help in some of the management going around in the government. Writes Lewis, the new syndicos, the mayors who have been appointed by the Allied military government to replace the old fascist podestas, are stated in the main to be members of the criminal Camorra. It is common knowledge that these have been appointed through the influence of Vino Genovesi, the American gangster who,

having obtained employment as an interpreter, has now maneuvered himself into a position of unassailable power in the military government. Insofar as anyone rules here, it is the Camorra. Neapolitan kleptomania is what he calls it. And this new breed of Camorra clans rising up, they're going to be a problem and stay a problem into the present day. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast where me, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, two journalists that have traveled all over the globe reporting on things of interest,

bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week. We've been doing this for three years now, which sounds insane to say. And, you know, we have yet to get any better since those first episodes. But yeah, the time has passed. Sean, you had a kid. I moved to Austin for six weeks. Lots happening. And yet, I'm still not spending my summers overlooking the Mediterranean.

What can you do? Yeah, I wouldn't mind a couple of scoops of Neapoliton kleptomania by the sea right now. I mean, I can say with absolute certainty that. that we are nothing, if not several years older than we were in 2020. Everything is in entropy, right? Except, of course, this podcast. Yeah, we are still going along. But just want to thank everyone that's a fan.

We're still alive. Everyone that's a fan, the listeners, Patreon people, especially. I was going over some old posts on my Instagram feed and I had a lot of friends that were photographers with like tens of thousands of followers who shared this when we first linked. So thank you for that. Do it again immediately. And also to support us, if you want bonus material, You can sign up at iTunes or at patreon.com.

Soutenawr Podcast. For the low, low price of $5, it's also ad-free. We just had a bonus go up about the homeless fentanyl wars in Seattle, which is a thing that is happening. Yeah. That our audio priest or Dale, who makes this thing sound good every week. He did some reporting on it and talked to us about it. So that's on the bonus. And yeah, our friend Lily, who's amazing, is doing some great work for us, too.

She just started a TikTok for us. She'll be running that. Look, I have no idea how that works. I don't want to figure it out, but she does. So if you're on TikTok, blast it out and do all of that. I thought you said you were going to do some dance videos for that as well. That's what you said the other day. Yeah, I'm just going to talk about black market methamphetamine and just point to facts.

Awesome. Yeah. Above me to the left, above me to the right. There'll be a dance that me and you do together. We'll merge it together. It's going to do great, you know. Are you allowed to talk about fentanyl on TikTok or do the Chinese not, or do the Chinese not, or do they like want to promote that?

How does that, how does that work? Yeah, good question. Yeah, I don't know. We'll have to get Lily on. Yeah, I mean, look, that's actually a good idea. Like, let's look and defend the whole content on TikTok and see, see what the regulations are in that. There's a bunch of videos of guys being like, it's awesome. We want to do more of it, you know?

That's, if anyone takes anything from these shows, I think it's that message. Yeah, so we should do it with a dance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've been, um, I've been fascinated by Naples, Florida. in Naples, Italy, going back forever, way before Gamora the book or movie or TV show, though. If you haven't seen the TV show, it's incredible. Honestly, one of the best series out there.

It's just brutal and unsparing. And in today's episode, we are talking about those Naples, homegrown clans, the Camorra, one of the oldest and most powerful organized crime groups in Italy, I think also the most of Ireland right now. But we've obviously talked about the Sicilian mafia a lot and the Calabrian and Jongeta. So now we're moving up the coast a bit of Italy to these guys. I think we might even have to do a two-parter just because there are so many clans and everything and there's just a lot of history involved in it too. Yes, it's really fascinating stuff. I mean, I'm also keen to know just how miserable Naples was at this time if some British

Bobby called Norman is saying that it's in Dark Ages. It's got to be pretty bad. Sean, speak English. British police off. What the fuck is a Bobby? Bobby's on the beat, man. Come on, come on. But yeah, do you not know about that book?

The opening is from the book, Naples 44. which is incredible. I mean, if you haven't read it, Sean or our listeners, it's not all about the Camar. It's just about the occupation. I guess can you say post-war Italy? I guess the war was still going on, but that part, southern Italy was occupied by the Allies.

But it's remarkable, and he wrote an incredible book. I think he went on to write a lot of others, but I don't really know too much about him. Anyway, one thing to say about Naples is that the book actually makes clear as well is that it is a port city, one of the biggest in Italy, and you know what that means, obviously. crime, trafficking of all kinds, unions, all that fun stuff. Here's a quote from The Guardian on the city itself.

Naples is a third world city with third world politics. It's super rich surrounded by miserable Hintelins. There is vast private wealth in the city, but this is illegal wealth, which is, I mean, that's a great quote, you know? Yeah. Also, this is the Guardian based in London. So, yeah, glass houses, but pretty cool. I don't know if you can, I don't know if you can get away we saying that about a lot of other places. but you know what we say, racism against Italians is allowed and encouraged. But here's actually, here's a great one too.

I'm quote heavy in the beginning because there's been a lot of poetic writing about the Camorra and about Naples as well. But this is from Roberto Saviano's book Gamora, quote, everything that exists passes through here through the Port of Naples. There's not a product, fabric, piece of plastic, toy, hammer, shoe, screwdriver, bolt, video game jacket, pair of pants, drill, or watch that doesn't come through here. The port of Naples is an open wound, end quote. And just imagine a CVS that's 330 acres over seven miles of coast without any of those plastic coverings where you need to call the cashier over to unscrew it. You know, just yours for the taking.

That does sound like Florida. Yeah, definitely Florida CVS is. But I actually, I didn't really go into Gamor the book a lot in this episode. I don't know. I guess, you know, we should mention Saviano has a plagiarism scandal. I mean, the book is a fantastic read. It's beautifully written, even translated. but yeah, he got a, he got ding for it by Mike Moynihan, actually, his second book, 0-0-0.

Some of the quotes were stuffed with reporting and writing plundered from lesser-known journalist, includes interviews with sources who may not exist, and contains numerous instances of unambiguous plagiarism. And Saviano replied that it was, quote, a non-fiction novel, which cannot and must not bent to the roles of investigative journalism and non-fiction. I'm not a journalist or a reporter, but rather a writer, and I recount real facts. but he also added that the book wouldn't include sourcing because the book is in the nonfiction genre but is first of all a novel.

Why should I add sourcing to a novel? Which, I don't know, man, that kind of talk sketches me out. Like, I get that some people take artistic liberties and composite characters, but usually you let that be known ahead of time. Maybe there's something lost in the translation to those answers, but, you know, it kind of sounds like he's admitting to bullshitting. Yeah, I mean, I guess he was on the, pretty much on the house arrest. after his first book, right?

So he couldn't go anywhere. But then not naming sources. It's rough as. But we could do the same. I mean, this show, we could maybe not bend to the roles in non-fiction novels. And from now on, we're never going to source any of our shows. And you guys can just trust us, basically. But, I mean, that sounds easier, right? Yeah, we're definitely doing some plundering.

I mean, we're guilty of that for sure. But, yeah, Naples, beautiful old city, rundown, ports, corruption, pickpockets. I mean, it's generally thought of as an amazing. gritty place. It's in the southwest of the country in Campania and the guardian again. Hundreds of thousands of people in Naples owe their jobs and livelihoods to either Byzantine political patronage or to the Camorra or both. So yeah, hell of place. It is also, of course, the birthplace of Furio and that guy, he hates the north. Okay, you can stop your watches, guys. I've got that at, what, 10 minutes, 11 minutes? I don't know he's going to win that one.

You know, I tried to, I really tried to tone it down throughout this thing. But, you know, come on. Furio, man. I mean, the school of Naples, you know, he's at, they're educating. But yeah, a little quote heavy here. There's just some really beautiful and provocative stuff written by journalists describing Naples. A big article that we're going to use a lot in this is from, Sean, I know you love this guy. William Langford for sure.

I can never pronounce his last name. Languichi. He's amazing. Yeah. Who wrote Alentheur article on the Camor for Vanity Fair. Another quote, silence is a neapolitan birthright. The city has such a culture of it that some years ago, when an innocent girl was killed in a Camara crossfire, many of the witnesses who had initially identified the shooters to the police were can'ted their statements during the trial that ensued.

In frustration, the investigating judge lost his calm and began berating the witnesses. As if here in the courtroom, he had come face to face with a Camor itself. He had not. He had come face to face with ordinary Neopolitans. You cannot really berate the Camara. If you try, you will find yourself meeting blank stairs. Or a gun, I guess. But, yeah.

All right, no more quotes. So the origin of the Camara, I mean, I love the history stuff with the more ancient groups. You know, we've done the triads, the kuzza, all that stuff. When it goes back hundreds of years and you kind of see how it morphs. But no one's really sure of the origin of the Kumar specifically. Some people say it dates back to the 17th century, and it's the direct descendant of the Garduna, which were a Spanish secret society. But that's recently come into doubt.

others say it's the kingdom of Naples that brought the organization into the region, and others say it just kind of emerged from the smaller groups of bandits or prison gangs. What we do know is that the first official use of the word Kamara dates back to 1735, when a royal decree authorized the establishment of eight gambling houses in Naples. The word itself is a blend with Kappa, which means boss and more, which was, I think, either a Neapolitan street name or a street gang that was active during the time. It really came into its own during the turmoil in Naples, in the late 1700s and early 1800s.

Naples was its own kingdom. The French revolution bleeds over. They go to war at the French. Naples has their own civil war. Europe, including Naples, is in chaos. At one point, the Republicans backed by the French, they conquer Naples and they declare a Parthenopian Republic.

Am I saying that right, John? Do you know what that word is? Yeah. Oh, God, no, I don't know. Go for it. Whatever you want. We're just going to keep, yeah, whatever. You guys don't know either.

No one, nobody cares. Anyway, that republic. public gets brought down, the French get kicked out in Europe. It's just hundreds of years of some guy from the northwest of a country going to war with some guy from the center north for no reason at all. Just a bunch of savages in that continent. Yeah, go Brexit. Keep them at arm's length. Anyway, we end up with the kingdom of two Sicilies, which Naples is involved with, but with all the chaos and power vacuum, we also end up with the Kamara coming into play.

We start to see them really coming up in official disciplinary meetings in 1820. then in 1848, Italy, or what now makes up Italy, again, is in turmoil. There's revolutions, which fail. And the elite who want to lead the revolutions, they realize they need the backing of the poor if they want to succeed. So they look to the commor for that, and they start paying off the leaders, even giving some of the official roles. So yeah, I mean, these guys are clearly going to become a problem. By the 1900s, we get something known as a Sorretto inquiry by the Italian government after a paper I'd continually raise the issue of widespread corruption in Naples.

This is a quote from the inquiry. The original low comorra held sway over the poor pleads in an age of objection and servitude. Then there arose a high comor, comprising the most cunning and audacious members in middle class. They fed off trade in public works contracts, political meetings, and government bureaucracy. This high comor strikes deals and does business with a locomor, swapping promises for favors and favors for promises. The high comor thinks of the state bureaucracy as being like a field that has to harvest and exploit. its tools are cunning, nerve, and violence. Its strength comes from the streets,

and it is rightly considered to be more dangerous because it has re-established the worst form of despotism by founding a regime based on bullying. The Haikamora has replaced free will with impositions. It has nullified individuality and liberty, and it has defrauded the law and public trust, which, you know, for an inquiry, government inquiry, that's some poetic writing right there.

Yeah, I'm getting at there pretty bad. I mean, I'm with them on the state bureaucracy bit, to be fair, It's kind of strange how, I find it really strange how these different clans or the different sort of like organized crime groups and it lead, they're basically living cheek to jail, right? Like with the Andrangetta, the Costa Nostra. This is like a pretty small land area. But I guess they're pretty much different countries back in the day as well, right? At least pretty new as a concept. Yeah, they were divided.

And I guess in the 1800s and like early 1900s, you know, you weren't, there wasn't like transnational or that much transnational organized crime. I think you kind of just had your territory. you did what you had to do. So it makes sense. And especially in these societies that were, you know, in the hinterlands, you know, the south of Italy has always been said as a place that the government didn't have total control over or whatever government was in power. They kind of made their own rules. There was this almost like feudal society.

You had the large landovers. You had bandits. You had almost like private armies rising up, you know, and they kind of did their own thing. And it's like how that guy talks to, the local talks to Lewis in the beginning of this episode, right? It's, you know, they were ruled by successive kingdoms and they didn't want to bow down to anyone, so they had their own laws. And then you had, you know, all the trade in the South of Italy going back and forth and different societies coming. So I think it just makes sense for there to be these like separate criminal groups. But it is amazing how in this one region, you know, in the south, where they're, it's not that over that big a territory.

You have three groups that now, you know, represent like the top of the top in international organized crime on a global scale, which I think is pretty, pretty incredible. It's really Silicon Valley of Europe, really. Yeah, no, seriously, of international organized crime. Yeah, for sure. At that point, the Camara, they're a parallel state, the parallel society, whatever you want to call it. The inquiry does kind of knock them back a bit. They lose a bunch of the elections. Their candidates lose the elections in 1901.

And with that loss in southern Italy, which is being crushed by poverty, you actually see some of the Camaro, they leave to the U.S. in their late 1900s, along with a lot of other southern Italians. that's a big, big immigration point in America, especially in places like New York, other cities on the East Coast. And even in the Midwest, you see a lot of Italians, southern Italians, flocking to the U.S. I mean, that's, you know, how many stories do we have of Lower East Side and other sort of mafia stuff in America with that takes place. It's baseball, but so much more.

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And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. An underrated part of American mafia history, the Sicilians and the Neopolitans actually have a little war, Camor versus mafia, in 1950 and New York. I think it lasts for a year or two. There had been this shaky peace deal

where both groups concentrated on different rackets to exploit their new home. The mafia was doing the black hand, extortion stuff, protection, whatever you want to call it. Well, the Camoran went for drugs, prostitution and gambling, which I don't know, sounds a lot more fun to me. But the more peaceful Sicilian boss, he ends up going to jail. A new guy takes over and he starts muscling in on the Camara gambling rackets, figuring he's got more power and more people.

The Camor actually take him out. They lure him to a ceasefire top. That's fake. Then they go after a bunch of other top mafia bosses, and they look set to win. But one of their top guys gets arrested. He flips. He tells the police everything. and a bunch of those guys get locked up, and the Sicilians, they end up pulling out the victory,

and they're the ones who go on to take over New York and the rackets there. Meanwhile, back in Italy, of course, Europeans are figuring out new reasons to kill each other. Mussolini takes power. He actually cracks down an organized crime in Italy and, you know, that and making the trains run. The Naples gangs, they fare a little bit better than the other mafiosos, though, so they're still kind of around and lying away. Yeah, you do got to hand it to Mussolini, I think we can, we can see. not have to hand it to Mussolini. That's actually not true, Sean. But of course, you know, the allies

with the U.S. invaded Italy, you know, back-to-back World War champs over here. And they control southern Italy by October of 1943. That's where we get into the intro over there, which comes from the book, Naples 44, which again, one of my favorites ever, definitely read it, get it if you can. Naples, again, terrible shape at this point. Carpet bomb to hell. City has an estimated 200,000 homeless, 10% of the city's female population are prostitutes.

It's just completely fucked. I guess do you call it post-war? I got occupied, occupied something ever you want to call it. But post-war in Europe in general, like the next three or four years, five years, so in 1950. It's a completely fascinating place where all sorts of stuff is happening. Just insane, the depravity, the turmoil, the population of people, the continued violence even after the Nazis are defeated. Read everything you can on it.

Savage Continent by Keith Lowe is one of my favorites, but it's just a wild, wild. time period in the world. So anyway, the Allies are occupying sub-inidally. And during wartime, of course, during a situation like this, you need to be in good with people who can get things and get things done, especially on the black market. And that tends to be organized criminals. So the Allies, of course, they get in good with the mafiosos and the bandits Camorra, though I guess it's also the other way around too, right? Yeah, I mean, this is the story of the Maltese mob that we got into last week during the war. There was, I think his name is Kadama, like the earliest Yakuza

kind of ultra boss. He was getting rich, I think, like, looting Manchurian steel and other metals for the Japanese during the war. The triads got their break like that. I mean, war racketeering and selling base materials, this is, this is like you said, that post-war period

in Europe and in the like, I guess the other major countries involved in the war, it's just insane. I've got a show, a big one coming up on the Chechens. I think we're going to do that next week. And that's kind of about war racketeering and profiteering that organized crime groups did. So yeah, nothing gets a gang going like a good old-fashioned dust up.

Well, it's also like, you know, you realize one of the most important things in organized crime in general is logistics, right? And I think we talked about that way back in the Russian mafia episode, how a lot of the guys who rose up to be the Russian mafiosas in the 90s, these were guys who were in the black market in the 80s during the Soviet Union. They were the ones who figured out how to get stuff from point A to point B. A lot of them were outcasts or people who couldn't rise up, whether they were, you know, Georgian or Jewish or Chechen even because they weren't allowed to function, you know, in some top levels of society there. So they got involved in the black market.

And when everything, there's a power vacuum, if you have those connections, if you have that logistical know-how, you can get goods from point A to point B. It doesn't even have to be illegal goods, right? Although obviously the profit margin on those are higher. like you're prime to get going as an organized criminal. Oh, yeah. Especially during the Soviet Union, like you said, like the Chechens, the Georgians, the Azeris. These are all people right on the periphery of the empire

that Moscow wasn't really bothered about. And then they had their guys in the capital who were kind of pulling the strings, but they weren't there. They were kind of able to operate under the radar. And I guess that's the same with these guys, right? There would have been kind of capos in Rome or whatever, but they wouldn't have really been pulling the strings.

It's the guys on the edge of Italy that are doing the stuff. Well, a lot of stuff was coming in through the port of Naples. You know, so they had first crack at all the goods coming in, weapons, goods, all that sort of stuff. But we'll get to that in a second. In May, 1944, an American sergeant with the U.S. Army criminal investigation receives a tip-off about someone involved in illegal stuff, and that someone was none other than the legendary American crime boss, Vito Geno Visi. If you aren't familiar with Vito, you know, he's the guy who the Genovese crime family, one of the five families in New York, is named after. He was actually born in Naples, not Sicily.

He emigrates to the U.S. as a kid, and he wasn't a Camor guy, really. But in 1937, he had to flee charges, and he goes back to Italy to avoid a murder indictment. At that time, he was already, like, basically second in line behind Lucky Luciano and his crime family. Luciano had gone to prison a little bit earlier, so he was kind of acting boss on the streets. Vito goes back to Italy, and he kind of coesies up to the fascist. He sees the other guys in charge, and he doesn't want to get locked up. so he starts befriending Mussolini's guys. He donated something like $4 million to the Italian fascist party,

bribes multiple party officials, and he even befriends Mussolini's son-in-law and was rumored to be his cocaine supplier. But again, the tide's turning the war, and these guys are nothing if not opportunists. So he's a change of heart, and he's back to supporting his adopted homeland and helping them out in their occupation zone.

Yeah, I mean, he became friends with the fascists, he paid their officials, he donated millions to the calls, he forged close business ties and Mussolini's son-in-law. I mean, I'm going to say maybe he was a fascist. I mean, like,

it's possible that Goebbels was just punking the Nazis for years, but I'm going to, I'm going to, like, put it out there and say he's a little bit right wing. I mean, I'm sure he's a little bit right wing, but it's kind of like, you know, these guys, not Gerbils, but a guy like Vito is going to be,

he's much more of an opportunist than anything else, right? It's kind of like, you know, maybe he's not bothered by it as long as he's getting paid, which, you know, is an indictment of itself, but I don't know, I don't think his political beliefs lying that.

His political beliefs are, let me get money as much as I can and be as powerful as I can, which I guess also could be some. Anyway, moving on. When this sergeant's investigating a veto, he looks into his file. He finds several enthusiastic letters of reference written by American officials. And this comes from the book Blood Brotherhood, which we also use for some of the research in this episode, and the next one we're going to do. And the letter reads, quote, Mr. Genovici met me and acted as my interpreter for over a month.

He would accept no pay, paid his own expenses, worked day and night, and rendered most valuable assistance to the Allied military government. Doesn't help in the long run, though. A few months later, he's actually escorted back to the states to face the murder charges. He beats the charges. He beats the case when the key witness is poisoned. Soon enough, he's back in business in the American mafia. But, yeah, the point we were making earlier,

the port of Naples is bustling while the Allies continue to fight, and the bandits of the Camorra, they're stealing close to half the stuff that ends up there due to just large-scale corruption. This is when the new Comorra clans kind of, hone their craft and get back on their feet. It's just wide-scale fevery. There's vacuum of power kind of and chaos even as the war ends. And the modern claims, this is when they really take off. And again, you know, they're kind of a new breed of the Camara. In the old days, like the 1800s,

it was real secret society stuff with rituals for inductions, a bunch of rules. There was a capint testa, which is that head in chief of the Camorra. He's voted on by the 12 district heads, which are the capon treaty. And it was much more formal and old school. The modern, the modern. The in Comorah, the one that emerges from the war and exists now, it's much different. It's a much more horizontal structure, not like, say, the Sicilian mafia, which is hierarchical. Today's version, the post-war version, you have clans that are always rising and others are becoming defunct. They're constantly feuding with each other and killing each other, sometimes creating alliances, sometimes working together, a lot of times working against each other. There's no

commission like the American mob or the boss of bosses like the Sicilians. Each clan is basically their own entity, right? They're autonomous, federalized, whatever you want to call it, which makes it harder for the police because you can take down one clan or one leader and the other, they're not going to miss a beat. And while there have been wars in the Sicilian mafia and the Andron Geta, and interfamily wars in the American mafia families, no one fights each other like these clans do. That's why the Italian government considers them the most violent criminal organization in the country. They kind of remind me a bit of the Israeli mafia episodes to be done, but a little less chaotic. If you listen to that episode, you know, you have the distinct different organizations.

They're feuding, their alliance making, they're breaking. And another interesting thing about the Camor is that you see some woman bosses, which is very rare in the world of organized crime, especially Italian ones. Because, you know, the wife of the sister, she sometimes takes over when the father, brother, son is killed or sent to jail or whatever. You know, if you look at the Sopranos episode, when Tony went to Italy, he had to deal with the woman boss. Commendatory.

Yeah, we have now that's, that's, uh, what, 27 minutes, so we can hold the second sweepstake. It's just. But fair enough. I mean, you've only done two. We've been going for a while now and you've only got two. You just kind of fall for, you feel for Polly, you know, like it's that classic, you know, second generation immigrant going back home thinking they're all going to love you.

Nobody gives a shit. Just the classic, classic episode. I genuinely think we would get more listeners if we just did you chat about Sopranos, like as most of the bonus shows. But, yeah. You're probably not wrong. But yeah, there's also way more people in the Camaro. Saviano says there's five Camorra members for every one Sicilian mafia member,

and eight for every member of the Andrageta. But again, this is like 15 years ago, so it could have changed. He also says they're so powerful that they don't need the politicians in Naples. Instead, the politicians need them. So we're going to talk about one of, if not the most powerful clan and the founding father, Paulo Deloro. It's also the clan that the TV show Gamora is based on, He's born in 1953 in the second Gigliano neighborhood of Naples, which, again, where the show is based.

You'll see moments in his life that really echo the show, or I guess the show really echoes moments of his life. But he's born and he's an orsion. He gets adopted by a middle-class family. He goes to school for a few years, and he heads north to become a door-to-door salesman. And he starts to gamble and play cards, and he gets a rep for being good at math and staying calm under pressure. Comes back home, marries a local girl in 1973, and they end up having a lot of, 11 children. He's going to need those skills then. Proper Italian Catholic family, man. So his gambling skills, they actually get him noticed by the clan that's running the neighborhood. It's led by a guy

named Aniello La Monica, who's a bit of a psycho. He's a pension from bloodless. It's the real killer. He hires Deloreal to run his books, basically be his accountant. You know, and this guy, he's against drug dealing. He sticks with the traditional stuff. Black market cigarettes, construction, protecting the neighborhood shopkeepers from crime, all that sort of stuff. and actually black market cigarettes are huge in the 70s and 80s. There's a war fought over them, but they're bringing in millions because they bring them into the Eurozone. It's just a, it's a huge moneymaker. Here's a quote from the Vanne Fair article that a lot of this is based on.

DeLauro stuck to the shadows. He spoke little, he listened and observed. He believed that rational people can resolve their professional disputes through compromise and negotiation, and that they should kill only as a last resort. He was more self-disciplined, however, than he was gentle. For a character composition, I guess, think of like, you know, Stringer, Bell or El Mayo, that sort of level of intellect. So Deloro, he runs the books, he gets sense of the business, and he comes to the conclusion that the local drug trade could make a ton of cash, which like, I don't know, I don't think you've got to be a business genius to be like, oh, selling drugs, we'll make a lot of money that way, you know? Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread?

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They weren't guessing. They were asking the victim who killed them. Sounds unbelievable, right? But it happened. And that's just one of thousands of stories waiting for you on Morning Cup of Murder. Hi, I'm Karina B. Meesterfer. And every single day on Morning Cup of Murder, I bring you a real, chilling, true crime story connected to that exact day in history. From Killer Cannibal Brothers to the Boy Scout who was obsessed with the occult

and the strange story of the bloody hammer in the frozen cabin. These aren't the cases you've heard a hundred times. They're the ones that make you stop. and think, how have I never heard this before? With over 2,500 episodes and a brand new story each and every single day, morning cup of murder becomes part of your routine fast. If you like your coffee hot but your bones chilled, then sit back and start your day with a morning cup of murder. Go listen to Morning Cup of Murder wherever you get your podcasts. And remember, stay safe. Then in 1980, there's a huge earthquake in Naples. You have a lot of poor people from the

surrounding countryside, they move into the city. And he kind of figures then, like, you know, drug sales now, all these poor people in the city, they're going to make a ton of, even more than before. But LaMonica again, still is reluctant. So, you know, it's kind of interesting, this like battle. I feel like this is a common story in a lot of mid-20th century organized crime groups, right? You have this, should they get involved in the drug? Should they not? It seems like the same argument happened in a lot of places, and there's always a divide between the old school and the new up-and-comers. And predictably, Deloro, decided, to get La Monica out of the way.

He tells all the other high-ranking clan members that he's scheming off the top. Lamanca actually makes a move on DeLoreal first. He sends some shooters, but Laura survives. And he uses someone promising cheap diamonds to lower La Monica out of his house where him and some allies gun him down. It's the only time DeLora actually ever uses a gun.

So at just 29 years old, he starts building. He's smart, again, tries to avoid the violence. He's friendly with the other clans. He doesn't move fast and break things. he's especially careful with the Lissiarty clan, who they also live in Second DiLiano. In 10 years, he amasses a fortune that's set to be in the hundreds of millions. He also establishes a bunch of legitimate holdings, clothing, bottled water, markets, meat, dairy, development, you know, real estate, all that sort of stuff, precious gems.

Amazing. No Instagram, real estate. Even bottled water. I mean, this guy has really been listening to our shows. He's on point, man. He's just like, you know, one of those guys who innately is just, good at this. He insulates himself against anyone turning a formant. You know, he basically has like 20 or so Capos function as independent entrepreneurs with exclusive rights to a Piazza to sell

drugs. And the Piazza, it's basically like the Mexican Plaza system, you know, the drug markets. The Camara, they take over multiple rundown buildings that are next to each other. They fix them up with steel bars on some entrances. They set up checkpoints and concrete blocks to sell low-grade coke and heroin, often much cheaper than in the north of the country or in Rome, so people sometimes travel down to get those prices and there's long lines. They have dozens of lookouts all over. They really make it almost impossible for the cops to catch any sellers with the drugs. Fortified corner spots, basically.

I guess, you know, sort of like New Jack City, too. From the Vanity Fair article, again, quote, there are variations, but the ideal is to steal off the outer perimeter of the complex by augmenting the existing window bars and steel doors with concertina wire and heavy bolts, and then to cut a small portal on the ground floor wall of stairwell, whether it's the courtyard to the back of the complex, through which cash and narcotics can be safely exchanged. So Dolores guys, they each get their own piazza,

and they have a minimum they need to buy from him, and they need to pay rent as well. But they're also allowed to buy wholesale from other suppliers. Deloro even gives up loans for this. He also has his own code of conduct everyone must adhere to, which is basically be fair and honest, even with their lowest employees, try to avoid conflict,

and if there's a serious argument, he'll be the judge of it. You also can't say his name. You know, he's like a ghost. only referred to as the man or Pasquale. Some people, like I said, they're just in in nately talented at something, and he seems to like he was that at running shit. He just had this like gravitas and people listened and he was good at it. So this leads to a very stable period in Second Digliano, where even street crime goes way, way down. When an important Italian newspaper writes an article about illegal gambling in the area, he orders all gambling to stop and it does within

48 hours. When he decides extorting shop owners for protection money, it's not worth a hassle. He stops it and he tells his men from now on, they pay full prices at the stores. And for all this sort of stuff, and he gives out a lot of favors too, he's like a Robin Hood figure. He gets really loved. And people say the difference between DeLoro and a saint is that DeLoro actually delivers miracles faster. Yeah, that's a pretty solid quote. I mean, I'm not entirely sure crime went down. I guess with all these Robin Hood guys, it just means that he's doing all of it. But I guess I would take a dozen of him before a single one of the Zeta so you got into last time. So, uh, yeah, I guess better, maybe. No, I think it does go down. You know, Naples is known for like pay pockets,

like petty street crime. I think even back then, I'm pretty sure he just like shuts that shit down right away. But yeah, I mean, he's still moving tons of drugs. So he's importing cocaine from Colombia through Spain, heroin from Afghanistan through Turkey and Eastern Europe, and hash from Morocco through Spain. And interestingly enough, he actually isn't doing this to the port. So he's He's not smuggling it through that. He's going overland because he thought the customs officials at the port were too greedy. So although drugs are his main business, he also has a profitable counterfeit brand name goods business where he would wholesale all over the world, fancy Italian brands like Gucci, Prada, Dolce.

Some of the counterfeits were made by the same Italian factories that produced the originals and were exactly the same while others were just shitty knockoffs. I think Gmour, the book and the show actually go deep into this. But at some point, his organization is said to be earning 200, million dollars a year. Actually, never mind, 200 million euros a year. And that's when the euro was kind of worth something back then. So, you know, looking good. By the mid-1990s, DeLoro has become a recluse, right? He rarely leaves his house. He has the same simple house he had grown up and as a child, but it's expanded and heavily fortified and guarded, just like more in Buffett. And you also, I mean,

you know Buffett's probably got shooters too, just like this guy does all over the neighborhood. So Doloro, he only has contact with his family and a few trusted lieutenant. tenants, and he hardly ever speaks on the phone. And he talks in, like, coded, sparse language so that even if outsiders were paying attention, they wouldn't be able to understand any of it. But then he's still completely off the radar. And while there's the occasional in-clan murder, it happens so rarely and cleanly that police still don't even know the existence of the DeLaur clan and how powerful it was.

But of course, in this world, all good things must come to an end. One of his former associates, he's a leader of a small clan, he gets out of prison, in, he wants his Piazza back. There's another guy running it, though. He can't get it back, so he decides to go to war. He kills five of Dolores closest guys. Ingers a bunch more of them. Dolores guys go after him.

He flees up north, and these guys kind of go rogue, and they kill his mom and his uncle, and they fuck up a few more of his family members. Here we go. It's the indiscriminate slaughter we knew would show up at some point eventually. I mean, maybe he should have stuck to the Mickey Mouse Gucci bags. I mean, he was sticking to it, you know? He was doing that.

They just, things got out of hands. So these guys, they'd actually gone rogue. Deloro ends up killing them to calm everything down because he doesn't approve of what they were doing. That guy, though, the guy who goes up north, he gets arrested a few months later. He ends up talking, including giving info on Lamanica's killing. It's not enough to really bring DeLora or his clan down at all, law enforcement-wise, but his name's out there. Makes the papers.

The clan is publicized for the first time, which is always the beginning of the end. And of course, soon enough, the Italian police, they start looking. into him. Then in 1998, the Italian cops, they get a big break for a pretty hilarious Italian reason. One of his sons, Dolores sons, is misbehaving at school so much that the teacher slaps him. Italians, man, you know, they know what to do with your spoiled, loud-ass kids. Like, a little back-of-the-hand action, never hurt anyone. Yeah, we've actually just put the, it's okay to beat your kids' t-shirt on the merch store as well, so people can go there. Maybe we should go with a little back-of-the-hand action, never hurt anyone before we go with that.

so I don't know if that's the right attitude. But what are the incident in truth? I mean, you did say prostitution is fun. So, I mean, the two things combined with some of your views. That is, I said it sounded more fun to run prostitution, gambling, and drugs than to extort shopkeepers, which I mean, that's, I don't know. You'd rather be extorting some, like, fucking hardworking bodega guy? Yeah, I mean, for shame. You're protesting a little too much for me.

But yeah, sure, go for it. Well, anyway. Where did the incident travels fast? When the kid returns home, he actually gets yelled at by Doloro. So the teacher has the lower support, but a few members of his clan, they see it as disrespect. And without Doloro telling them to go do it, they go to the school and they slap the teacher around. Teacher follows a complaint, doesn't know who Deloro is. He's summoned by the police station for a conversation where a mugshot is taken.

He denies any knowledge of the incident. He kind of says he's to the shopkeeper. He is eventually released, but the police soon pick up a lot of chatter on the water. about this incident with Pasquale, and it becomes clear that DeLoro, who cops thought was just some, like, minor player, is in fact the boss. Delora picks up that they're on to him. He goes really underground now. He's sleeping in, like, empty apartments, moving locations all the time, traveling abroad, and just really, really laying low. Still, no one is willing to speak to the police, even though they know who he is now because of, you know, the Murtha.

The cops do end up getting a couple of wiretaps up, and they start building evidence. It takes years, but by 2002, the issue arrest warrants for DeLoro and 60 members of his clan. A bunch are arrested. DeLoro evades arrest. Rumor spread he's all over the world. He's added to Italy's most wanted list, but the truth is he's actually just hiding out in Second DiLiano in like an old woman's apartment. If you've seen, Gamora, you know what I'm talking about.

In 2004, one of his sons dies in an accident, and DeLoro is grief-stricken. He eventually decides to handover power to his oldest son, Cosimo, who is a bit of a playboy and kind of surrounded by all these young shooters. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, if your name is Cosimo, I think you have to be a bit of a playboy at least. Yeah, you can't not. Otherwise, like, you know, just doesn't work. So he's arrogant, he's hot-headed. You know, think of the oldest son of a mafia boss who own everything. He thinks his father is soft, and he decides that the whole independent contractor thing that built the clan isn't working out. So he says, no more. They're all employees now. They need to buy all their product from him,

and he's going to determine the rates how he sees fit. Deloro tries to get his son to come down, but he's just not having it. And what follows, ends up being one of the deadliest wars in Camor history. Cosimo, the young guns, end up fighting DeLoro's old guard, who are known as the secessionists. Sixty people are killed in a short period. Cosmo's guys at one point torture and kill the girlfriend and one of the secessionists and then the burner body. People are pissed off. This is too far. An arrest warrant issued for Cosimo. He goes into hiding, but he sends so many texts to various women that he's captured within weeks in January of 2005, and the war only ends up lasting a couple of months. Eventually,

Paulo Deloro, the father, he has to strike a peace deal for his idiot son because the secessionist vastly outnumber his loyal guards and Cosimo's boys. So it's not favorable to him, but orders are stored to the area. The secessionists, they get most of the spoils and they form their own clan. And Paulo and the DeLoros, they're left

with one apartment complex and an alley. Later that year, the police finally find Paulo Deloro, living in some random old woman's apartment, just kind of hidden. During his trial, he sees all the charges, and the new ones that are piled on. He dismisses his lawyer, tells him there's no point in carrying on,

gets a public defender. He's convicted of three consecutive 30-year prison sentences in May of 2006. And his idiot son, he's also sent away for life. War breaks out again in 2006 between the deloral loyals and the secessionists. Then the secessionists, they split into rival factions, and the bloodshedges continues to rage for years. The same thing.

When one clan is really strong, there's peace. But the aftermath of when they split up, it's just bloody affairs until another clan concede. total control. And there we have it. That is the Camara. There's still a lot more we can do on them. So maybe we'll have a new new one done on some of the other clans relatively soon or some of the modern day kind of happenings that's going on. But, you know, that's the beauty of this podcast. There's just, there's no rules. You never know what we're going to do next. It's just two guys fighting the system one, 45 minute podcast at a time. Yeah, that was really well told. Yeah, we should definitely do some modern ones on the Camara like taking over the Netherlands, pumping money into Germany. There's tons of stuff. By the way, I want to chat out Henry Smith, one of our listeners. He actually knew what that random record store I was mentioned in last week was in London.

And I should say, again, like, guys, if you really hate adverts, which, I mean, you know, all of us, pay for the Patreon and they are going to disappear quicker than one of Cosimo's girlfriends. Or if you want to support us, advertise with us. You know, let's make it all happen. We'll make it all happen. Patreon.com slash Underworld Podcast. until next week. Be safe. USAA knows dynamic duos can save the day,

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