The Underworld Podcast - The Knife Fighting Italian Gangster Who Built an Army while in Prison

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

The Camorra clans of Naples had always played second fiddle to the Sicilian Mafia and the Calabrian 'Ndranghetta. Until Raffaelle Cutolo started building up his Nuovo Camorra Organization while locked up in a notorious prison. When he wasn't writing poetry or challenging other bosses to knife fights, his old school charisma and genius leadership skills, as well as his insanity, saw him take a small prison crew and build it into an army of thousands ready to die for him. Many of his soldiers would get that opportunity as he started a war trying to rule all of Naples, but it was his battles with the government that ended up really taking their toll. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Now available on Disney Plus rated PG Naples Italy 1977 Rafael Ecutolo has just busted out of prison for the second time and he's about to go

on a recruiting bench He's been building a new Camor clan from scratch not an easy thing to do, earning quite the name for himself in the notorious Pozo Realty prison where he's being held on a murder charge. That'll happen when you challenge a Kumar head to an old-school knife fight and he backs down. Kutov's played his cards right, adapted to the prison rules pretty shrewdly, and is already forming up a pretty solid crew behind bars that is incredibly loyal to him.

In no time, he's going to have thousands of loyal soldiers in his Nuevo-Kamar organization that he's been putting together with a strict hierarchy, unlike the other much more looser Camor clans. He's old school, and he's been imparting the old Camorra ways on all of his newer crews. There's a reason they call him the professor. He's also insanely charismatic, something like a natural-born leader or a cult leader.

His power has been skyrocketing by this point, and he basically runs all the prisons in Naples, but that's not enough. Even though we started the organization behind, bars, he's looking to expand as far as possible on the outside, and he's going to use his newly acquired freedom to spread far past Naples. He's also going to let his massive power go to his head a bit and demand tribute from all the other Qamara clans, even those tied into the Sicilian mafia. They're not going to take it well. And this one man, in between ripping off earthquake

reconstruction funds and threatening high-level ministers in the government, is going to lead everyone into the bloodiest Camor War in history as he looks to fully take over Naples. This is the Underworld podcast. Welcome back to the Underworld podcast, where every week we tell you a different story about organized crime with two reporters who've covered it all around the world.

Myself, Danny Gold, and my charming British co-host, Sean Williams, who is recovering from what sounds to be like a fun weekend that he can't discuss publicly. Sean, it's been a week in the world. Yes. Definitely be the week. Why don't you just take a moment real quick to tell everyone something adorable your puppy did, just to kind of like, you know, set the tone we're trying to have here.

Yeah, let's claw back like one, what, blob of serotonin? I don't know what they measured in. No, no. She actually attacked another dog while I was out walking her last week. So, yeah, I think she's following the world in that sense. I mean, the weather's nice. Anything else? Tell me something good.

Is anything good happening? That's the opposite of like a dog story that I think. people want to hear. But she's tiny, right? She's like eight pounds. So I guess that that's kind of cute. Yeah, yeah. She's cute while she's doing it,

but she will rip its face off. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that backfired. As always, we have bonus episodes up on our Patreon at patreon. At patreon.com slash in the world podcast or on iTunes.

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even though we're adult men. Do that if you can. Yeah, I mean, it's tough all over the world, and it's cost of living, and people are struggling. So we don't want to spend what little dollar you have left on the show. But if you can like, like and subscribe on Spotify, rate it, go to the YouTube, subscribe there. I guess that's really going to help us make decisions about where we can spend our time.

Is that too earnest? Should I do a fart joke or something? I mean, we've already done the dog, so. No. No. So, yeah, we did an episode on the commercial. the crime clans out of Naples and all the history. I think that was, what, maybe five or six episodes back if you guys want to go back and listen to that. That was the buildup with a couple

of other main characters. But I like the story of Rafael A. Kutolo, who they called the professor so much, I thought he needed his own episode. And a lot of this comes from the book, Blood Brotherhood, which is by John Dickey. It's a super dense history of Italy's three most powerful mafias, and it's really worth your time. Definitely buy it. And if you guys buy his book, maybe he won't get mad at us for telling the story that he pretty much wrote. Yeah, also, I'm kind of disappointed because before we did the show, you looked up how to pronounce Raphael's name, and you kind of didn't go to whole hog with that, so I thought you were going to really give it some, but I don't know, man.

Rafael, Rafael, yeah, that's nowhere near, come on. We're just, like, distra, poor Italian people having to listen to this. I was going to make a joke about how, like, you know, we can ignore everything else. going out on the world right now for this hour just to tell a story about guys named Giuseppe killing each other. But there's definitely some dudes in Naples right now who are like, like, you have no idea what the 80s were like here. How dare you make fun of Giuseppe? But that's what we're sticking with. Anyway, Kutolo, he's born in 1941, you know, during wartime in Italy, in the mountains or hinterlands of Naples. And he grows up poor in a very religious family

with no connections actually to the Camorra. But I feel like when you say religious family in Italy in the 1940s. It's pretty much like it's redundant, right? It's like every family there. His father is a farm worker and despite him being nicknamed the professor, he is a terrible student and is always running around, you know, the young hooligans at age 12, doing petty crimes. I don't think they were like four people on a Vespa back then, like stealing cell phones, but basically they were doing that except for the 1950s. He really gets in trouble at 21 after what sounds like a prank goes wrong. He's like driving his car towards. a group of young women, and he breaks the last second, and they yell at him, and he gets out of

the car, and he kind of, I think, slaps or beats up one of the women, just the class act all around. So a fireman sees this happening, and he intervenes. He gets into a fight with Cotolo, and then Cotolo shoots and kills him, and he gets convicted of murder. And he gets sentenced to life, I think, at first, but then after appealing, he gets sentenced to 24 years. Yeah, I mean, another nail in the coffin for prank humor, but I thought all the waving and hand gistering and like, he was Italy's ways of avoiding road rage, but I don't know,

this guy pretty much sounds like a psychopath show off the bat, so yeah, yeah, I think he really is, but you're right, I didn't draw the connection between dispensing justice against prank YouTubers, like remember that,

I don't know if you've seen the video of the guy who got shot in the mall, and, uh, big, yeah, look, it needs to happen, right?

Someone needs to stop these people. Victimous crime. Yeah, someone needs to stop these people. Uh, and I think what this guy is, like, he ends up actually basically,

spending most of his life in prison. But that's kind of really where his story actually begins, because he's going to go on to lead the biggest Camara clan in history, thousands of members, and have total control over much of the Italian prison system from Naples to beyond. In prison, Cotolo, he mixes this toughness that he has with this charming charisma. And people, you know, the way they talk about him, he was just, he just had that sort of like leadership, cult-like quality that people naturally followed. He pays his tribute to the powerful bosses inside. He abides by all the codes, and he starts making a name for himself. And he starts gathering actually a small number of prisoners to kind of start forming his squad.

It's kind of off topic a little, but I read a recent piece in, I think it was Bloomberg Business Week, and it was really good. It was about these commandments going back, sort of back to these times that we're talking about now. And they're still so strong that they've led to this kind of race war in prison between the mafia and the Nigerian confraternity gangs, kind of like an Aryan Brotherhood, Latin Kings thing, prison race war. But yeah, I'll stick on the reading this. It's really interesting. And we definitely have to go back to the Nigerians because they are really building up a presence in Italy right now. And I actually listen back to a bit of our show.

I think it's like show number one or two about the Nigerian stuff that I'd done years ago. And it sounded like I was reading off a hostage script. So we need to go back to that. Yeah, we've been doing this thing three years now. And I'm still saving up cash to buy a fleece. So that's nice, isn't it? Did I mention I went out on Saturday and had fun? Yeah, anyway, you cut off for part of that, but, you know, whatever it is, I'm sure, I'm sure, I'm sure it was fascinating and interesting for all the listeners.

Yeah, you know, I remember reading stories about that and never expecting them to have the kind of power, like the kind of power to take on any of those, whether it was Camara or Sicilians. And I think that's even a plot point, right, in the first season of the show, Gamora. I'm not allowed to say it on this show, but I haven't watched Camor. Fuck. I mean, was what you were reading, did it kind of seem like they actually had the power to take on the Italian? and organized crime goods, because that's kind of shocking to me. Yeah, I mean, that's how they're framing it, but I think it's more the government is right-wing and they're like, whoa, they're trying to big it up as well.

So I think there's a little bit of, I don't know, a bit of propaganda around it. Yeah, yeah. So a couple of years later, he gets temporarily freed while waiting for a ruling from a higher court. He goes on the run. This is about 1970, and that's when he really gets involved with the Comorra, starting to kind of rise in the ranks of a clan. He's involved with the usual stuff, drug trafficking, extortion. But soon enough, after getting to a firefight with the police,

he's captured and he sent to this infamous prison in Italy called, yeah, this is going to be bad, Pozo Real Prison, and this is where he starts to build up the Nuova-Kamora Organizatio, which is what he forms. It's also known as the NCO. It's actually a pretty simple idea that he starts with. They offer protection to these first-time younger prisoners

who weren't affiliated with any gangs or groups and were scared. And once the young men got outside, they would kick back a percentage of their earnings to Kotolo, basically from their day jobs and he would in turn take that money and send it to relatives of other prisoners, corrupt prison officials and administrators, pay for lawyers, medical visits.

It really kind of reminds me of how the huge Brazilian prison gangs formed. Their methods of basically, we'll take care of you in here when you get outside, you feed it back. But I guess that's how a lot of prison gangs work, but it was really something that they were dedicated to. And he basically takes care of these guys,

especially the poorer ones, even doing things like buying them food from whatever the Italian version, of commissary is and things like that. But of course, it's not just like young guys getting a couple of years of bids, right? He has his core team of just like killers and he starts recruiting as well.

It's like the opposite of that teacher guy how to fish thing, right? You just give him a mars bar from the commissary and he's yours for life. Yeah, it works. So he starts getting extremely powerful. His influence grows in the prison. And soon he's powerful enough

where he can arrange transfers for all prisoners, the different things. His organization starts growing in other prisons and he gets a ton of members on the outside. By 1970, 74, he earned the nickname the King of Poja Rial and was involved in a major drug trafficking ring with the senior guys in the Endaondheta and the Sicilian Mafia. How about that? How about that pronunciation right there?

Oh, yeah. I know that didn't go unnoticed. That wasn't bad. You got to give me some credit for that one. So he's just, he's really good at form. I don't want to say Andongeta again because I'm going to mess it up, but I did. Anyway, he's really good at forming these sorts of alliances with that, with the Andanaveta. Oh, there we go.

the Sicilians, I think, in the beginning. But yeah, he just is a natural, I mean, he's one of these natural leaders. The kind of guy that you think, if he wasn't a psychopath, he'd be the CEO of, I don't know, what's a big Italian company, Vespa. Anyway, when a prominent

Camor boss by the name of Antonio Spavoni, who is also known as Omalimo, which translates to the bad man, which is a solid, like, simple, but a solid mafia nickname. Yeah, good. Comes to the prison in 1975. Cotolo challenges him to a traditional knife fight in the courtyard like the Camar apparently did in the old days,

which is known as a Zumpata. When the bad man refuses... As the crispy chicken sandwich from 7-Eleven, people always call me loud. And I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm crispy. Did you expect me to whisper? If you want quiet, go eat some soup and reflect. Like, I know I'm a handful.

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And I think the guy, the older guy, said something like, why are young men so eager to die when he refuses, which is kind of a movie-worthy quote from an old mobster. But when he gets out of prison, Cotolo has him shot in the face. He actually survives, but he's all damaged. And then he steps down,

no longer wanting a part in any of it. Yeah, you could probably call getting shot in the face a bit of a wake-up, call, isn't it? Yeah, I feel like there's... I mean, he literally didn't bring a gun to a knife fight, so, yeah, I think he needs to get out of it. I was expecting a really terrible pun from you in that situation, but that'll work too.

You got it in the end. Yeah. So Cotolo is just, he's really good at the things that you need to be a boss, organization, logistics, he's super charismatic, and he always knows what to do. And soon this cult of personality develops around him. His clan, the NCO, they're very strong with loyalty, which I guess is mostly part for the course for organized crime groups in them, Italy, but they have this sort of ideology, too, even more so than the traditional Italian criminal organizations.

It's a highly centralized organization with clear hierarchy, which is different to a lot of the usual Kamara setup. It's kind of more comparable to the Sicilian mafia in that sense. And he ends up borrowing a lot of rituals and terminology from the Andan Geta, which itself had taken the terminology and rituals in the old school Kamora that we talked about in that episode, a couple episodes back. Two former and Jorgenta members, they actually say they gave Kutolo his second baptism, they call it, in 1974, and then he started giving his new recruits the same ritual going forward. The NCO was also forbidden from harming children though kidnapping or other abuse. And one time, Cotolo supposedly had a kidnap or assassinated the show that he meant business, which if you know about the other Italian organized crime groups, you know, children, wives, family members, they're far from off limits.

These guys are kind of scumbags when it comes to that. And then he kind of sells the NCO as almost a fellowship of the downtrodden against the hostile world, just the group of friends, you know, bounding together and committing industrial size crime. And then I feel like this is a cliche. in all supposedly genius crime leaders. I've talked about this before, I think on the show when we talk about these people,

but he gets nicknamed the professor because he read a lot in prison, like a lot of history books, especially about the Camorra, which I don't know why a prison want to have history books about the criminal organizations in it, but, you know, more power to them.

He also got nicknamed the monk. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like the bar on people sort of quietly reading the Vinci Code in prison is pretty low. Maybe, yeah. It's always like Machiavelli and the Art of War and all that.

And no, Those books don't help anyone. No one's like reading the 40 laws of power and being like, oh, I'm going to apply this in real life. No one's ever applied that in real life, okay? You read it. You think it's interesting for like three days and you forget about it. I don't care what 50 cents says. We're never getting on Rogan, you know that.

No, definitely not. He also, he wrote short meditations on life, on love, on Murta, and poetry. He was like, you know, a bad Instagram influencer, one of those How to Live Your Life Podcasters, basically. Here's one of his poems, The Sentence, Life Imprisonment. as a youth you entered that tomb like cell the silent cell the suffering cell you felt alone and lost it's very oh very very very allegorical i must say i feel like i needed some bongos there yeah i mean we shouldn't make fun of this guy was all no we should i mean it was awful it sounds like but like you're not really trying with that like that is that is some a half-assed poetry if i've

ever heard poetry before anyway one of his books on life and love and all that becomes this sort a Bible for all the NCO guys. It gets passed around, abandon the prison and all that sort of stuff. But, um, you know, Sean, you used to write poetry a lot, right? And try to get women to come to your dorm room so you could read them your poems. Do you, do you remember any off the top of your of your, of your, your poems that you wrote all the time? I mean, I wouldn't, I wouldn't like to go into them too much. Nothing on that level, like Jordan Peterson tweet level. But yeah, I mean, I basically had and still have no discernible skills. So it's mostly, it's mostly a John Pill playlist, a cheap blunt and some chat about Arthur Miller or, you know, just the usual king shit.

I mean, I guess you cracked out the acoustic and played some Tracy Chapman, right? No, but Tracy Chapton went to my college, and I don't know how to play any music. And I was definitely against that, you know, Belushi style. So is the poetry then, yeah. Yeah, I think the way you picked up women or you tried to and failed miserably was you turned your wind amp speakers really loudly when you played whatever little John song was super popular in that era. It might be dating myself right now. Never worked.

But I think we, I think in that era, we all first. firmly believed that if you just played rap music loud enough, it was like a siren, siren song, you know? Didn't work. But really, really pat on this episode out. It's a short one. So you guys are getting some, I don't even know what you would call it. Some insights. Yeah. Yeah. Behind the curtain. The NCO engages in the usual criminal activity that we talked about drug dealing extortion truck hijackings, but they're also more sophisticated. And they do stuff like getting involved and infiltrating government building projects and defrauding the European economic community of agricultural subsidies.

Okay, what? Yeah, I mean, it's like I always tell the young guys that I know it's like selling cocaine isn't even worth it for the time you'll get. Credit card scamming is passe. The money is and always will be and just fraudulently convincing the government that you're growing a ton of arugula and just getting that subsidy money. Talk to every gangster, you know, every kid on the corner that you know, let them know. Get into subsidies.

Grow grapes. No, fake it. know, and get into agricultural subsidies because these guys know. Interestingly, the professor, his sister gets involved in running these scams. That's kind of like, you know, in Tony Visits Naples, they take orders from a woman. And again, we always support Mafia DEI on this podcast, and we always will. In 1977, he's powerful enough to get himself transferred to the MENT Award. And I'm going to talk a little bit about that later, because that's obviously a fascinating story. The following year, he escapes again. He goes on the run for 15 months, which is like the longest.

he's ever been out of prison since that first sentence before being captured for his final time. His man had blown up a wall with T&T and he allegedly went through the rubble, but the truth is actually he just walked through the front door, which reminds me of the El Chapel thing, right? We were supposed to have hidden in a laundry basket, but the reality is he probably just walked out again through the front door. Yeah, that's got BS. I mean, he probably just got wheeled out sitting on top of the laundry basket, just noting down all the guard's names as he went. I mean, who is going to stop that, dude?

before he gets her captured, he boosts the NCO's growth like crazy with hundreds of more joining, he even goes to the U.S. to short ties with some American mafias. You could just get away with anything in the 70s. You know, you probably didn't even have to, like,

show ID on and get on a flight. You just show like a Costco card and they let you on. It's just, what a wild, wild fun time to do crime. Then he buys a palace once owned by the Medici family on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius,

puts his sister there, and he also kind of makes it the headquarters of the NCO. Just to get into how powerful this dude is when he was in prison. In that prison he's in, on average, there's like 25 prisoners to a cell. He has his own cell with a shower while his own personal cook had the cell next door. So, I mean, it's like goodfellas like times 10. When he's transferred to a smaller prison where his cell was carpeted, fitted with a colored television sound system, and that's

colored TV in like the late 70s, early 80s, right? That's a big deal. He requests that his chef follows him and his request is immediately granted by the prison authorities. As a prisoner, he dresses impeccably. He's got ties on, designer shirts. gold watch crocodile skin shoes and his daily meals consisted of lobster and champagne which I don't know if I buy that it's kind of you know the fast track to gout but the guy was doing well yeah how's it how's it going on down there you know dude runs in my family and I you know I eat a lot I eat too much meat and drink too much red wine I got to be careful so it's a rough rough one to get but there's an insight yeah we're learning a lot about me to this episode maybe

too much there's also all these stories too about him basically sitting in the warden's office I I guess they call it the prison governor in Italy. He's making international phone calls, which again, for our younger listeners, making an international phone call back then, it was a big deal. You know, like even in the 90s, like if you called your pen pal from Belgium, whatever Sean did and talked to him for like in 50 minutes, your mom would whoop your ass. And coincidentally, the professor once slapped the warden across the face when he searched his cell, and then later that warden was killed.

So in the trial about his escape from prison, which he wins on appeal where the court said he could not be punished because his lack of mental fitness. He gives this impromptu press conference. This is another guy who like love the media, love giving statements. You know, Godi, like all that sort of stuff. And this, again, comes from Blood Brothers by John Dickey. Buy that book. I think Alexander Reed Ross sent it to me as a gift.

So very nice man. He's got a podcast about Italy, actually. Fuck, what's it called? But look up Alexander Reed Ross, Italy podcast. Good dude. Send me a book. That's how you get prom around here. So this is, he's a,

starts to talk to the meeting. He says, I'm someone who fights in justice, me and on my friends, a Robin Hood, so to speak. Then when they ask him about the NCO, I don't know, maybe NCO, NCO, Nassuno, which means I don't know anyone. They ask me if he's in charge of the prison system. He says, I'm on charge the prison governor is, what about the murder of the deputy prison governor?

You had Prisley slapped him and threatened to kill him, and great answer right here. Yes, I did, because he was doing some really, when he pauses, but he's dead now. It's unkind to talk ill of the dead. Anyway, I may be insane, but I'm not stupid insane. I'm intelligent insane. So I'm hardly going to slap someone

threatened to kill him and then go ahead and murder him. I don't fancy collecting life sentences like that. Yeah, I mean, he absolutely does like collecting life sentences like that. I mean, I'm starting to believe that Robin Hood has done way more harm than good to society by emboldened and all these crooks. I mean, he comes up like about two dozen times

in the shows that we've done. You don't get many folks quoting Goldilocks or Rumpelstiltskin when they're murdering families, do you? Yeah, very, very influential. don't, maybe don't read that book to your kids or show them that movie when they're on an impressionable age because it'll just, you never know what path, it'll stare them down. The NCO, though, is getting huge and they get so big that one of their split-off organizations ends up becoming the Sakada-Kor-Korona-Unida, which again, I'm mispronouncing, you know, live with it. It's

currently the fourth mafia. They don't get a lot of attention. There's sometimes just called the fourth mafia. And what happens is the NCO guys, they start getting transferred to regions all over Italy, not just the ones they request, but, you know, the prison system does that. And we've kind of of seen this play before. We know how it works out. One of the regions some of these guys get transferred to is the Italian region of Apulia, which is in the southeast. And when these NCO guys get transferred to the prison there, they do what they do. They take over. They initiate all the local crooks into their organization, bringing all those gangs. The big man himself, he actually travels to Puli when he had escaped from jail for a bit to bless this kind of growth.

You know, I'm forgetting the word that gangs use, like one of the bloods, it might be sanctioned when they basically take the new gang. It might be sanctioned. Whatever that means. Soon enough, they have hundreds of members there. And Kutolo, he kind of forms it as a standalone branch. The deal was that the local gangsters would manage all the criminal activity with Kutolo's Kamoa backing it, and they would get 40% of the profits.

However, this proves an unstable arrangement in 1983 during some troubles that he goes through. I'm going to talk about. They split off the group and formed their own separate identity called the SCEU. And the SCEU and mixes in traditions from the And Rangeta and the Kamoa, and their own Apulia traditions to form the foundation of their group. Like I said, they're commonly called the fourth mafia. You don't hear them often in the same sentence

as the big guys, you know, the Andrangetta, the Camorra, the actual mafia. They're not on that scale. Actually, I wanted to do an episode on them, but there's just not that much on them in English. They have about 1,500 members. They're active in Europe, the U.S. They're involved, again,

drug trafficking, prostitution, arms trafficking, extortion, the usual stuff. And they bring in like 2.5 billion euros where anywhere else in the world, they'd be considered a massive criminal organization. But when you're talking about the Camorra and the Androngetta, who have tens of billions of dollars, they're kind of considered small fry. Yeah, I don't know huge amounts about like Italian organized crime.

But I mean, are these, so these guys are still active in Puglia? Own it all. Pay off your home. Travel for life. Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Bucks slot machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dollar dream package. The biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily

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Calabrians and the Andron Gita, I mean, the Andromeda and Camor didn't have a ton of attention, but there's been TV shows and books about them the last 10, 15 years in English. So I'm sure, I'm sure we're only years away from a Paramount Plus series on the SEO, but we'll get there. Guys, IP, get it. Also, a shout out to Puglia. It's like one of the most amazing place I've been. It's like cheap, beautiful, old towns, everything. Amazing. Go.

Yeah, one of these days, man. One of these days. Cotolo, though, he is not a small fry. He's not doing little money. He's expanding like crazy. You know, thousands of soldiers at this point, he starts demanding taxes from all the other Camar clan the ones not affiliated with him,

including those that are working and affiliated with the Sicilian mafias. He's asking for every cardine of untaxed. to get paid a fee, which is a huge form of tribute. It's a lot of money. That's one of the biggest industries right there. A bunch of their clans aside, they've had enough, and they form into their own little supergroup called the Nuevo Familia, the NF. In the early 80s, this whole region, where Naples is, it basically splits the two groups for the battle that's going to come. Says the professor, quote, this is his little battle cry before the war starts. One day the people of Campania will understand that across the bread eaten in freedom is worth more than a steak

Eden as a slave. And that day Campania will truly have victory. Right. I mean, I'll give him that one. He's been improving since his prison days. He's been reading his classics, maybe. That's pretty fair. Way, way, way better.

As the start of this war, the NTO, they've got dedicated soldiers. They have, like, you know, hierarchy, single leadership. Well, the NF is a very loose alliance where the only thing holding them together is their opposition to Kutolo. And the Sicilian mafia, who's ruled by your friend, Sean, Toto Arena, right? Is that you say his name? Oh, yeah, lovely guy. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, which we've done... So we've done episodes on him. Not a very nice man. He's heavily involved in the war. He wants to manage it from the outside. But the Silly mob, they quickly find out the Kamoer Klins' affinity with them. They're not so gung-ho about going to battle against this guy who has thousands of soldiers.

They're kind of more interested in cutting a deal. So the Palermo Commission, which is the ruling body of the Sicilian mafia, they sent an assassin in the summer of 1980 to take care of Kutolo. But the assassin gets dealt with very quickly after arriving in Naples. And soon the Sicilians, they try a different tactic, which is peacemaking. The mafia sponsors, I don't know what sponsors mean in this situation, but they have three peace conferences trying to broker a deal between the NCO and the NF. These conferences are actually attended, some of them by Tocerini himself, which, again, if you listen to our episode, you know the kind of legendary psycho he is.

He had just taken over the Palermo Commission by murdering many of his opponents. And the peace attempts, they do not work. They don't amount to anything. The war ends up taking five years, and over a thousand people are killed in it. So one of those deaths is, you know how we talked about how he got declared a mentally unfit? The guy who declared him that is a professor, Professor Aldo Cimarari. In 1982, he gets killed. He's a criminal psychiatrist who's responsible for all the claims on Guntola's mental health

that get him all the preferential treatment and sent from maximum security prisons to the far easier psych wards. He's a self-percane fascist with links and not like a wannabe Twitter fascist, like a real one. with links to the Italian military intelligence and he's a far right agitator, which again, in this day and age, he would just have a substack or a Twitter and maybe a rumble channel. But back in the day, he's a guy trying to recruit Italian criminal organizations

to his fascist causes. But the mafioso's, God bless them. They're much more interested in just making money. They don't care about politics. So the best he could get was a very simple trade. The mob guys would get his psychiatric, quote-unquote, expertise, and they would in turn help his fascist cohorts get weapons.

He gets a little cocky, though, tries to make this deal with not only Cotolo, but a bunch of the other NCO's enemies in the Camorra. Eventually, his body is discovered in the boot of a car, only a few hundred meters from Cotola's castle, while the head is found in the front seat, but it actually turns out that most people think it was orchestrated by the NF themselves. It kind of says a lot about how fully insane Italy is at this point. This crazy war is like a bit under the radar in the wider mafia stories. I guess we've already covered a bunch of stuff like the P2, the Secret Society and God's Banker and all of this.

like left and right political violence that's happening. This is the so-called years of lead, right? Is it all lumped into that kind of era? I think it's 60s to 80s roughly, right? Yeah, Years of Lead was more political, though. This is, right? Isn't that where the classification comes from? Or does it also apply to the Mafia Wars?

Yeah, but I think the Mafia's all wound up in that as well, I think. Yeah. Alexander, who I mentioned, I mean, I think his podcast is about the years of lead. He gets really, really deep into it way more than we do. But it's a wild, fascinating period. And I guess these guys probably always, like I said, paled in comparison to the Sicilians at the time. So I'm sure they didn't get as much attention. And then also around this time before, you know, in 1980, there's a huge earthquake in Naples.

I think it's like a 6.9. The Richter scale, you know, destroys a lot of the city. Some wings of the prison itself, the Pojia Real prison, the NCO, called Stronghold. It collapses. There's total chaos. The guards largely abandoned it. The NCO goes around hunting its enemies and kills several of them. And the same process repeats itself in a 19-19.

anyone aftershock. But the big thing about natural disasters, a ton of reconstruction is needed. And that means tons of money coming to Naples. And Kutolo, of course, he's going to get his fingers in all of it while the war is ongoing. Okay, so we've got two classics of the genre here. We've got prison falls down, Italian authorities do nothing and just sit around and let everyone run amok. And then we've got guys getting into real estate as well. So this is all coming together quite nicely. Yeah. Basically, you can just track all our themes. in all these episodes, they all kind of add up. And then in 1981, there's this infamous kidnapping,

and the professor grows even more powerful. I feel like I've said that 15 times, but you guys get the idea. The guy was fucking serious business. There's this politician for the Christian Democrats that's the largest party in Italy at the time. He's kidnapped by the Red Brigades, which are a left-wing terrorist organization.

Usually these cases, they don't end well because the Christian Democrats, they have a policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and they kidnap people end up dead. But this time something different happens. And no one discovers it until 10 years. later that, well, I guess some people do, but it doesn't mean on public until a decade and a half later. He's actually released after 2.5 months after the Red Brigades received a 2.5 million ransom.

And it turns out the government had secretly gone to Cotolo to manage the negotiations. He has these meetings in prison with the guys from the group that are in there, all this stuff. And he's able to actually secure the release. And it just so happens that this politician is personally responsible for the handling of massive funds, giving to the reconstruction that's going to happen after the earthquake. So not only does Cotolo get a ton of those funds going through his people, including his son, but now he's kind of legitimized. That's not a right word.

Legitimize. You know what, leave that. Let the people know that I, you know, we're all human here. Mistakes are made. So he's legitimized having the government and authorities come to him for help. I guess it wasn't public then, but around the government and all that, they kind of get to know. he though, he's not pleased and he thinks he deserves more.

So he leaks details in the negotiations kind of secretly in a roundabout way to the press to make the government look bad. But it backfires and this ends up being his downfall. You gotta stop being greedy, man. Yeah, I mean, what happened to the guy writing rhyming couplets about a matter as well,

bloody poets? And the Robin Hood thing, man, you gotta stop being greedy and get to the needy. Come on. The highest levels of the government, the guys who, you know, they're not the Naples guys, they are a little harder to get bought off. They start looking at Kutolo.

Italy's president learns about how he's living in prison and is kind of horrified by it. So he immediately orders him transfer to the prison island of Asanara, which is like some Alcatraz type setup, you know, where you can't communicate with anyone, which means that Kutolo loses control of the NCO. He doesn't know how to tell them, he can't really communicate with them. And the NF decides to move in for the kill. But yeah, the war was still going on, even through the earthquake and all that stuff. They systematically take out the NCO leadership, one after another, killing them, car bomb shootings, all that. They might have even had help from elements of the state that were pissed at Kutolo for thinking

he could push them around, leak this stuff, and basically do what he wants without the government authorities being able to keep in check. And the NCO at that point starts to fall apart. A bunch of the clans aligned with Kutolo jumped ship. Kutolo's son is killed eventually in 1990. His sister sent the jail in 1993. He only dies recently in 2021. I think he was like 79 at the time.

But Sean, don't you want to jump in with your question? You always ask about whether they're vaxed or not? No, I mean, you know, stuff speaks for itself. I mean, if you're vaxed, you're in trouble. That's my honest opinion. But he was, he's basically, he's been done from a Camorifistakor for way longer than that, basically lost all his, a lot of his power. His legacy, though, is still pretty legendary.

You know, he built a Camorra into a force it hadn't been before, rivaling the Androngetta and Sicily. where before I was kind of playing second fatal to those two powerhouses. And he did it all from behind prison walls pretty much. I think he was only free for like maybe a year and a half or total from the early 1960s on. Here's a quote again from him about his life. I don't regret anything about my life. Good stuff.

Yeah. Crime is always a wrong move. It's true. However, we live in a society that is worse than criminality. Better to be crazy than to be a dreamer. A crazy man can be returned to reason. For a dreamer, he can only lose his head. A Camorista must be humble, wise, and always ready to bring joy where there is pain.

Only thus will he become a good Camarista before God. I am far from being a saint. I've made people cry, and I've done harm to those who want to harm me, making me cry. A camarista is one who declares himself by his lifestyle. He who errs dies. That sounds good, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly gibberish. But I don't know, maybe it loses something in the translation. I mean, you have to hope so.

But in a way, it's kind of the most honest thing we've had one, like, massive criminal saying in a while. It's just like completely, I don't get anything. I've killed a bunch of people. It's bad. I don't care. It's good. It might be bad, but it's probably good.

And I got loads of money. And anyone who goes against me dies. It makes me cry. It makes me cry. But, you know, it's good, but it's bad. It's good. But I'm not a saint, but I'm also a really cool guy. Anyway, I want to learn what he meant by bringing joy to the people.

like this, like, I don't know why my head jumped to like some camarista, like doing a puppet show for kids in one of the neighborhoods. That's probably not what he meant, but that's where, um, that's where my head is. Yeah, I don't think it was the story about the guy with his head on the front seat of the car, but I might be wrong. I don't know.

I don't know what makes a Camerista. I mean, as long as he doesn't err, I mean, as long as he's not an error, then, uh, then he's good. Yeah, but, uh, there you have it. That is the story of the professor. You know, subscribe, like YouTube, TikTok. All that stuff. Patreon, please. And yeah, just remember, you know, it's going to get worse before it gets even more worse. So that's where we're at right now. But at least you guys, at least you got on a

t-shirt. At least you got us, you know? I'm going to order Italian food. I'm in the move for baked clams. Anyway, I'm going for a July. No, you know what? I'm going to do a bonus with some other Camara stuff soon. Once I can focus again. Yeah, good. Good to go. All right. Take care. Everyone. Love you all. Bye. Bye. Peace up. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money. Whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings.

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