Raffaele “the Professor” Cutolo, one of the most feared and powerful chiefs of the Neapolitan Camorra, spent most of his adult life in prison. And it was in a prison bed on Wednesday that he was found dead, aged 79.
His arrest did not stop him from ordering murders, forging criminal ties and starting a war that left several hundred people dead in the early 1980s. Cutolo, whose life inspired films and songs, transformed his prison cell into his criminal office, from where recruited thousands of members to Camorra who, once released, committed murders on their orders.
“Because of his strong ties to politicians, Cutolo was a piece of the Italian state,” said the writer and author of Gomorra, Roberto Saviano. “He was very powerful, more than a prime minister.”
Born in 1941, Cutolo was 22 when he committed his first murder. After a fight, he killed a young man who had made strides towards his sister. He was sentenced to 24 years in prison, where his criminal career continued in the form of physical assault on other inmates. Early on he challenged the supposed first Camorra chief, Antonio Spavone, to a duel. Cutolo asked him to be armed with a knife for the inner courtyard of Poggioreale prison, but Spavone did not appear. This tacit refusal earned Cutolo the respect of other inmates and reinforced his criminal credentials.
At Poggioreale prison, in the late 1970s, Cutolo founded the New Organized Camorra (NCO) with the aim of renovating the old rural Camorra. The chief also elaborated an initiation ritual that included an oath: “The day when the people of Campania understand that it is better to eat a slice of bread as a free man than to eat a steak as a slave is the day that Campania will win. “
“Cutolo transformed Camorra into a mass organization, inciting young people to violence,” said Isaia Sales, an essayist and professor of mafia history at the Suor Orsola Benincasa University in Naples. “Many bosses sent from prison, but they were already mafiosi when they entered. Cutolo entered prison as a common criminal and from there he founded one of the most powerful criminal organizations in the world ”.
According to the Italian justice department, in 1980 the NCO had about 10,000 affiliates.
In the early 1980s, Cutolo started an internal war in Camorra. The conflict would cause the death of hundreds of affiliates and dozens of innocent people.
For ordered killings, Cutolo was sentenced to four life sentences and would spend the last decades of his life locked in a cell. His detention did not prevent him from having a daughter, thanks to artificial insemination, authorized by the Ministry of Justice in 2001, after a long legal battle.
“I’m going to die in prison. My last wish is to give my wife a son, ”Cutolo told La Repubblica newspaper.
Cutolo’s life inspired films such as O Professor, by Giuseppe Tornatore, and even a song by the singer and composer Fabrizio De André.
Cutolo was happy to give interviews to the press, the court and the prison. In an interview with journalist Enzo Biagi in 1986, he said: “Camorra is a choice of life, a party, an ideal”.
Sales said: “He was the most media-driven of the mafia bosses. In a sense, it recalls Al Capone. “
During the first wave of the pandemic, Cutolo’s lawyers asked authorities to transfer the detainee to house arrest to prevent him from hiring Covid, but a judge rejected the request, saying that Cutolo, despite his age, “could still strengthen Camorra, with respect to which Cutolo fully maintained his charismatic influence ”.
During all the years of his imprisonment, Cutolo has never shown any sign of regret and has always refused to cooperate with investigators.
“His power kept him in prison for life,” said Saviano. “And he will take all his secrets to the grave.”