Posted on 10/25/2009 12:14:44 AM PDT by Saije
Reporting from Naples, Italy - In most respects, it was a typical mob shootout: members of feuding clans facing down their rivals on the main street of the small town of Lauro, exchanging gunfire from their cars until three people lay dead and four others wounded.
The difference, though, was that the battle between the Cava and Graziano families involved women only. As townspeople looked on in horror, two mothers in their 50s and a 16-year-old girl were slain in their Audi on the streets of the Naples-area community.
Yet even after the deadly 2002 firefight, prosecutors were slow to act in many cases against the powerful mob women of the Camorra, who have played a major role in Neapolitan crime wars that have lasted a quarter of a century and have claimed the lives of more than 3,000 people, including dozens of innocent bystanders.
Stefania Castaldi, an anti-mafia prosecutor in Naples, cites the case of one Camorrista, the term for a Neapolitan clan member, who was arrested with a stash of drugs and weapons in the master bedroom of his home. A judge threw out her request to indict the suspect's wife as an accomplice.
"In the past, there was a degree of shortsightedness; investigators did not want to believe that the women were involved," she said in an interview in Naples with The Times. "There was a general underestimation of the social role of women as well as of the role of the woman within organized crime. . . .
"[But] they did not just have supporting roles, they were protagonists."
Prosecutions against women are now increasing, said Castaldi, 49, who has spent most of her career trying to loosen the mob's stranglehold on southern Italian society, first in Sicily and now in Naples
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Except that the Corleones came from Corleone, Sicily.
Nothing new and no facts or numbers or statistics. We have always used our women to hide and camouflage our drugs, guns and activities because the law treats them gently and is less likely to search them or condemn for what is found.
1960 or 2010, not much changes, it was probably the same in 1760 or 100 BC.
I like large Naples women.....
Nothing new in this story. I believe the Sopranos dealt with this about 7-10 years ago. Tony went to Naples and negotiated, amongst other things, with the female head of the mob in Naples. The women hold down the fort while the men are in prison.
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