Free Republic

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...

NAPLES, Italy, Dec. 17 (Reuters) - Vincenzo Mazzarella, the head of a Naples crime gang, was arrested Friday at Euro Disney, near Paris, after a monthlong manhunt, the Italian police said. The arrest, by French police officers, came during a separate mob sweep in Italy that resulted in 11 arrests and the confiscation of assets worth more than $1.3 million, the authorities said. Naples has been gripped by mob violence since October, with more than two dozen people killed. Mr. Mazzarella, 48, was described by the police as one of the most important leaders of the Camorra, a Naples gang...