Alex Perry - The Good Mothers - The True Story of the Women Who Took on The World's Most Powerful Mafia

Italy, and Europe, had a new mafia war to fight. And though its empire was now global, the ’Ndrangheta remained as attached to Calabria as Cosa Nostra had been to Sicily. In April 2008, two of the prosecutors who had humbled the Sicilian mafia, Giuseppe Pignatone, now sixty, and Michele Prestipino, fifty, had their requests for transfer to Calabria accepted. Their friend and ally in the Palermo flying squad, Renato Cortese, went with them. As the three cast around for a team who might do to the ’Ndrangheta what had been done to Cosa Nostra, they realised they faced a problem. Many Italian prosecutors baulked at the idea of an assignment to what was universally regarded as both a backwater and enemy territory. In 2008, only twelve of the eighteen prosecutor positions in Calabria were filled and the province had just five anti-mafia specialists. In Milan, however, Alessandra applied. She was ready to return to the south, she told her bosses. She understood the work would be ‘riskier’ and more ‘difficult and complicated’. That just made it all the more urgent. 4

In April 2009, Alessandra and her husband packed up their apartment in Milan and flew south, following the sun down the west coast of Italy. As the plane started its descent, Alessandra saw the Aeolian Islands to the west, then Sicily and the snows of Etna to the south, then the streets of Messina below. As she passed over the broad blue of the Straits, she regarded the white foam trails of the rusty freighters as they rounded the tip of the Italian peninsula and turned north to Naples, Genoa, Marseilles and Barcelona. Not for the first time, it occurred to Alessandra that the lazy arc of this shore would, from a suitable distance, form the shape of a very large toe.

Alessandra’s new security detail met her at Reggio airport. They took the expressway into town as a two-car convoy. The road climbed high above the city, skirting the dusty terraces that led up into the Calabrian hinterland. Below were the cobbled streets and crumbling apartment blocks whose names were familiar to Alessandra from dozens of investigations into shootings and fire-bombings. Somewhere down there, too, were the bunkers, entire underground homes where ’Ndrangheta bosses would hide for years, surfacing through hidden doors and tunnels to order new killings and plan new business.

As they reached the northern end of Reggio, the two cars took an off-ramp and plunged down into the city, dropping through twisting hairpins, bumping over ruts and potholes, plunging ever lower through tumbling, narrow streets before bottoming out just behind the seafront. Once on the flat, the drivers accelerated and flashed through the streets, past abandoned hotels, boarded-up cinemas and empty villas before turning back up towards the hills and sweeping through the gates of a carabinieri barracks. In its 3,500 years of existence, Reggio had been a Mediterranean power, the birthplace of the kingdom of Italia, a Norman fortress and a Riviera resort. Now it was bandit country. Entire neighbourhoods were off-limits to carabinieri or prosecutors. For Alessandra, home for the next five years would be a bare-walled officer’s apartment jammed into the barracks roof with a view of the Straits of Messina.

Denise slept for an hour and a half the night Lea disappeared. 1The next morning, 25 November 2009, she ate breakfast with her Aunt Renata, walked with her to the kindergarten where she worked, then spent the morning silently smoking cigarettes with Andrea and Domenico in a nearby piazza. In the afternoon, Carlo phoned and told her to meet him at Bar Barbara. On the way there, Denise ran into a cousin from Lea’s side of the family, Francesco Ceraudo, who lived in Genoa. She told Francesco that Lea was missing and asked him if he had seen her. Francesco blanched. ‘Do you know anything?’ Denise asked. ‘Absolutely not,’ he said, and walked on.

The entire Cosco clan were in Bar Barbara: Carlo, his brothers Vito and Giuseppe, and Aunt Renata. Giuseppe and Renata were playing video poker in the corner. Giuseppe won 50 euros and, clumsily, gave the winnings to Denise. After a while, the carabinieri called Denise on her mobile and said they needed to speak to her. During the call, a squad car pulled up outside. Vito asked what was happening. ‘Lea’s missing,’ Carlo told him.

The Coscos weren’t about to let one of their own go to the carabinieri alone. Vito dropped Carlo and Denise at the station around 8.30 p.m., and father and daughter entered together. Inside, however, carabiniere Marshal Christian Persurich told Carlo he had to talk to Denise unaided. Persurich showed Denise to an interview room. He informed her that in Calabria her Aunt Marisa had reported Lea missing. Marisa had also told the carabinieri that Lea had testified against the ’Ndrangheta and that she and Denise had spent time in witness protection. Lea had now been missing for more than twenty-four hours. Persurich needed the whole story. Denise should take her time and leave nothing out. The interview would be strictly confidential.

Denise nodded. ‘If my mother’s missing,’ she began, ‘then it’s probably because she’s been killed by my father.’

Marshal Persurich interviewed Denise for five hours, finishing just before 2 a.m. Denise emerged to find Carlo pacing the waiting room, demanding that the officers let him read her statement. Seeing his daughter, Carlo confronted her. ‘What did you tell these people?!’

‘You asked us to Milan,’ Denise replied blankly. ‘We spent a few days together. You were meant to pick her up. But you couldn’t find her. Then we looked for her all over.’

Carlo looked unconvinced. Five hours for that?

On the way back to her cousin’s, Carlo and Denise stopped at a restaurant, the Green Dragon, named after the symbol of Milan. Inside was Carmine Venturino, the cousin who had given Lea some hash to smoke. Carmine had a babyish face and looked like a born truant, and Denise had liked him from the moment she met him at a wedding in Calabria the previous summer. But that night they had nothing to say to each other. After Carmine and Carlo had a brief, hushed discussion, Carlo walked his daughter back to Viale Montello. There, Denise slept in Andrea’s room for a second night.

The next morning, Carlo, Denise and a friend of Carlo’s, Rosario Curcio, saw a lawyer in town. Carlo told the lawyer he wanted to see Denise’s statements. The lawyer asked Denise what she’d told the carabinieri . Denise repeated what she had told Carlo: that she and her mother had come up to Milan to spend a few days with her father and Lea had vanished on their last night. She began crying. The lawyer said he could arrange to have Lea’s disappearance publicised on national television. There was a show, Chi l’ha Visto? ( Have You Seen Them? ), which appealed for information on missing people. ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake!’ cried Carlo. The lawyer didn’t get it at all. Carlo stood up and walked out, leaving Denise crying in the lawyer’s office.

After Denise recovered, she, Carlo and Rosario drove to a beauty salon owned by Rosario’s girlfriend, Elisa. Carlo took Rosario aside for another quiet talk. Elisa asked Denise what was going on. Denise burst into tears once more and told Elisa that her mother had gone missing two nights before. Elisa said that was strange because Rosario had vanished for a few hours the same evening. They’d had a date, said Elisa, but Rosario had cancelled, then switched off his phone. When she finally got through to him around 9 p.m., he’d told Elisa something about having to fix a car with Carmine. It didn’t make sense. Why the sudden rush to fix a car? Why at night? Denise was about to say something when Carlo interrupted to say he was taking Denise back to Viale Montello. She slept in her cousin’s room for a third night.