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The Cuocolo trial: the Camorra in the dock
MURDERER: the Camorra
VICTIMS: Gennaro Cuocolo and Maria Cutinelli
PLACE AND DATE: Torre del Greco, Naples, 5 June 1906
MATERIAL EVIDENCE: ring
PROVENANCE: Viterbo, Public Prosecutor’s Office, 1936
At dawn on 6 June 1906, the body of the camorrista Gennaro Cuocolo was found in the Contrada Calastro in Torre del Greco, not far from Naples. His head had been battered with a stick, while his body had at least forty knife and stiletto wounds. A few hours later, the body of Cuocolo’s wife, Maria Cutinelli, was found in an apartment in Via Nardones in Naples. She had been stabbed eleven times.
Cuocolo and Cutinelli were a criminal couple specialized in housebreaking, and worked for the Camorra by providing information and the impressions of locks from luxury apartments.
The discovery of the bodies led to one of the most complex legal cases of the twentieth century.
The investigations allowed the police to reconstruct events from the evening before the two murders: Cuocolo had dined with a group of camorristi in a small restaurant near the scene of the crime; the others present were Enrico Alfano, known as Erricone, considered the real head of the Camorra, his brother Ciro, Giovanni Rapi, a primary school teacher and usurer, and finally Gennaro Ibello and Gennaro Jacovitti, two members of the Camorra rank and file. The whole gang was arrested, but a month and a half later the investigations carried out by the police headquarters had reached a dead-end, the suspects were released and the case was taken over by the Carabinieri. The inquiry was entrusted to Captain Carlo Fabbroni, who soon began to accuse the Naples police of corruption and inefficiency.
The investigation was given new impetus by a young camorrista serving a jail sentence in Naples. He was a certain Gennaro Abbatemaggio, already a Carabinieri informer, who told officers his version of the facts: the decision to kill Cuocolo, suspected of being a police spy, had been taken at a meeting chaired by Enrico Alfano. The revelations led to further arrests.
At 2 pm on 22 October 1907, the Court Chambers met in Castelcapuano to sign the committal for trial of the accused. On 27 March 1909 the Assistant Public Prosecutor, Michele Ciancaglini, committed 47 persons for trial by the Court of Assizes in Naples.
The trial, however, was not held in Naples: there had been so many obstacles and attempts to corrupt the authorities that it was transferred, on the grounds of legitimate suspicion, to the Court of Assizes in Viterbo. The hearing began in the spring of 1911, and continued for twelve long months. On 8 July 1912, the Cuocolo trial, followed with great interest by the newspapers and the general public, ended with a verdict of guilty, and the defendants were sentenced to a total of 354 years’ imprisonment. Enrico Alfano and Giovanni Rapi were sentenced to thirty years, Abbatemaggio to five years.
In 1926, fifteen years later, there was a coup de théâtre: Gennaro Abbatemaggio withdrew all his accusations, but the case was never reopened.
