Striking Back Against the Mob

Fees for doing business in their territory, for cement, for subcontracts: This was the mob's empire. All the biggest public works in the area involved the Casalesi, from roads to a segment of the Rome-Naples highway to the Santa Maria Capua Vetere prison, where some of their members eventually ended up.

In two legal proceedings against the Schiavone family in August 1996, authorities confiscated 450 billion lire; a year later, they seized another 515 billion. That adds up to $788 million taken over two summers from just one of the many families that make up the Casalesi, an amount that would bring any business to its knees. But the Schiavone family and the Casalesi continue to prosper. All told, they are estimated to be worth about $47 billion.

The Spartacus trial was sweeping, covering events that began in 1988 and ended in 1996. Authorities needed almost a decade to figure out what had gone on with the Casalesi over the years, and this mother of all investigations spurred dozens of related homicide, drug and fraud investigations. In an earlier phase of the trial, the state even seized as assets two local soccer teams that the Camorra owned. All of that happened with next to no attention from the national or international media.

This time, things have been different. The trial was covered by journalists not just from Italy but from all over the world. The bosses hate this attention; Schiavone asked for permission not to attend the final hearing because he is not, he said, "a wild animal in a cage."

The Casalesi are afraid. They're afraid because they have never faced such blistering convictions. Their bosses never die in prison; they end their days free and far from their old territory. Schiavone, who has been in a high-security prison for a decade, wrote a letter to the Italian president asking for mercy. He once tried to pass as mentally ill and rustled up some psychiatric reports stating that he believed that strange ghosts visited him in his cell at night.

But now, with his life sentence, Schiavone has been brought to his knees. Only if he snitches on his friends and opens up about his own activities can he hope to get out early. If he and other bosses give in, then the sordid story of the Casalesi might finally come to an end.

With the end of this trial, I am reminded of the Camorra's victims, people killed for resisting the System's power who are honored only by the occasional street name and in the hearts of their families and friends. Salvatore Nuvoletta: a 20-year-old carabiniere killed in 1982 for his involvement in the arrest of one of Schiavone's relatives. Alberto Varone: a businessman killed in 1991 because his furniture factory made the mobsters in his town hungry for even more money. And Don Peppino Diana, a priest in Casal di Principe, shot in the church meeting room when I was 16 for denouncing the Camorra. The list grows longer still, to include people such as Domenico Noviello, gunned down a little more than a month ago, seven years after he accused the mob of extortion.

I hope that the Spartacus trial doesn't end like the life of Spartacus himself. He was killed in battle and his followers crucified along the Appian Way, the area where, in the ultimate irony, Casalesi-owned stores stand today. Night may have ended in southern Italy, but morning is not yet here.

www.robertosaviano.com

Roberto Saviano is the author of "Gomorrah: A Personal Journey into the Violent International Empire of Naples' Organized Crime System." Published by arrangement with the Roberto Santachiara Literary Agency. This article was translated from the Italian by Outlook editorial aide Emily Langer.