The Camorra Clans of Naples: Italy's Most Violent Criminal Organizarion
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Norman Lewis is in his early 30s, a member of the British Intelligence Corps with the Allied forces, and he's stationed in the city during the Allied occupation after pushing Mussolini out. And it's rough going. The city is a mess. It's bombed out. The people are suffering, and he's even caught malaria, as the swamps nearby still have mosquitoes that carry it.

Water rationing has gotten so bad, people are cooking with seawater. Women and children go to the fields to find edible plants. Orphan beggars are everywhere. Some women sell themselves for tins of food. Soldiers are looting while rooting out fascists and collaborators. And there's also always rumors of German spies, German counterattacks, all that sort of stuff. It's almost as bad as Naples, Florida.

writes Lewis, quote, It is astonishing to witness the struggles of this city so shattered, so starved, so deprived of all those things that justify a city's existence, to adapt itself to a collapse into conditions which much resemble life in the dark ages. That's nothing to say the vendettas or blood feuds some of the locals are still engaging in, using the soldiers to carry out their bidding. One thing in Naples, though, is blossoming and growing like weeds from shattered pavement.

Luis functions as a police officer during the occupation, and eventually he's put in charge of a number of nearby towns and the countryside. As he quickly learns, this is Zona de Camorra, gangster's territory, the Camorra zone. And they're getting a huge boost these days, as goods and guns for the allies flood the area and the black market thrives.

A local explains to him, "The Camorra is a system of self-protection and secret resistance against the tax collectors and bullies of the successive foreign governments that ruled Naples for centuries. The people in this territory lived by their own laws, with secret courts. Omerta was the rule of the game. Those who opened their mouths or traitors were sentenced to death." That makes Lewis' job of restoring order quite the challenge.

Mussolini had cracked down on the gangsters from Naples to Sicily, but the Camorra were hard to put down. The thing is, in the old days, there was a moral code, but now it's completely lawless. The Camorristas are criminals and they prey on what they can in the anarchy of post-war Italy, taking everything, and they plunder like pirates. They also have some help in some of the management going around in the government.

Insofar as anyone rules here, it is the Camorra.

Neapolitan kleptomania is what he calls it. And this new breed of Kimora clans rising up, they're going to be a problem and stay a problem into the present day. This is the Underworld Podcast. ♪

Welcome back to the Underworld Podcast, where me, Danny Gold, and my co-host, Sean Williams, two journalists that have traveled all over the globe reporting on things of interest, bring you a new story of international organized crime every single week. We've been doing this for three years now, which sounds insane to say, and we have yet to get any better since those first episodes, but yeah, the...

The time has passed, Sean. You had a kid. I moved to Austin for six weeks. Lots happening, and yet I'm still not spending my summers overlooking the Mediterranean. What can you do? Yeah, I wouldn't mind a couple of scoops of Neapolitan kleptomania by the sea right now. I mean, I can say with absolute certainty that we are nothing if not several years older than we were in 2020.

Everything is entropy, right? Except, of course, this podcast. Yeah, we are still going along. But I just want to thank everyone that's a fan. We're still alive. Everyone that's a fan, the listeners, Patreon people especially. I was going over some old posts on my Instagram feed and I had a lot of friends that were photographers with tens of thousands of followers who shared this when we first linked.

So thank you for that. Do it again immediately. And also to support us, if you want bonus material, you can sign up at iTunes or at patreon.com. For the low, low price of $5, it's also ad-free. We just had a bonus go up about the homeless fentanyl wars in Seattle, which is a thing that is happening. Our audio producer, Dale, who makes this thing sound good every week, he did some reporting on it and talked to us about it. So that's on the bonus page.

And yeah, our friend Lily, who's amazing, is doing some great work for us too. She just started a TikTok for us. She'll be running that. Look, I have no idea how that works and I don't want to figure it out, but she does. So if you're on TikTok, blast it out and do all of that. I thought you said you were going to do some dance videos for that as well. That's what you said the other day. Yeah, I'm just going to, I'm going to talk about black market methamphetamine and just point to...

facts. Awesome. Yeah. Above me to the left, above me to the right. There'll be a dance that me and you do together. We'll merge it together. It's going to do great. You know, are you allowed to talk about fentanyl on, on, on Tik TOK or do the Chinese not, or do they like want to promote that? How does that, how does that work? Yeah. Good question. Yeah. I don't know. We'll have to get Lily on. Yeah. I mean, look, that's actually a good, like, let's look into fentanyl content on, on Tik TOK and see, see what the regulations are in that.

It's just a bunch of videos of guys being like, it's awesome. We want to do more of it. If anyone takes anything from these shows, I think it's that message. So we should do it with a dance. Anyway, Naples. I've been...

I've been fascinated by Naples, Florida and Naples, Italy going back forever, way before Gamora the book or movie or TV show though. If you haven't seen the TV show, it's incredible. Honestly, one of the best series out there. It's just brutal and unsparing. And in today's episode, we are talking about those Naples homegrown clans, the Gamora, one of the oldest and most powerful organized crime groups in Italy. I think also the most violent right now, but

We've obviously talked about the Sicilian Mafia a lot and the Calabrian and Giongetta. So now we're moving up the coast a bit of Italy to these guys. I think we might even have to do a two-parter just because there are so many clans and everything and there's just a lot of history involved in it too. Yes, it's really fascinating stuff. I mean, I'm also keen to know just how miserable Naples was at this time if some British bobby called Norman is saying that it's in the Dark Ages. That's got to be pretty bad. Sean, speak...

speak English British police what the fuck is a Bobby Bobby's on the beat man come on come on

But yeah, do you not know about that book? The opening is from the book Naples 44, which is incredible. I mean, if you haven't read it, Sean or our listeners, it's not all about the Camorra. It's just about the occupation in, I guess, can you say post-war Italy? I guess the war was still going on, but that part, Southern Italy was occupied by the Allies. But it's remarkable. And he wrote an incredible book. I think he went on to write a lot of others, but I don't really know too much about him. Anyway.

One thing to say about Naples that the book actually makes clear as well is that it is a port city, one of the biggest in Italy. And you know what that means, obviously, crime, trafficking of all kinds, unions, all that fun stuff. Here's a quote from The Guardian on the city itself, quote, Naples is a third world city with third world politics.

it's super rich surrounded by miserable hinterlands there is vast private wealth in the city but this is illegal wealth which is i mean that's a great quote you know yeah also this is the guardian based in london so um yeah glass houses yeah pretty cool i don't know if you can i don't know if you get away with saying that about a lot of other places but you know what we say racism against italians is allowed and encouraged but uh

Here's actually, here's a great one too. I'm quote heavy in the beginning because there's been a lot of poetic writing about the Camorra and about Naples as well. But this is from Roberto Saviano's book, Camorra. Quote, everything that exists passes through here, through the port of Naples. There's not a product, fabric, piece of plastic, toy, hammer, shoe, screwdriver, bolt, video game, jacket, pair of pants, drill, or watch that doesn't come through here.

The port of Naples is an open wound, end quote. And just imagine a CVS that's 330 acres over seven miles of coast without any of those plastic coverings where you need to call the cashier over to unscrew it. You know, just yours for the taking. That does sound like Florida.

Yeah, definitely Florida CVSs. But I actually, I didn't really go into Gamora the book a lot in this episode. I don't know. I guess, you know, we should mention Saviano has a plagiarism scandal. I mean, the book is a fantastic read. It's beautifully written, even translated. But yeah, he got a, he got dinged for it by Mike Moynihan, actually. His second book, Zero, Zero, Zero. Some of the quotes were stuffed with reporting and writing plundered from lesser known journalist includes interviews with sources who may not exist.

and contains numerous instances of unambiguous plagiarism. And Saviano replied that it was, quote, a nonfiction novel, which cannot and must not bend to the roles of investigative journalism and nonfiction. I'm not a journalist or a reporter, but rather a writer, and I recount real facts. Um...

But he also added that the book wouldn't include sourcing because the book is in the nonfiction genre, but it's first of all a novel. Why should I add sourcing to a novel? Which, I don't know, man, that kind of talk sketches me out. Like, I get that some people take artistic liberties and composite characters, but usually you let that be known ahead of time. Maybe there's something lost in the translation to those answers, but, you know, it kind of sounds like he's admitting to bullshitting.

Yeah, I mean, I guess he was pretty much under house arrest after his first book, right? So he couldn't go anywhere. But then not naming sources is rough as. But I mean, we could do the same. I mean, this show, we could maybe not bend to the roles of nonfiction novels. And from now on, we're never going to source any of our shows. And you guys can just trust us, basically. But...

I mean, that sounds easier, right? Yeah, we're definitely doing some plundering. I mean, we're guilty of that for sure. But yeah, Naples, beautiful old city, rundown, ports, corruption, pickpockets. I mean, it's generally thought of as an amazing but gritty place. It's in the southwest of the country in Campania and the Guardian. Again, hundreds of thousands of people in Naples owe their jobs and livelihoods to either Byzantine political patronage or to the Camorra or both. So yeah, hell of a place.

It is also, of course, the birthplace of Furio. And that guy, he hates the North. Okay, you can stop your watches, guys. I've got that at, what, 10 minutes, 11 minutes?

I don't know who's going to win that one. You know, I tried to, I really tried to tone it down throughout this thing, but you know, come on. Furio, man. I mean, he, the school of Naples, you know, he's at, they're educating, but yeah, a little quote heavy here. There's just some really beautiful and provocative stuff written by journalists describing Naples. A big article that we're going to use a lot in this is from Sean. I know you love this guy, William Lang for sure. I can never pronounce his last name. Langovich. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

who wrote a lengthy article on the Camorra for Vanity Fair. Another quote, "...silence is a Neapolitan birthright. The city has such a culture of it that some years ago, when an innocent girl was killed in a Camorra crossfire, many of the witnesses who had initially identified the shooters to the police recanted their statements during the trial that ensued. In frustration, the investigating judge lost his calm and began berating the witnesses."

As if here in the courtroom, he had come face to face with a Kimura itself. He had not. He had come face to face with ordinary Neapolitans. You cannot really berate the Kimura. If you try, you will find yourself meeting blank stares. Or a gun, I guess. But yeah. All right. No more quotes. So the origin of the Kimura, I mean, I love the history stuff with the more ancient groups. You know, we've done the triads, the Yakuza, all that stuff. When it goes back hundreds of years and you kind of see how it morphs, but-

No one's really sure of the origin of the Camorra specifically. Some people say it dates back to the 17th century and it's the direct descendant of the Garduna, which were a Spanish secret society. But that's recently come into doubt. Others say it's the kingdom of Naples that brought the organization into the region. And others say it just kind of emerged from the smaller groups of bandits or prison gangs.

What we do know is that the first official use of the word Camorra dates back to 1735, when a royal decree authorized the establishment of eight gambling houses in Naples. The word itself is a blend with capo, which means boss, and mora, which was, I think, either a Neapolitan street name or a street gang that was active during the time.

It really came into its own during the turmoil in Naples in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Naples was its own kingdom. The French Revolution bleeds over. They go to war with the French. Naples has their own civil war. Europe, including Naples, is in chaos. At one point, the Republicans, backed by the French, they conquer Naples and they declare a Parthenopian Republic. Am I saying that right, Sean? Do you know what that word is?

Yeah. God, no, I don't know. Go for it. Whatever you want. We're just going to keep, yeah, whatever. You guys don't know either. No, nobody cares. Anyway, that republic gets brought down. The French get kicked out and Europe, you know, it's just hundreds of years of some guy from the northwest of a country going to war with some guy from the center north for no reason at all. Just a bunch of savages in that continent. Yeah, go Brexit. Keep them at arm's length.

Anyway, we end up with the kingdom of two Sicilies, which Naples is involved with. But with all the chaos and power vacuum, we also end up with the Camorra coming into play.

We start to see them really coming up in official disciplinary meetings in 1820. Then in 1848, Italy, or what now makes up Italy, again is in turmoil. There's revolutions which fail, and the elite who want to lead the revolutions, they realize they need the backing of the poor if they want to succeed. So they look to the Camorra for that, and they start paying off the leaders, even giving some of them official roles. So yeah, I mean, these guys are clearly going to become a problem.

By the 1900s, we get something known as the Soretto Inquiry by the Italian government, after a paper had continually raised the issue of widespread corruption in Naples. This is a quote from the inquiry. "...the original low Camorra held sway over the poor plebs in an age of objection and servitude. Then there arose a high Camorra, comprising the most cunning and audacious members of the middle class. They fed off trade and public works contracts, political meetings, and government bureaucracy."

This high Camorra strikes deals and does business with a low Camorra, swapping promises for favors and favors for promises. The high Camorra thinks of the state bureaucracy as being like a field it has to harvest and exploit. Its tools are cunning, nerve, and violence. Its strength comes from the streets, and it is rightly considered to be more dangerous because it has reestablished the worst form of despotism by founding a regime based on bullying.

The high Camorra has replaced free will with impositions. It has nullified individuality and liberty, and it has defrauded the law and public trust, which, you know, for an inquiry, a government inquiry, that's some poetic writing right there.

Yeah, I'm getting that they're pretty bad. I mean, I'm with them on the state bureaucracy bit, to be fair. It's kind of strange how, I find it really strange how these different clans or the different sort of like organized crime groups in Italy, they're basically living cheek to jowl, right? Like with the Andrangheta, the Cosa Nostra. This is like a pretty small land area, but I guess they're pretty much different countries back in the day as well, right? At least pretty new as a concept. Yeah.

Yeah, they were divided. And I guess in the 1800s and early 1900s, there wasn't that much transnational organized crime. I think you kind of just had your territory. You did what you had to do. So it makes sense. And especially in these societies that were...

In the hinterlands, the south of Italy has always been said as a place that the government didn't have total control over or whatever government was in power. They kind of made their own rules. There was this almost like feudal society. You had the large landowners. You had bandits. You had almost like private armies rising up. And they kind of...

did their own thing. And it's like how that guy talks to, the local talks to Lewis in the beginning of this episode, right? It's, you know, they were ruled by successive kingdoms and they didn't want to bow down to anyone. So they had their own laws. And then you had, you know, all the trade in the South of Italy going back and forth and different, different societies coming. So I think it just makes sense for, for there to be these like separate criminal groups, but it is amazing how in this one region, you know, in the South where they're there, it's not that over that big a territory, you have three groups that now,

you know, represent like the top of the top in international organized crime on a global scale, which I think is pretty, pretty incredible. It's really Silicon Valley of, uh, of Europe, really. Yeah, no, seriously of international organized crime. But at that point, the Camorra, they're, you know, a parallel state, the parallel society, whatever you want to call it.

The inquiry does kind of knock them back a bit. They lose a bunch of the elections. Their candidates lose the elections in 1901. And with that loss in Southern Italy, which is being crushed by poverty, you actually see some of the Camorra, they leave to the US in their late 1900s, along with a lot of other Southern Italians. That's a big, big immigration point in America, especially in places like New York, other cities on the East Coast. And even in the Midwest, you see a lot of Italians, Southern Italians flocking to the US. I mean, that's-

You know, how many stories do we have of Lower East Side and other sort of mafia stuff in America that takes place? But an underrated part of American mafia history, the Sicilians and the Neapolitans actually have a little war, Camorra versus mafia, in 1950 in New York. I think it lasts for a year or two.

There had been this shaky peace deal where both groups concentrated on different rackets to exploit their new home. The mafia was doing the black hand extortion stuff, protection, whatever you want to call it. Well, the Camorra went for drugs, prostitution and gambling, which I don't know, sounds a lot more fun to me.

But the more peaceful Sicilian boss, he ends up going to jail. A new guy takes over and he starts muscling in on the Camorra gambling rackets, figuring he's got more power and more people. The Camorra actually take him out. They lure him to a ceasefire talk. That's fake. Then they go after a bunch of other top mafia bosses and they look set to win.

But one of their top guys gets arrested. He flips. He tells the police everything. And a bunch of those guys get locked up. And the Sicilians, they end up pulling out the victory. And they're the ones who go on to take over New York and the rackets there.

Meanwhile, back in Italy, of course, Europeans are figuring out new reasons to kill each other. Mussolini takes power. He actually cracks down on organized crime in Italy and making the trains run. The Naples gangs, they fare a little bit better than the other mafiosos, though, so they're still kind of around and lying in wait.

Yeah, you do got to hand it to Mussolini. I think we can say. You do not have to hand it to Mussolini. That's actually not true, Sean. But of course, the allies with the US invaded Italy, back-to-back World War champs over here. And they control Southern Italy by October of 1943. That's where we get into the intro over there, which comes from the book Naples 44, which again, one of my favorites ever. Definitely read it, get it if you can.

Naples, again, terrible shape at this point. Carpet bomb to hell. City has an estimated 200,000 homeless. 10% of the city's female population are prostitutes. It's just completely fucked. I guess, do you call it post-war? Occupied zone, whatever you want to call it.

But post-war in Europe in general, like the next three or four years, five years, until 1950, it's a completely fascinating place where all sorts of stuff is happening. Just insane, the depravity, the turmoil, the population upheaval, the continued violence even after the Nazis are defeated. Read everything you can on it. Savage Continent by Keith Lowe is one of my favorites, but it's just a wild, wild time period in the world. So anyway, the Allies are occupying southern Italy. And during wartime, of course, during a situation like this,

you need to be in good with people who can get things and get things done, especially on the black market. And that tends to be organized criminals. So the allies, of course, they get in good with the mafiosos and the bandits, Kimura, though I guess it's also the other way around too, right? Yeah. I mean, this is the story of the Maltese mob that we got into last week during the war. There was, I think his name is Kodama, like the earliest Yakuza kind of ultra boss. He was

getting rich. I think like looting Manchurian steel and other metals for the Japanese during the war. The Triads got their break like that. I mean, war racketeering and selling base materials. This is like...

Like you said, that post-war period in Europe and in the, I guess, the other major countries involved in the war, it's just insane. I've got a show, a big one coming up on the Chechens. I think we're going to do that next week. And that's kind of about war racketeering and profiteering that the organized crime groups did. So, yeah, nothing gets a gang going like a good old-fashioned dust-up. Well, it's also like, you know, you realize one of the most important things in organized crime in general is logistics, right? Yeah.

And I think we talked about that way back in the Russian Mafia episode, how a lot of the guys who rose up to be the Russian Mafiosos in the 90s, these were guys who were in the black market in the 80s during the Soviet Union. They were the ones who figured out how to get stuff from point A to point B. A lot of them were outcasts or people who couldn't rise up, whether they were Georgian or Jewish or Chechen even, because they weren't allowed to function properly.

you know, in some top levels of society there. So they got involved in the black market. And when

everything, there's a power vacuum. If you have those connections, if you have that logistical know-how, you can get goods from point A to point B. It doesn't even have to be illegal goods, right? Although, obviously, the profit margin on those are higher. Like, you're primed to get going as an organized criminal. Oh, yeah. Especially during the Soviet Union, like you said, like the Chechens, the Georgians, the Azeris, these are all people right on the periphery of the empire that Moscow wasn't really bothered about. And then they had their guys in the capital who were kind of pulling the strings, but they weren't there. Yeah.

They were kind of able to operate under the radar. And I guess that's the same with these guys, right? There would have been kind of capos in Rome or whatever, but they wouldn't have really been pulling the strings. It's the guys on the edge of Italy that are doing the stuff. Well, a lot of stuff was coming in through the port of Naples, you know? So they had first crack at all the goods coming in, weapons, goods, all that sort of stuff. But we'll get to that in a second.

In May 1944, an American sergeant with the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation receives a tip-off about someone involved in illegal stuff, and that someone was none other than the legendary American crime boss, Vito Genovese. If you aren't familiar with Vito, he's the guy who the Genovese crime family, one of the five families in New York, is named after. He was actually born in Naples, not Sicily. He emigrates to the U.S. as a kid, and he wasn't a Camorra guy, really. But in 1937, he had to flee charges, and he goes back to Italy to avoid a murder indictment.

At that time, he was already basically second in line behind Lucky Luciano and his crime family. Luciano had gone to prison a little bit earlier, so he was kind of acting boss on the streets.

Vito goes back to Italy and he kind of cozies up to the fascists. He sees they're the guys in charge and he doesn't want to get locked up. So he starts befriending Mussolini's guys. He donates something like $4 million to the Italian fascist party, bribes multiple party officials, and he even befriends Mussolini's son-in-law and was rumored to be his cocaine supplier. But again, the tide's turning the war and these guys are nothing if not opportunists. So he's a change of heart and he's back to supporting his adopted homeland and helping them out in their occupation zone.

I mean, he became friends with the fascists. He paid their officials. He donated millions to the cause. He forged close business ties to Mussolini's son-in-law. I mean, I'm going to say maybe he was a fascist. I mean, like it's possible that Goebbels was just punking the Nazis for years, but I'm going to, I'm going to like put it out there and say he's a little bit right wing.

I mean, I'm sure he's a little bit right wing, but it's kind of like, you know, these guys, not Gerbils, but, but a guy like Vito is going to be, he's much more of an opportunist than anything else. Right. It's kind of like, uh, you know, maybe he's not bothered by it as long as he's getting paid, which, you know, is an indictment of itself, but yeah, I don't know. I don't think his political beliefs lie in that his political beliefs are, let me get money as much as I can and be as powerful as I can, which I guess also could be some anyway, moving on.

When this sergeant's investigating Vito, he looks into his file. He finds several enthusiastic letters of reference written by American officials. And this comes from the book Blood Brotherhood, which we also use for some of the research in this episode and the next one we're going to do. And the letter reads, quote, Mr. Genovese met me and acted as my interpreter for over a month. He would accept no pay, paid his own expenses, worked day and night, and rendered most valuable assistance to the allied military government.

Doesn't help in the long run, though. A few months later, he's actually escorted back to the States to face the murder charges. He beats the charges. He beats the case when the key witness is poisoned. Soon enough, he's back in business in the American mafia. But

Yeah, the point we were making earlier, the port of Naples is bustling while the Allies continue to fight, and the bandits of the Camorra, they're stealing close to half the stuff that ends up there due to just large-scale corruption. This is when the new Camorra clans kind of hone their craft and get back on their feet. It's just wide-scale thievery. There's a vacuum of power, kind of, and chaos even as the war ends.

And the modern clans, this is when they really take off. And again, you know, they're kind of a new breed of the Camorra. In the old days, like the 1800s, it was real secret society stuff with rituals for inductions, a bunch of rules. There was a Capintesta, which is the head in chief of the Camorra. He's voted on by the 12 district heads, which is the Capintreaty. And it was much more formal and old school.

The modern Camorra, the one that emerges from the war and exists now, it's much different. It's a much more horizontal structure, not like, say, the Sicilian mafia, which is hierarchical. Today's version, the post-war version, you have clans that are always rising and others are becoming defunct. They're constantly feuding with each other and killing each other, sometimes creating alliances, sometimes working together, a lot of times working against each other. There's no commission like the American mob or the boss of bosses like the Sicilians.

Each clan is basically their own entity, right? They're autonomous, federalized, whatever you want to call it, which makes it harder for the police because you can take down one clan or one leader and the other, they're not going to miss a beat. And while there have been wars in the Sicilian mafia and the Andrangheta and inter-family wars in the American mafia families, no one fights each other like these clans do. That's why the Italian government considers them the most violent criminal organization in the country.

They kind of remind me a bit of the Israeli mafia episodes we've done, but a little less chaotic. If you listen to that episode, you know, you have the distinct different organizations, they're feuding, they're alliance making, they're breaking. And another interesting thing about the Kimura is that you see some woman bosses, which is very rare in the world of organized crime, especially Italian ones, because, you know, the wife of the sister, she sometimes takes over when the father or brother or son is killed or sent to jail or whatever. You know, if you look at the Sopranos episode, when Tony went to Italy, he had to deal with a woman boss, right?

Yeah. Now that's, that's what, 27 minutes. So we can, we can hold the second sweepstake. It's just, but fair enough. I mean, you've only done two. We've been going for a while now and you've only got two. You just kind of fall for, you feel for Pauly, you know, like,

It's that classic second generation immigrant going back home thinking they're all going to love you and nobody gives a shit. Just the classic episode. I genuinely think we would get more listeners if we just did you chatting about Sopranos as most of the bonus shows. Yeah.

You're probably not wrong. But yeah, there's also way more people in the Camorra. Saviano says there's five Camorra members for every one Sicilian mafia member and eight for every member of the Andrangheta. But again, this is like 15 years ago, so it could have changed. He also says they're so powerful that they don't need the politicians in Naples. Instead, the politicians need them. So,

We're going to talk about one of, if not the most powerful clan and the founding father, Paolo di Loro. It's also the clan that the TV show Gamora is based on. He's born in 1953 in the second Degliano neighborhood of Naples, which again, where the show is based. You'll see moments in his life that really echo the show, or I guess the show really echoes moments of his life. But he's born and he's an Orson. He gets adopted by a middle-class family.

He goes to school for a few years and he heads north to become a door-to-door salesman. And he starts to gamble and play cards, and he gets a rep for being good at math and staying calm under pressure. Comes back home, marries a local girl in 1973, and they end up having 11 children. He's going to need those skills then. Proper Italian Catholic family, man. So his gambling skills, they actually get him noticed by the clan that's running the neighborhood. It's led by a guy named Aniello LaMonica, who's a bit of a psycho. He's a penchant for bloodlust. Just a real killer.

He hires Delorio to run his books, basically be his accountant. And this guy, he's against drug dealing. He sticks with the traditional stuff, black market cigarettes, construction, protecting the neighborhood shopkeepers from crime, all that sort of stuff. Actually, black market cigarettes are huge in the 70s and 80s. There's a war fought over them, but they're bringing in millions because they bring them into the Eurozone. It's a huge moneymaker. Here's a quote from the Vanity Fair article that a lot of this is based on.

Deloro stuck to the shadows. He spoke little, he listened and observed. He believed that rational people can resolve their professional disputes through compromise and negotiation, and that they should kill only as a last resort. He was more self-disciplined, however, than he was gentle. For a character composition, I guess think of like, you know, Stringer Bell or El Mayo, that sort of level of intellect.

So DeLauro, he runs the books, he gets sense of the business and he comes to the conclusion that the local drug trade could make a ton of cash, which like, I don't know. I don't think you've got to be a business genius to be like, Oh, selling drugs will make a lot of money that way. You know, then in,

In 1980, there's a huge earthquake in Naples. You have a lot of poor people from the surrounding countryside. They move into the city. And he kind of figures then, drug sales now, all these poor people in the city, they're going to make a ton, even more than before. But LaMonica, again, still is reluctant. So it's kind of interesting, this battle. I feel like this is a common story in a lot of mid-20th century organized crime groups. You have this, should they get involved in the drugs? Should they not? Right.

It seems like the same argument happened in a lot of places, and there's always a divide between the old school and the new up-and-comers. And predictably, DeLauro decides to get LaMonica out of the way. He tells all the other high-ranking clan members that he's scheming off the top.

Lamonica actually makes a move on Delorio first. He sends some shooters, but Delorio survives. And he uses someone promising cheap diamonds to lure Lamonica out of his house, where him and some allies gun him down. It's the only time Delorio actually ever uses a gun. So at just 29 years old, he starts building. He's smart, again, tries to avoid the violence. He's friendly with the other clans. He doesn't move fast and break things. He's especially careful with the Lisiardi clan, who they also live in Secondigliano.

In 10 years, he amasses a fortune that's set to be in the hundreds of millions. He also establishes a bunch of legitimate holdings, clothing, bottled water, markets, meat, dairy, development, real estate, malls, hotel shops, all that sort of stuff, precious gems. Amazing. No Instagram, real estate, even bottled water. I mean, this guy has really been listening to our shows. He's on point, man. He's just like one of those guys who innately is just good at this. He insulates himself against anyone trying to inform it.

He basically has 20 or so capos function as independent entrepreneurs with exclusive rights to a piazza to sell drugs. And the piazza, it's basically like the Mexican plaza system, the drug markets. The Camorra, they take over multiple rundown buildings that are next to each other. They fix them up with steel bars on some entrances. They set up checkpoints and concrete blocks to sell low-grade coke and heroin, often much cheaper than in the north of the country or in Rome. So people sometimes travel down to get those prices, and there's long lines.

They have dozens of lookouts all over. They really make it almost impossible for the cops to catch any sellers with the drugs. Fortified corner spots, basically. I guess, you know, sort of like New Jack City, too. From the Vanity Fair article, again,

Quote, there are variations, but the ideal is to seal off the outer perimeter of the complex by augmenting the existing window bars and steel doors with concertina wire and heavy bolts, and then to cut a small portal on the ground floor wall of stairwell, whether it's the courtyard or the back of the complex, through which cash and narcotics can be safely exchanged.

So Deloro's guys, they each get their own piazza and they have a minimum they need to buy from him and they need to pay rent as well. But they're also allowed to buy wholesale from other suppliers. Deloro even gives them loans for this. He also has his own code of conduct everyone must adhere to, which is basically be fair and honest, even with their lowest employees, try to avoid conflict. And if there's a serious argument, he'll be the judge of it. You also can't say his name. You know, he's like a ghost. He's only referred to as the man or Pasquale.

Some people, like I said, they're just innately talented at something, and he seems to like he was that at running shit. He just had this like gravitas, and people listened, and he was good at it. So this leads to a very stable period in second Degliano.

Or even street crime goes way, way down. When an important Italian newspaper writes an article about illegal gambling in the area, he orders all gambling to stop, and it does within 48 hours. When he decides extorting shop owners for protection money, it's not worth the hassle. He stops it, and he tells his men from now on, they pay full prices at the stores. And for all this sort of stuff...

and he gives out a lot of favors too he's like a robin hood figure he gets really loved and people say the difference between deloro and a saint is that deloro actually delivers miracles faster yeah that's a pretty solid quote i mean i'm not entirely sure crime went down i guess with all these robin hood guys it just means that he's doing all of it but um i guess i would take a dozen of him before a single one of the zeta so you got into last time so uh

Yeah, I guess. Better? Maybe. No, I think it does go down. You know, Naples is known for like pickpockets, like petty street crime. I think even back then, I'm pretty sure he just like shuts that shit down right away. But yeah, I mean, he's still moving tons of drugs. So he's importing cocaine from Colombia through Spain.

heroin from Afghanistan through Turkey and Eastern Europe, and hash from Morocco through Spain. And interestingly enough, he actually isn't doing this through the port. He's not smoking it through that. He's going overland because he thought the customs officials at the port were too greedy.

So although drugs are his main business, he also has a profitable counterfeit brand named Goods Business where he would wholesale all over the world, you know, fancy Italian brands like Gucci, Prada, Dolce. Some of the counterfeits were made by the same Italian factories that produced the originals and were exactly the same, while others were just shitty knockoffs. I think Gamora, the book, and the show actually go deep into this. But at some point, his organization is said to be earning $200 million a year.

Actually, never mind. 200 million euros a year. And that's when the euro was kind of worth something back then. So, you know, looking good.

By the mid-1990s, DeLauro has become a recluse, right? He rarely leaves his house. He has the same simple house he had grown up in as a child, but it's expanded and heavily fortified and guarded, just like Warren Buffett. And you also, I mean, you know Buffett's probably got shooters too, just like this guy does all over the neighborhood. So DeLauro, he only has contact with his family and a few trusted lieutenants, and he hardly ever speaks on the phone.

And he talks in like coded sparse language so that even if outsiders were paying attention, they wouldn't be able to understand any of it. But then he's still completely off the radar. And while there's the occasional in-clan murder, it happens so rarely and cleanly that police still don't even know the existence of the Delor clan and how powerful it was. But of course, in this world, all good things must come to an end. One of his former associates,

He's a leader of a small clan. He gets out of prison. He wants his Piazza back. There's another guy running it, though. He can't get it back, so he decides to go to war. He kills five of Delorio's closest guys, injures a bunch more of them. Delorio's guys go after him. He flees up north, and these guys kind of go rogue, and they kill his mom and his uncle, and they fuck up a few more of his family members. Here we go. It's the indiscriminate slaughter we knew would show up at some point eventually. I mean, maybe he should have stuck to the Mickey Mouse Gucci bags.

I mean, he was sticking to it. He was doing that. Things got out of hand. So these guys, they'd actually gone rogue. And Deloro ends up killing them to calm everything down because he doesn't approve of what they were doing. That guy, though, the guy who goes up north, he gets arrested a few months later. He ends up talking, including giving info on LaMonica's killing. It's not enough to really bring Deloro or his clan down at all, law enforcement-wise, but his name's out there. He makes the papers. The clan is publicized for the first time, which...

It's always the beginning of the end. And of course, soon enough, the Italian police, they start looking into him. Then in 1998, the Italian cops, they get a big break for a pretty hilarious Italian reason. One of his sons, DeLauro's sons, is misbehaving at school so much that the teacher slaps him

Italians, man, you know, they know what to do with your spoiled, loud-ass kids. Like a little back-of-the-hand action never hurt anyone. Yeah, we've actually just put the It's Okay To Beat Your Kids t-shirt on the merch store as well so people can go there. Maybe we should go with a little back-of-the-hand action never hurt anyone before we go with that. So I don't know if that's the...

the right attitude. But what are the incident... Well, I mean, you did say prostitution is fun. So, I mean, the two things combined would suggest some of your views. That's not true. That is, I said it sounded more fun to run prostitution, gambling, and drugs than to extort shopkeepers, which, I mean, that's... I don't know. You'd rather be extorting some, like, fucking hard-working bodega guy? Yeah, I mean... For shame. You're protesting a little too much for me, but yeah, sure, go for it. Well, anyway...

Word of the incident travels fast. When the kid returns home, he actually gets yelled at by Deloro. So the teacher has Deloro's support, but a few members of his clan, they see it as disrespect. And without Deloro telling them to go do it, they go to the school and they slap the teacher around.

Teacher files a complaint, doesn't know who DeLauro is. He's summoned by the police station for a conversation where a mugshot is taken. He denies any knowledge of the incident. He kind of says he's to the shopkeeper. You know, he is eventually released, but the police soon pick up a lot of chatter on the wire about this incident with Pasquale. And it becomes clear that DeLauro, who cops thought was just some like minor player, is in fact the boss.

Delora picks up that they're onto him. He goes really underground now. He's sleeping in like empty apartments, moving locations all the time, traveling abroad, and just really, really laying low. Still,

No one is willing to speak to the police, even though they know who he is now because of, you know, the Amurta. The cops do end up getting a couple of wiretaps up and they start building evidence. It takes years, but by 2002, they issue arrest warrants for DeLauro and 60 members of his clan. A bunch are arrested. DeLauro evades arrest. Rumors spread he's all over the world. He's added to Italy's most wanted list. But the truth is, he's actually just hiding out in Secondigliano in like an old woman's apartment. If you've seen Gamora, you know what I'm talking about.

In 2004, one of his sons dies in an accident and DeLauro is grief stricken. He eventually decides to hand over power to his oldest son, Cosimo, who is a bit of a playboy and kind of surrounded by all these young shooters. Yeah, I mean, to be fair, if your name is Cosimo, I think you have to be a bit of a playboy at least.

Yeah, you can't not. Otherwise, like, you know, this doesn't work. So he's arrogant. He's hotheaded. You know, think of the oldest son of a mafia boss who ruined everything. He thinks his father is soft and he decides that the whole independent contractor thing that built the clan isn't working out. So he says no more. They're all employees now. They need to buy all their product from him and he's going to determine the rates, how he sees fit. DeLauro tries to get his son to calm down, but he's just not having it. And what follows ends up being one of the deadliest wars in Camorra history.

Cosimo and the young guns end up fighting DeLauro's old guard, who are known as the secessionists. 60 people are killed in a short period. Cosimo's guys at one point torture and kill the girlfriend of one of the secessionists, and then they burn her body. People are pissed off. This is too far. An arrest warrant is issued for Cosimo. He goes into hiding, but he sends so many texts to various women that he's captured within weeks in January of 2005, and the war only ends up lasting a couple of months. Eventually, the

Paulo, Delorio, the father, he has to strike a peace deal for his idiot son because the secessionists vastly outnumber his loyal guards and Cosimo's boys. So it's not favorable to him, but orders are stored to the area. The secessionists, they get most of the spoils and they form their own clan. And Paulo and the Delorios, they're left with one apartment complex and an alley.

Later that year, the police finally find Paolo DeLauro living in some random old woman's apartment, just kind of hidden. During his trial, he sees all the charges and the new ones that are piled on. He dismisses his lawyer, tells him there's no point in carrying on, gets a public defender. He's convicted of three consecutive 30-year prison sentences in May of 2006. And his idiot son, he's also sent away for life. War breaks out again in 2006 between the DeLauro loyals and the secessionists.

Then the secessionists, they split into rival factions and the bloodshed just continues to rage for years. The same thing when one clan is really strong, there's peace. But the aftermath of when they split up, it's just bloody affairs until another clan can seize total control.

And there we have it. That is the Kimura. There's still a lot more we can do on them. So maybe we'll have a new one done on some of the other clans relatively soon or some of the modern day kind of happenings that's going on. But, you know, that's the beauty of this podcast. There's just, there's no rules. You never know what we're going to do next. It's just two guys fighting the system one 45 minute podcast at a time. Yeah, that was really well told. Yeah, we should definitely do some modern ones on the Kimura like that.

taking over the Netherlands, pumping money into Germany. There's tons of stuff. By the way, I want to shout out Henry Smith, one of our listeners. He actually knew what that random record store I was mentioning last week was in London. And I should say again, like guys, if you really hate adverts, which I mean, you know, all of us pay for the Patreon and they are going to disappear quicker than one of Cosimo's girlfriends. Or, or if you want to support us,

Advertise with us. Let's make it all happen. We'll make it all happen. Painshop.com slash Art of World Podcast. Until next week, be safe.