Italy Wipes Out Camorra Crime Gang

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1026, 17 July 1930, Page 16

Italy Wipes Out Camorra Crime Gang

Society Destroyed After a Century MUSSOLINI’S ORDERS The camorra, dreaded slaying, robbing and blackmailing society of Naples and Southern Italy, has about vanished on the hundredth anniversary of its inception in Naples. The society was founded in IS3O.

Simultaneously local authorities in Italy announce a decided decrease in the number of crimes of blood. For the fiscal year just ended hospitals reported admitting 256 wounded or dying persons, whereas in 1925, only five years ago, this number was 460. Morover, the figures of 1925 included only Naples, while those of 1930 include the whole province and embrace a greater population for the city itself. The determined work of the Neapolitan police, inspired by the stern orders of Premier Mussolini, has in eight years wiped out the camorra almost completely. Their later arrest was in May, when they caught Gennaro Aiello, who fled to New York in 1926, after the killing of Antonio Amendola, and lived there for four years before being discovered.

Aiello was known in camorra circles as “Capariello.” Accused with him aro seven other camorrists. All are held in the Naples prisou. The camorra history furnished a fascinating chapter in Italy’s varied life. But the better citizens of Naples felt that the early colour and romance of the society was small compensation for its, later icy grip of terror upon the cit^. The camorristi are gone, but their influence is still felt by the ordinary crooks and criminals. These latter, for instance, use many of the camoristic signals—a cats meow for the approach of a policeman; a cock’s crow for the approach of a victim; a long whistling sigh if the victim is accompanied; a sneeze to show that the victim was not worth-while. Origin of the Camorra The camorra originated in the prisons of Naples. Its first members were victims of oppression by the Bourbon rulers of Naples. Prisoners whose terms had expired carried the society into the city in 1830, and there it was born into the open. It grew in power and wealth until it leagued itself with princes, churchmen and statesmen. Then it abandoned politics and turned to robbery, smuggling, blackmailing and illegal lotteries. Because it was so powerful and the police of Naples so aenaemic, merchants hired camorristi to superintend the loading and unloading of merchandise to prevent other thieves from stealing the goods. Members of the camorra even were taken into the police service for special work, the philosophy of setting a thief to catch a thief. Attempts to stamp out the camorra were made without effect in 1862 and again in 1877 and 1900. In the last year a suit in the courts revealed such astounding power of the camorristi that the national government dissolved the municipality of Naples and appointed a commissioner to rule the city.