Giovanni Pandico (born June 24, 1944) is a former Italian Camorrista who was a member of the
Nuova Camorra Organizzata
The Nuova Camorra Organizzata (Italian: New Organized Camorra) was an Italian Camorra criminal organization founded in the late 1970s by a Neapolitan Camorrista, Raffaele Cutolo, in the region of Campania. It was also known by the initials NCO. ...
(NCO), a
organization in
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
. Pandico rose to become one of Camorra boss,
Raffaele Cutolo
Raffaele Cutolo (; 4 November 1941 – 17 February 2021) was an Italian crime boss, leader of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. Cutolo had a variety of nicknames including o Vangelo'' ("the gos ...
's underwriters within the organization. After twelve years of imprisonment, he decided to collaborate with Italian justice and subsequently became a
pentito
''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public ...
in 1983. Pandico's revelations brought a massive crackdown on the NCO and led to the arrests of over 856 NCO members and affiliates on June 17, 1983, a day labeled by the Neapolitan press as the black day of the NCO.
[Jacquemet, ''Credibility in Court'', pp. 1]
Biography
Early years
Giovanni Pandico was born in
Liveri (
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
), where his father was a lieutenant in the Italian army. Leaving
Sassari
Sassari (, ; sdc, Sàssari ; sc, Tàtari, ) is an Italian city and the second-largest of Sardinia in terms of population with 127,525 inhabitants, and a Functional Urban Area of about 260,000 inhabitants. One of the oldest cities on the island, ...
shortly after the
Second World War
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
, his mother brought him to
Liveri, a small town on the outskirts of
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
where his Greek grandfather had first taken up residence. During one of his first days on the witness stand, Pandico commented on his Greek roots: ''"My family has Greek origins and in
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, Pandicos means the just man".''
[Jacquemet, ''Credibility in Court'', pp. 71] By the age of 15, Pandico was already familiar with juvenile hall, having spent some years inside the Filangieri, the Neapolitan juvenile detention centre. At the age of 19, he was arrested for attempting to bomb the barracks of the
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri (, also , ; formally ''Arma dei Carabinieri'', "Arm of Carabineers"; previously ''Corpo dei Carabinieri Reali'', "Royal Carabineers Corps") are the national gendarmerie of Italy who primarily carry out domestic and foreign polic ...
and thus incarcerated in the infamous
Poggioreale
Poggioreale ( Sicilian: ''Poggiuriali'') is a ghost town and ''comune'' in the province of Trapani, western Sicily, southern Italy, located in the Belice
The Belice, , is a river of western Sicily. It is about long. From its main source nea ...
prison of Naples.
[
It was during this period that he met prominent Camorrista and head of the NCO, Raffaele Cutolo. According to his later testimony in the courtroom, Pandico was initiated into the Camorra by Cutolo on December 8, 1963, by the classical ritual of blood baptism: a small cut on the base of the index finger of the right hand. Later, in a letter to Cutolo, he would recall the event as ''"our first camorristic dawn with all our splendor."''][
Pandico was eventually acquitted of the bombing charges and released from prison. While living in freedom, he survived on odd, low paying jobs and was occasionally sent back to the Poggioreale prison for minor offenses. During one of his prison terms, he was reunited with Giorgio Della Pietra, another native of Liveri, who was serving a 24-year prison term for murder. It was during his stay with Della Pietra that Pandico came to the conclusion that it was his own father and mother, together with the mayor of Liveri, Nicola Nappi and his brother Salvatore, who had conspired to have Della Pietra convicted of the murder of another brother of the mayor, Michele Nappi, on April 3, 1956.][
]
Assassination attempt on Mayor Nicola Nappi
Pandico was inclined by this piece of information to seek revenge on the people responsible for his friend's incarceration. On June 18, 1970, two days after his release from prison, he went to city hall with the intention to kill the mayor, Nicola Nappi. In his rampage through the corridors of the city hall, he first killed Giuseppe Gaetano, a city supervisor who tried to block him. He then proceeded to shoot and kill Guido Adrianopoli, a clerk who had appeared in the corridor to see what was going on. Finally, he shot and wounded the mayor and employee, Pasquale Scola, who were both trying to find some protection in the mayor's desk.[
Pandico was arrested the following day and immediately confessed to the crime. He stated that he wanted to get even with the mayor, the mayor's brother Salvatore, and his own mother and father who had testified in the criminal trial against his friend, Giorgio Della Pietra. But he later changed his mind and declared that Mayor Nappi had put a contract on Giuseppe Gaetano. He claimed that Gaetano was blackmailing the mayor and that Nappi arranged to be wounded in order to confuse the reconstruction of the crime and so distance himself from the murder. After a brief psychiatric examination which had cleared Pandico to stand trial, he was defined as a ''"pure paranoid individual, able however to understand very well his own situation."'' As a result, he was convicted of multiple murder, multiple attempted murder and lying with malice by the judges of the Corte d'Assise in Naples, and sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment, in total.][ He had been sentenced to three years of imprisonment for a slander charge in 1973.][Enzo Tortora: Justice betrayed]
, Panorama, August 27, 1986
Career in the NCO
In prison, Pandico increased his knowledge by voraciously reading written documents, particularly legal papers, and soon began helping other inmates in their dealing with the law. Thus, he soon developed a prodigious career in the mostly illiterate Neapolitan prison system. He was soon transferred to the prison of Porto Azzurro, where he was hired by the prison administration to help other inmates write personal letters, appeals to judges and other bureaucratic letters. Later, he was again transferred to the prison of Ascoli Piceno, which was a traditional stronghold of Raffaele Cutolo's NCO. He was moved to a cell next to Cutolo and assisted the crime boss in his daily routine, which included making coffee for him, serving food, but above all, he wrote letters on Cutolo's behalf, using a stamp with Cutolo's signature.[
Pandico's new status of ''scrivano'' (writer) coupled with his close contact and relationship with the boss greatly boosted his prestige and standing within the organization. He had now gained a reputation as a ''"man of honor".'' However, Pandico was increasingly at odds with the younger, more determined members of the NCO who despised him due to his arrogance and his desire to always know everything. It was only Cutolo's vested interest in Pandico that prevented any violence against him.][
]
Becoming a Pentito
However, things would later change dramatically for Giovanni Pandico when, following the scandal of the Cirillo affair, President Sandro Pertini
Alessandro "Sandro" Pertini (; 25 September 1896 – 24 February 1990) was an Italian socialist politician who served as the president of Italy from 1978 to 1985.
Early life
Born in Stella (Province of Savona) as the son of a wealthy landown ...
personally intervened to have Cutolo transferred to the high security prison on the island of Asinara
Asinara is an Italian island of in area. The name is Italian for "donkey-inhabited", but it is thought to derive from the Latin "sinuaria", and meaning sinus-shaped. The island is virtually uninhabited. The census of population of 2001 lists o ...
, Sardinia. Pandico realized that the younger leaders of the organization would never give him the respect that he wanted. After attempting unsuccessfully to improve his position by meeting with the NCO leadership, he asked the prison administration to put him in isolation. Two days later, on March 21, 1983, Pandico summoned the warden and announced his desire to defect from the NCO and cooperate with the authorities. Pandico also claimed to be a godfather and senior figure in the NCO.[
Giovanni Pandico's decision to become a pentito was received as a big surprise by the Italian law enforcement agencies. This was because although he had spent the past twelve years in prison, he had never come under suspiscion as being a member of the NCO.][Di Luzio, ''Culture in communication'', pp. 146–147] Pandico soon proved to be one of the most important pentiti to ever be involved in the Maxi Trial
The Maxi Trial ( it, Maxiprocesso) was a criminal trial against the Sicilian Mafia that took place in Palermo, Sicily. The trial lasted from 10 February 1986 (the first day of the Corte d'Assise) to 30 January 1992 (the final day of the Supreme ...
against the NCO. He was the second senior member of the NCO to turn informant, the first being Pasquale Barra
Pasquale Barra (; 18 January 1942 – 27 February 2015) was an Italian Camorrista who was a senior member and hitman for the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples. Barra has the distinction of being the first NCO membe ...
, who realizing that Cutolo was prepared to let him be killed, decided to reveal details of NCO murders in order to gain greater protection.[Behan, ''See Naples and Die'', pp. 316] A week after announcing his decision, he was flown via helicopter to the Neapolitan Operative Center of the Carabinieri, where his visit was eagerly awaited by the prosecuting attorneys, Lucio Di Pietro and Felice Di Persia.[
In his confession to the two district attorneys, Pandico presented himself as the betrayed man and expressed his disillusion in the organization:
:''"I intend to tell everything I know about the organization called NCO which I belonged and from which I want to dissociate myself because the rules of honor which had characterized the NCO up to now, no longer exist. A once perfect organization in which I believed, with a division of rules and hierarchies that are always respected, is now under the arbitrary will of different people who do not rely on the leaders of the organization and due to a lack of discipline go against the common interest of the organization, producing an unnecessary amount of violence and terror. I thought a great deal about it, and I have decided to talk. I want to do so in full spontaneity, having realized the uselessness of belonging to an organization devoid of all rules."''][Jacquemet, ''Credibility in Court'', pp. 74]
By this time, Pandico also held his former boss and mentor, Raffaele Cutolo, responsible for his problems and the general situation. In an open letter to Cutolo which was published in a Naples daily paper, he said: ''"When you will be left alone, when all the camorristic people will have deserted you, you will take off your mask. Maybe only to breathe some fresh air. Otherwise you will end up choked by all these dead men who will scream at you: for what we have died?"''[
After more than a week of interrogation and 300 pages of deposition, Pandico was identified as a true pentito. His deposition was released to the press two months later on June, at the time of the crackdown against the NCO, as the most significant evidence behind the arrests of 200 individuals.][Di Luzio, ''Culture in communication'', pp. 148] Overall, more than 1,000 would later be indicted for the crime of association with a ''"Mafia-like organization"'' called the Nuova Camorra Organizzata. The resulting Maxi trials lasted three years and required the participation of nine different judges and scores of legal clerks, attorneys, witnesses and military policemen.[ Pandico was also sentenced to two years of imprisonment, for slander charges against prison staff, by the Tribunal of ]Livorno
Livorno () is a port city on the Ligurian Sea on the western coast of Tuscany, Italy. It is the capital of the Province of Livorno, having a population of 158,493 residents in December 2017. It is traditionally known in English as Leghorn (pronou ...
in 1984.[
]
Testifying against his former colleagues
From April 10, 1985 to April 15, 1985, Pandico took the stand and provided an unchallenged five-day testimony against his former associates and provided evidence for the crime of association in the NCO against many defendants.[Jacquemet, ''Credibility in Court'', pp. 2–4] After his first testimony, he had come to be perceived as the most reliable of the pentiti by both the press as well as law enforcement agencies. The Italian newspapers dubbed him ''"The Supercomputer"'', due to his extraordinary memory and were scrambling to cover the new wealth of information that he had produced in the courtroom.[
On the second day of his testimony, Pandico reminisced about the actions of one of his own Camorristic godsons, Alfredo Guarnieri. Pandico testified that during this time when he and Guarnieri had shared the same cell, the latter had asked to be admitted into the NCO. Prior to an induction, an initiate had to prove his courage by executing a ''sgarro'', a test of personal violence needed by any member to fully become a Camorrista. Pandico agreed to this initiation and asked Guarnieri to murder his own sister-in-law, whom he deemed guilty of betraying the ]family honor
Family honor (or honour) is an abstract concept involving the perceived quality of worthiness and respectability that affects the social standing and the self-evaluation of a group of related people, both corporately and individually. The family ...
after the death of his brother. Moreover, he wanted her head cut off in an almost surgically precise way in order to create a cover up, and put on the grave of his brother.[
However, Guarnieri did not possess the necessary skill for the operation. Therefore, Pandico decided to teach him how to decapitate a person by showing him how to behead rabbits. He brought a dozen rabbits from the prison's canteen and with a sharpened spoon demonstrated how to sever their heads. He gave the novice some rabbits to practise on and when he became completely certain that Guarnieri knew the proper decapitation techniques, he sent him to behead his sister-in-law. This murder was never accomplished. The judges, lawyers, and audience reacted to Pandico's story with a mixed reaction of interest, shock, horror and bemused curiosity.][
Among his many other important revelations was the claim that Italian businessman, and former ]SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
officer, Francesco Pazienza
Francesco Pazienza (born in 1946, Monteparano) is an Italian businessman, and former officer of the Italian military intelligence agency, SISMI. As of April 2007, he has been paroled to the community of Lerici, after serving many years in prison, ...
had met the failed Turkish assassin, Mehmet Ali Ağca
Mehmet Ali Ağca (; born 9 January 1958) is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison. After serving ...
, in his prison cell at Rome's Ascoli Piceno. This claim was also made by Ağca himself in his trial. From his New York prison, Pazienza denied ever having visited Ağca.
In the first set of trials resulting from the 1983 crackdown, Pandico's testimony along with those of many other pentiti such as Pasquale Barra, Giovanni Melluso
Giovanni Melluso (born 1956) was an Italian criminal. He became a significant informant against the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples. He would be used by the Italian Justice Department to testify about the NCO's sh ...
and Luigi Riccio
Luigi Ginginiello Riccio (born 1957) is a former Italian Camorrista who is now a pentito. While initially a member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata, Riccio switched sides and joined the rival Nuova Famiglia only eight months before his collaborati ...
were found reliable and convincing enough to become a significant factor in the convictions of more than 800 defendants.[ However, many of Pandico's accusations were later proven to be unfounded, and several of the convicted defendants were released.][ In a separate trial in ]Salerno
Salerno (, , ; nap, label= Salernitano, Saliernë, ) is an ancient city and ''comune'' in Campania (southwestern Italy) and is the capital of the namesake province, being the second largest city in the region by number of inhabitants, after ...
in which Pandico was called to testify, the prosecuting magistrate stated that ''"Pandico's repentance was one of his many opportunities to show off his histrionic personality made up of mystifications, ample but void gestures, bickering accusations and lies.[
]
False testimony against Enzo Tortora
Giovanni Pandico was one of the eight former NCO pentiti who falsely accused the popular TV anchorman
A news presenter – also known as a newsreader, newscaster (short for "news broadcaster"), anchorman or anchorwoman, news anchor or simply an anchor – is a person who presents news during a news program on TV, radio or the Internet. ...
Enzo Tortora of NCO membership and cocaine
Cocaine (from , from , ultimately from Quechuan languages, Quechua: ''kúka'') is a central nervous system (CNS) stimulant mainly recreational drug use, used recreationally for its euphoria, euphoric effects. It is primarily obtained from t ...
trafficking. He mentioned Tortora's name while examining the lists of the members of the NCO. He claimed to have received this information directly from Raffaele Cutolo, in the course of a discussion which was supposedly carried out in the Ascoli Piceno prison during the second half of 1981. Pandico underlined that Tortora's task within the organization was that of selling the drugs and taking the money abroad.[
He claimed that Tortora was mentioned accidentally while discussing a stock of drugs, when Cutolo allegedly said: ''"let's not behave like Tortora", "the one with the parrot".'' However, Cutolo would have been referring to a misdeed committed by Tortora, that is, a stock of drugs worth 50-60 million lire which he was in debt of with the organization and especially with Barbaro and Alcamo, a stock which Tortora had supposedly sold but not paid to the NCO during the years between 1977 and 1978.][ Tortora was detained for years before being cleared of the charge by an appeals court. He developed cancer and died soon after the case was finally solved, some say because of the emotional ]stress
Stress may refer to:
Science and medicine
* Stress (biology), an organism's response to a stressor such as an environmental condition
* Stress (linguistics), relative emphasis or prominence given to a syllable in a word, or to a word in a phrase ...
of his imprisonment.[Schneider, ''Reversible Destiny'', pp. 144]
References
Further reading
*Jacquemet, Marco (1996). ''Credibility in Court: Communicative Practices in the Camorra Trials'', Cambridge University Press
*Di Luzio, Aldo (2001). ''Culture in communication: Analysis of intercultural situations'', John Benjamins Publishing Company
*Behan, Tom (2002). ''See Naples and Die: The Camorra and Organized Crime'', Tauris Parke Paperbacks
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pandico, Giovanni
1944 births
Living people
People from Sassari
Nuova Camorra Organizzata
Camorristi
Pentiti