Rosetta Cutolo

Rosetta Cutolo (; 1 January 1937 – 14 October 2023) was an Italian criminal and the sister of the Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo, head of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. As her brother spent most of his time behind bars from where he sent out his instructions, the everyday running of the enterprise was entrusted to his older sister, Rosetta. Her nickname was , meaning "ice eyes".

Background Rosetta, a grey-haired, pious-looking woman, lived alone for years with her mother in Ottaviano, near Naples, tending her roses. She was the power behind her brother for over 15 years, passing on his orders from jail and cultivating his devoted followers outside. Without her the NCO would have collapsed, according to a resident from Ottaviano.

While her megalomaniacal brother created scandal by giving interviews and making speeches in the courtroom, Rosetta kept a low profile. She had a love-hate relationship with her brother. According to their lawyer Paolo Trofino, they had a stormy relationship: "They often have rows. She thinks he talks too much. She wishes he wouldn’t give interviews."

Fugitive Rosetta Cutolo negotiated with South American cocaine barons, narrowly failed to blow up police headquarters, and was glamourized in a film, The Professor. She participated in a high-level meeting with representatives of the Sicilian Mafia and Camorra clans to try to put an end to the war between the NCO and their rivals from the Nuova Famiglia, together with Cutolo's right-hand man Vincenzo Casillo. She was not seen in public thereafter for over 10 years, and directed operations from a series of safe houses in different cities. She had been sentenced in absentia in 1990 to nine years in prison on charges of Mafia association, later reduced to five years. Prosecutors alleged she had been running her brother's organisation. She was acquitted on nine murder charges. Rosetta had persuaded the authorities she was harmless, and her frumpy image definitely helped.

However, according to prosecutor Antonio Laudati, who questioned Cutolo many times, his sister was the true force behind the NCO: "Her brother has always been under the power of her forceful personality. He's been in prison for 30 years; during that time she became director of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata in her own right."