Umberto Ammaturo

Umberto Ammaturo (; born May 21, 1941), also known as 'o pazzo ("the mad one"), is an Italian former criminal and a member of the Neapolitan Camorra, a Mafia-type organisation in Italy. He specialized in cocaine trafficking from South America. He was included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy until his capture in May 1993. A month later he decided to become a pentito, a state witness breaking omertà, or code of silence.

Early life and start of criminal career Ammaturo was born in a large Neapolitan family. His father ran a wine business that suffered economic difficulties. On top of that, his mother died when Umberto was just seven years old, leaving his father to look after seven small children.

Ammaturo was related to Felice Malvento (his brother Antonio was married to Luisa Malvento), a cigarette smuggler with contacts to Sicilian mafiosi such as Tommaso Buscetta. He was first arrested in 1962. In 1965, the handsome Ammaturo met Pupetta Maresca a former beauty queen who had made international headlines in the 1950s when she killed in revenge the murderer of her husband, a Camorra boss named Pasquale Simonetti. She had met a lot of sympathy among ordinary Neapolitans for her deed. Maresca bore him twins.

Ammaturo received serious police attention when he was arrested again in 1972 with Nunzio Guida, the Camorra’s leader in Milan. In 1974 he was caught smuggling cocaine through the diplomatic bag of the consul of Panama with Aniello Nuvoletta. Two years later he feigned to be ill with cancer and was sent to a hospital from which he escaped.

Camorra war against Cutolo During the war in 1980-1983 between the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO) headed by Raffaele Cutolo, and the Nuova Famiglia (NF) headed by Carmine Alfieri, Ammaturo and Maresca sided with the NF, in particular with Antonio Bardellino of the Casalesi clan, against Cutolo’s NCO. Bardellino and Ammaturo were involved in many murders of members of the NCO.

While free and provided with a new identity in exchange for his testimonies, he admitted to killing Semerari and personally decapitating him in a rare interview with La Repubblica newspaper in May 2010. In exchange for financial support, Semerari offered psychiatric evaluations to members of various criminal organizations, most notably the Camorra and Banda della Magliana. He had made deals with both Raffaele Cutolo's NCO, as well as with the NF. Ammaturo considered him to be a traitor siding with the enemy in their fierce criminal war.

Cocaine baron Contrary to conventional Camorra bosses Ammaturo remained a loner. He had no specific territory, no crime family and specialised entirely in cocaine trafficking, above all with Bardellino. The drug trade gave him wealth and power, although he lacked social control and even less political influence in Italy. The particular success of Ammaturo was the result of his innovation to set up a triangular system of cocaine smuggling, involving several African countries as staging posts, rather than just using the traditional South American-European axis. He diversified his interests on a global scale, buying a tourist centre in Senegal through a Swiss bank account. and spent three months in jail in Brasília awaiting extradition. However, he managed to escape, after paying some US$100,000 in bribes and was flown to Peru. In retaliation his brother Antonio was killed. His testimony resulted in 40 arrests in May 1994, amongst them Michele Zaza and Luigi Giuliano.

Ammaturo entered the witness protection program and was provided with a new identity. His properties were seized.