Murder Bardellino, the reconstruction of the new agreements
Formia - Vincenzo Di Caterino, according to the pentiti, is the pawn that led to the readmission of the Bardellinos into the clan since 2019

02/08/2023 1pm
It is a slow and meticulous work that lies behind the turning point in the investigations into the ambush of Gustavo Bardellino, which are carrying with them investigations into the internal and external reorganization of the Casalesi clan, where between repentance and arrests it has been created for a while a clear power vacuum for years. And it is always the collaborators of justice who offer the evolutionary framework. In the search decrees that brought the DDAs of Rome and Naples to Formia, we already start from an emerging figure, that of Vincenzo Di Caterino, apparently a minor figure, from Santa Maria Capua Vetere, nicknamed o'piatto, very rich, powerful and unscrupulous to the point to weave a renewed pact with the Bardellino family, expelled from the Caserta area and never readmitted. Di Caterino, on the other hand, only looks at money, to do with car showrooms and drugs. He was arrested last year but in the meantime the pentiti continued to speak.

due to consolidated criminal balances that occurred following the upper hand of the group of Casalesi headed by Francesco Schiavone known as Sandokan, Mario Iovine, Vincenzo De Falco over the faction headed by Antonio Bardellino, with whom a violent confrontation had taken place at the end of the 1980s aimed at the territorial dominance of the association". The Dda believes that since 2019 a new pact has been born between the Bardellinos (especially the cousins ??Calisto and Gustavo), and the rising star Vincenzo Di Caterino, apparently the only one able to digest a rapprochement with the exiled Bardellino . The crimes with the mafia method configured in the search decree would have been committed between Casal di Principe and Formia, including the south of the Pontine as a whole.

Among the pentiti who provided the magistrates with information on the new arrangements is Antonio Lanza, former head of the Bidognetti area. The former affiliate, speaking to the public prosecutor Maurizio Giordano about the role that Vincenzo Di Caterino, alias 'o platter, would have had in the clan, revealed, among other things, links between the underworld of the Aversano countryside and the Roman one: « Di Caterino is an affiliate of the Schiavones and dealt in drugs and weapons for them. Before my last release – Lanza recounted – he carried out extortion together with Vincenzo Cirillo, brother of Francesco known as 'coscia fina' », sentenced to 30 years for the murder of Domenico Noviello. Lanza stated that, between 2021 and 2022, Di Caterino also became close to extra-regional mafia groups: "I learned that he carried out activities related to drugs and weapons also for the Spada, active in the areas of Frosinone and Rome". Bonds that were not shared, however, by Lanza, who for this reason was removed from the fief of the Aversano countryside. Lanza's story, if it were to be ascertained by the investigators, would demonstrate how the Casalesi mafia, especially the one represented by the new recruits, is now willing to relate to other structures with which it would hardly have collaborated until a few years ago. Lanza, alias 'o Piotta, 47, began collaborating with the Naples DDA at the beginning of 2023; in November 2022 he was among the 37 suspects reached by the precautionary custody order of the investigation aimed at dismantling the Bidognetti gangs (of which he was a part) and Schiavone, which had reorganized involving historic affiliates released from prison and new associates. The investigation that brought Lanza into play also involved Di Caterino, accused by the DDA of Naples of having been part of the Schiavone group.