Romano converted to Islam.

Ex-mafioso Catello Romano opens the door: neglect of omerta
Ex-mafioso Catello Romano (33) is serving a thirty-year sentence for the murder of a politician. Behind bars he wrote a thesis about his gangster life and the Italian became world news because he confessed to three unsolved murders. 'My goal is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of crime and its possible prevention.'
Crime
Erik Brouwer
Mar 10 2024 | 15:39


Catello Romano
The converted Muslim sat behind a computer in prison and wrote: 'My name is Catello Romano. I am 33 years old and have been in prison for almost half my life, fourteen years in a row. I committed terrible crimes and was convicted of murder on behalf of the Camorra. What follows is my criminal history.' These are the first words of the most spectacular Italian dissertation ever. The author: ex-Camorra member and serial killer Catello Romano. He is currently in custody in Padua and will not be released anytime soon. Not even now that he breaks the omerta and reveals how the Camorra operated in his town.

Catello Romano was born in 2001 and grew up in Castellammare di Stabia, a town of 14,000 inhabitants near Naples. His neighborhood of Scanzano is a Camorra stronghold. Retailers must pay protection money. The waste industry is completely controlled by the mafiosi. Many politicians and municipal officials cooperate with them. Agents receive money if they ignore their crimes or pass on information from secret documents. Catello's ordinary parents hated the Camorra and according to them, their son also had to realize that the mafiosi on their scooters were canaglia , scum. At first he seemed to listen and decided to become a police officer. According to him, things went wrong after his parents' divorce. He was laughed at and verbally abused on the street. Were the Romanos real Catholics?

Crazy mafia boss
Catello fell under the spell of the Camorra. His favorite film was Il camorrista from 1986 by Giuseppe Tornatore, about the deranged mafia boss Raffaele Cutolo. Catello calls him 'O Prufessore' (the Professor) in his thesis and he writes: 'The Professor was the first to occupy my inner world.'

The Professor was the leader of Nuova Camorra Organizzata, a gang that had to restore the former glory of the Neapolitan mafia. He was put on earth by God to save the Neapolitan people, could bring the dead to life and make people without legs walk again. Psychiatrists declared him psychotic and insane after his arrest, the judge sentenced him to life in prison in 1963 for many murders and he died behind bars in 2021.


One afternoon, Catello met a Camorra member eighteen years his senior named Renato Cavaliere. Catello describes him in his dissertation as 'my underworld buddy'. Renato introduced him to other Camorra members and explained how the organization worked in their town. The clan leader was Vincenzo D'Alessandro. Their clan was therefore called the D'Alessandro clan. Catello joined the Camorra, he started stealing, threatening, suddenly had the budget to dress well, bought Paciotti boots, a Prada jacket and a Rolex. He cherished his jackets and ties, had worked hard for them and 'made many sacrifices for them by taking on humble and difficult jobs'.

Non-criminal townspeople were afraid of him, the most beautiful girls from his town suddenly responded to his advances

Catello describes in his dissertation why the Camorra became extra attractive to him. He developed an increasingly poor relationship with his father, almost never saw his mother after the divorce and filled the 'void' by replacing real family with 'a new family'. He looked for role models and they were the mafiosi 'who were at the top of the hierarchy'. Catello didn't want to look like his father or follow in his footsteps, why would he? His life as a Camorra member seemed to have only advantages at first. Non-criminal fellow citizens were afraid of him, the most beautiful girls in his city suddenly responded to his advances, even in the clubs of Naples they came to him because of his 'new criminal identity'.

Crucial date in his life: February 3, 2009. Renato and Catello met two other Camorra members that day: Salvatore Belviso and Raffaele Polito, the first cousin of clan boss Vincenzo D'Alessandro. Their mission was to kill Luigi Tommasino, a Democratic Party councilor in Castellammare. Catello was not told why, he only knew that Tommasino was around forty and he saw in a photo that Tommasino had a round head with only some hair on the sides.

Catello was given the task of following the council member and putting his schedule on paper. He did so and on February 3, 2009, the attack could hardly have gone wrong. The target was driving his Lancia Musa through Viale Europa in his town of Castellammare di Stabia at around half past four in the afternoon. Next to him sat his 13-year-old son Raffaele. Tommasino was passing by the Unieuro store as Renato and Catello rode by on a Piaggio Beverly scooter. They fired thirteen times with a Czech-made 9 caliber Luger pistol. Bullets landed in Tommasino's head. The councilor fell on the steering wheel of the Lancia, the car swerved to the left and crashed into the Unieuro shop window. His son Raffaele was not hit, that was not the intention, Camorra members do not kill family members. Journalists and carabinieri traveled to Viale Europa. The mayor burst into tears when he heard the news and urged all residents of his city to rise up against the Camorra 'to show that Castellammare di Stabia is not afraid of the mafia'.

Detectives concluded that the gunmen were professional sicari (hitmen). What was the motive and who gave the order? Tommasino was first described as 'not very visible' and 'not a strong personality'. He had a clean criminal record and was described by colleagues at city hall as 'an impeccable politician'. Tommasino had an office above the boutique where his wife worked behind the counter. Agents went there to confiscate diaries, files and computers. Tommasino's brother Giovanni gave an interview to channel TG1 and said: "Luigi was killed because he condemned the Camorra infiltration of his party."

Regretful
After the murder, Catello returned to his Scanzano neighborhood, Raffaele went into hiding in a farm that the clan rented in the province of Siena. A few weeks after the murder, Raffaele called the police. He declined to give his name, but did say, "I know the names of those who killed Tommasino." The shooters were Catello Romano from Castellammare and Renato Cavaliere from the same town, known in the D'Alessandro clan as The Uncle. Salvatore Belviso had helped with the preparation. The three suspects were arrested.


Catello told police he wanted to become a pentito , regretfully. Carabinieri took him to a hotel and dictated to Catello what was expected of him as a pentito. He would be placed in a protection program, but in return he had to be fully open. Names, places, murders, crimes. Catello pretended to tell all when he confessed to killing Luigi Tommasino, but he didn't know he was a city councilor. He described in detail how the preparation had gone and how he had first followed Tommasino for two weeks. He had not committed any other murders, this was really his first liquidation.

Catello had only pretended to cooperate with the police, climbed out the window and fled to his girlfriend

Two days later, an officer opened his room door. Where was the pentito? Catello had only pretended to cooperate with the police, climbed out the window and fled to his girlfriend. He spent the night with her and then looked for a hiding place. Agents only found him after a month in the Caserta region and then he could no longer pretend to be a pentito. Catello didn't want that at all, he was proud to belong to the Camorra and bravado told the detectives that he was withdrawing all his so-called confessions.

First hypothesis about Tommasino's murder: he was indeed murdered because of his anti-Camorra attitude. After a thorough investigation, the municipal councilor turned out to be less virtuous than expected. A detective pointed out the "dangerous connection" the politician had with "prominent members of the D'Alessandro family." Tommasino was a childhood friend of Pasquale D'Alessandro, brother of clan leader Vincenzo. On behalf of the D'Alessandro clan, the municipal councilor arranged for family members of Camorra to get jobs at companies that worked for the municipality. The collaboration went well for a long time, but at the beginning of 2009 he did not keep an agreement. A few weeks before the murder, Tommasino had a conversation with two entrepreneurs about a parking garage in the city center. The clan members were angry about this, the entrepreneurs had not contacted the D'Alessandros and the parking garage had to be checked by them. Tommasino probably had to die over this issue, as a warning to other politicians who break agreements.

Lifetime
The trial against Catello and the others started on November 23, 2010. He was 21 years old and received a life sentence. His underworld buddy Renato was 39 years old and received the same sentence. Salvatore was sentenced to eighteen years, Raffaele to twelve years for solving the murder through his phone call. The judge wrote in the judgment: 'The murderers acted with their faces uncovered, in the city center and in the name of the D'Alessandro clan. The order to kill Tommasino came directly from the boss Vincenzo D'Alessandro, whose consent was needed to carry out the liquidation.' The attack was committed in the center of the city, 'in front of the terrified eyes of hundreds of people'. That made it extra bad and traumatic.

Catello was first imprisoned for six years in Catanzaro, the capital of Calabria. Italy's most dangerous mafiosi are guarded there as heavily as possible. His appeal was in 2016. Renato was now a sincere pentito and said: 'I was the leader. I was instructed by boss Vincenzo D'Alessandro to eliminate people who were hindering our interests, such as Tommasino. I ask his family for forgiveness for what I did. And they have a right to know the truth.”

The judge reduced his sentence to thirty years and Catello also received thirty years on appeal. They returned to their cells. Catello was visited there one morning by a man named Charlie Barnao, a professor from the University of Catanzaro who has been teaching the Sociology of Survival sub-study in Italian prisons for five years. Ex-criminals need to learn lessons by writing down their criminal history. Barnao previously helped Sicilian mafia boss Salvatore Curatolo, who was sentenced to life in prison, with his thesis on prison survival strategies and he worked with Camorra Godfather Sergio Ferraro, who had twenty years behind bars to write his thesis on 'socialization between mafia clans' . Both were awarded a sociology diploma and they were as happy with that as with a successful contract killing.

Catello's dissertation was entitled: Criminal Fascination . He described how his father often beat his mother and explained how the mafia became his new family. He wanted to be completely honest, so he confessed to crimes he had never told the police about.

On October 27, 2008, just before noon, two men were shot at in front of an abandoned bar on Via Castellammare near Castellammare di Stabia. They died instantly. Local journalists called it 'a brutal double murder'. Was the Camorra behind it? It certainly seemed that way.

Detectives cordoned off the area and interviewed witnesses. Two sicari appeared to have liquidated the two victims from a motorcycle. They did this 'in perfect Camorra style', it was reported the next day in the Corriere del Mezzogiorno . According to carabinieri from Castellammare, more than twelve shots had been fired. The names of the victims were announced after a few days. Carmine D'Antuono was 58 years old and lived in Castellammare. His nickname was O Lione, The Lion. He had a high position as a lieutenant in the mafia. His clan got into a conflict with the D'Alessandro clan and it escalated into a bloody war.

Name of the other victim: Federico Donnarumma. He was 42 years old, worked as a driver and was from Pimonte. No officer seemed to understand why he too had been shot. Donnarumma did have a criminal record, but that was for fraud and other relatively minor crimes. Wrong time in the wrong place? That's what it looked like. The perpetrators could never be found until Catello came clean in his dissertation.

Hole in the soul
He and the other shooter prepared for the murder for two weeks. Catello was given a photo of D'Antuono and memorized the characteristics of his future victim. He had never seen Donnarumma before, and the Camorra did not actually need her to die at all. Afterwards, Catello had a 'hole' in his soul that never healed. In his dissertation he describes it as 'the most violent, traumatic and irreparable event' in his life. Carmine D'Antuono had to die because he was a rival, he could still deal with that, but Donnarumma only died because he happened to be near D'Antuono and Catello wrote: 'I didn't understand it right after and I still can always don't understand. But I shot him too.”

Next murder he confessed to: of Nunzio Mascolo, a member of their own clan. He was murdered at night on December 6, 2008 in Castellammare. The command consisted of two people. They rode to the target on motorcycles and wore helmets. Mascolo didn't realize he was being chased until the last moment. He fell, but it was too late: 'a shower of lead was let loose on his body'. Catello fired nine shots from a 7.65 caliber pistol. The 36-year-old Mascolo was killed instantly.

In his thesis, Catello writes: 'Although I cannot prove it, I am certain that he did nothing to deserve death. In the infamous logic of the Camorra and of the underworld in general, it works like this: it is not even necessary that the victim has done anything. I learned on the spot that in that world you can die because of the envy of someone who, unfortunately for the victim, has some leverage to impose a death sentence.” Catello also makes it clear that his role was to pull the trigger and not to ask questions. That's just how it worked in the Camorra.

After his confessions and apparent conversion to Muslim, Catello was transferred to a slightly less heavily guarded prison in Padua. There he completed his dissertation. Catello said he went 'through a very difficult process' by reliving everything. He was not allowed to hold anything back, total honesty was expected of him and that often hurt.

According to his professor, the end result is a Mario Puzzo-worthy autobiography of 170 pages full of 'chilling descriptions of the criminal environment, as well as musings on family, education, childhood, puberty, divorce, separation anxiety, drugs, violence and mafia history'. The foreword states: 'My goal is to contribute to the understanding of the phenomenon of crime and its possible prevention. I strongly believe that words are important and this autoethnographic text aims to change the world.'

Catello wanted to investigate why 'crime exerts such a deep fascination' on young people and why the mafia clan can replace 'the family of origin'. One of his explanations: 'It is their way of emancipating yourself and gaining social recognition. In this context, violence becomes a task and a way to demand respect.'

“I had this crazy strong desire to be someone, to be seen and to be part of something bigger and more important, to prove myself through cruelty.”

Reckless and stupid
At the beginning of his dissertation, Catello describes his friendship with Renato and other Camorra members: 'Through them I built a new alternative identity as a heavy boy, it was a mask with which I wanted to hide my vulnerability as a teenager, to survive in a violent and extreme world.' He was, in his own words, 'reckless' and 'stupid', had an 'idiotically strong desire to be someone, to be seen and to be part of something bigger and more important, to prove myself through cruelty and coldness in suppressing other men'.

He writes in detail about the first time he used a gun. He had to because he had to protect a clan member who was out on bail. Rival mafiosi wanted revenge and Catello's job was to prevent this. He must admit that he enjoyed moments like this for a long time and that made him do things that he can no longer imagine. After his first murders, he had to throw away his newly purchased expensive clothes 'as a precaution to hide traces of gun powder'. He had made the mistake of just wearing his Prada jacket and now he had to destroy it. He "suffered greatly and I complained for a long time." In fact, his clothes were so important to him that he went to his client to 'force' him to buy him a new jacket, 'something he did not do'.

Outpourings like this were not easy for Catello to write, but it had to be done. On one of the last pages he quotes Aldo Moro, the former Italian prime minister who was liquidated by Red Brigade terrorists and wrote just before his death that 'anyone who tells the truth should never regret it'. Catello agrees with these words and calls speaking the truth 'enlightening'. Calling on all virtuous people to "be courageous," he writes, "I have related the above in the hope that I have done something good for those I have wronged and for myself."

After his release, Catello wants to start over "as the Catello I was before everything I did" and he "hopes to put his life in order, once and for all." Through the thesis 'I bring the truth to the surface and, in a sense, as far as possible, I repay a debt to society'.

Catello graduated with honors and received his sociology degree in a small ceremony from his imam. His professor calls Catello "a brilliant student" who "received very good grades throughout his studies" and said: "He has put his life in order once and for all and analyzes the events of his past through a sociological research method, which also makes it a has a therapeutic function.'

The thesis is currently in the hands of the public prosecutor. The text is being studied by detectives and the local police boss is likely to reopen the investigation into the three mafia murders in 2008.

https://revu.nl/artikel/511089/ex-maffioso-catello-romano-doet-boekje-open-lak-aan-de-omerta