Mafia Murders Rack Italian Town for 23 Years

At noon when the hot breeze from Africa dies down, old and middle-aged men come to talk in the shade of the palm trees in Cittanova’s town park. These days they talk about killings Nos. 47, 48, 49, 50 and 51 in a Mafia-family feud that has been going on for 23 years.

The slayings on a sultry summer night are, in fact, the talk of this whole town of 10,000 people on the toe of the Italian boot. A string of previous killings has made this area, Reggio di Calabria province, Italy’s murder capital.

Parents fear for their children. Paramilitary police in bulletproof vests stand guard with rifles at entrances to town. They patrol the usually quiet streets.

But while people talk to each other about the killings, sometimes in whispers, they don’t talk to the police about them, according to Capt. Cosimo Fazio of the paramilitary Carabinieri station in nearby Taurianova.

‘Saw, Heard Nothing’

He estimated that on the night of the five slayings, 2,000 people must have been in the areas of the two separate attacks.

“But they all said they saw nothing, heard nothing,” he said. “One driver, whose windshield had nine bullet holes, told us the damage was done by stones flying up from the road.”

Since 1964, the feud between the Facchineri and Raso-Albanese clans have claimed 25 victims on one side, 26 on the other.

In the last five, the Raso-Albanese were the victims. Police say that three men in a car and armed with sawed-off shotguns blocked an auto driven by a Raso and his 18-year-old nephew, an Albanese, as they drove past the groves of olive trees lining one of the roads into town.

Burst Into Bar

The men killed them, then sped into Cittanova and burst into La Pineta, a refreshment bar across from a playground and about 20 yards up the street from the town park.

They opened up with a few more shotgun blasts, and three men fell into a bloody heap. One of the victims had been released from prison eight days earlier after serving a sentence for kidnaping.

“We all talk about it, we’re worried,” a thin man in the park said, fanning himself with a folded newspaper. “My daughter was in the playground.”

“The Mafia is part of the social fabric,” said a local lawyer, speaking in the park but only on condition that he not be identified. “It’s all mixed in. How do you eradicate it?”

Top Police Chiefs Meet

“Ask that question at the ministries,” one of his companions said. “We’re this way because that’s what they want. Terrorism was defeated because the politicians wanted to defeat it.”

Italy went through several years of terrorist attacks, chiefly by ideologues known as the Red Brigades. But the attacks have diminished markedly in recent years.

Alarmed by the Calabrian bloodshed, Italy’s top police chiefs met in a special session at the Interior Ministry in late August.

By then, there were 107 killings in Reggio di Calabria, a handful shy of the province’s total for all of 1986. Police say they can definitely link at least half of the attacks to the Mafia.

Mafia Trials

There was much talk about the government defeating Italy’s Mafia when the largest anti-Mafia trial opened in Palermo, Sicily, in February, 1986. The trial, which started with 474 defendants, is still going on. Other mass trials have been held in Messina and Catania--both in Sicily--and one is being prepared in Reggio di Calabria.

The state has responded to the surge in killings in Calabria by sending hundreds of police and Carabinieri forces into hot spots.

Police describe the Cittanova and other killings in the area as battles for turf. At stake is control of heroin traffic that goes as far as Canada and Australia, extortion rackets, kidnaping rings for ransom and government contracts, especially in the construction industry.

Cittanova is fertile terrain for the Mafia because of a high unemployment rate and people’s distrust of government.

Extortion Frequent

The town’s major industry is olives and olive oil production, but the recent popularity of seed oil has hurt the industry.

Police say extortion of legitimate business is frequent. If a businessman doesn’t meet Mafia demands, they say, the punishment could be a bombed car or a torched store.

A waiter who doubles as the cashier of a restaurant said he applied for a government job and was told he could have it for 1.5 million lire (about $1,250), more than a month’s salary for many people.

The high numbers of Calabrians without jobs--nearly twice the national figure of 11%--provide a pool of manpower for crime bosses.

$400 for a Killing

Standard pay for a killing is about 500,000 lire ($400), said Fazio of the Carabinieri.

A communique that followed the special ministerial meeting called for economic and political measures as well as police force to end the violence in Calabria.