The Good Mothers

by Alex Perry

  A bigger ordeal for Giuseppina would be facing her family in court. The hearings in Palmi weren’t scheduled to begin until May 2012, giving Giuseppina and Alessandra months to ready themselves. Once proceedings were under way, however, they would be a marathon. The trial was expected to last a year. Giuseppina’s evidence was so detailed that her testimony and cross-examination alone would take a week, Monday to Friday, eight to ten hours a day.

  Alessandra arranged for Giuseppina to speak via video link from Rebibbia. When a number of Pesce relatives were given permission to attend the trial in Rebibbia, Alessandra requested a screen in court to block their view. But Alessandra knew her star witness and her family would still be aware of each other’s presence, and would be feeling each other out, testing each other’s will. She decided to train Giuseppina like an athlete. She stressed physical fitness, encouraging Giuseppina to exercise for her stamina and advising her to take chocolate and fruit juice into the hearings to sustain herself. She told her to ask for a break any time she needed it. To prepare Giuseppina’s mind, Michele Prestipino began joining Alessandra on her visits to Rebibbia. The prosecutors would put Giuseppina through her paces, spending days going over questions and evidence and likely questions from the defence, so that Giuseppina knew the case and the judicial procedure back to front.

  Alessandra had also long understood that if Giuseppina was to betray her family, she would need a substitute to hold on to. Alessandra had given up the habit of a lifetime to become something approaching a mother to her. As Giuseppina’s day in court drew nearer, Alessandra was heartened to see their relationship deepening. Once they finished the formal work of taking statements and verifying evidence, the two women found that what remained was warmth and closeness, an acceptance and appreciation of each other. One day, when Alessandra was setting up her tape recorder in their usual room at Rebibbia, Giuseppina entered carrying a gift. Alessandra unwrapped it to find a small hand-embroidered cushion. On it, Giuseppina had stitched the words: ‘Thank you for everything. With love, Giusy’. ‘I was touched,’ said Alessandra. ‘After all, I was the one who had arrested her. Twice. In prison, she couldn’t make much but she had done what she could. And the care she took in making this cushion! The tiny stitching. She’d scented it with a flowery fragrance and the smell filled my apartment for a week. It was a symbol, a token of her gratitude that she was still alive, thanks to my stubbornness. And a very feminine one, which seemed to indicate a particular warmth and regard for me.’

  When the first day of Giuseppina’s testimony finally arrived on 22 May, Alessandra judged that she and Michele Prestipino had done all they could.1 Giuseppina was determined and confident. In a remarkable reversal of roles, she even tried to soothe Alessandra’s nerves. A year earlier, when Giuseppina had suspended her cooperation, Alessandra had told her in parting that she would hold on to the dream that Giuseppina would one day restart her collaboration and face her family in court. Now Giuseppina winked at Alessandra. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘Dreams can come true.’

  Still, as Alessandra stood in Palmi’s main court, watching the video monitor as Giuseppina took her seat in Rebibbia, she was tense. Bringing a collaborator to testify against the mafia in court was a high point in any Italian prosecutor’s career. Bringing Giuseppina to testify against her family, perhaps the only time that such a knowledgeable witness would give evidence against so powerful a clan, was the judicial event of the decade. The next few days would be a procedural and bloodless war, but a war nonetheless. On one side, truth and justice. On the other, murderous criminality and intense blackmail. Alessandra found herself simultaneously in thrall to the proceedings and terrified by them. How would Giuseppina cope?

  Alessandra began by asking Giuseppina to describe her life as a mafiosa. Giuseppina explained her duties, which included passing messages between the men and managing the Pesce extortion rackets. She gave an overview of the other businesses: trucking, drugs, weapons and corruption. She laid out the organisation’s structure, specifying which of her uncles and cousins were its bosses and lieutenants, and the line of succession. She spoke about how the men maintained a legal fund for family members on trial or in jail. She explained how her grandmother Giuseppa Bonarrigo’s house served as a meeting place where the men believed they could talk without fear of being bugged.

  Giuseppina spoke in detail about the men’s fear of surveillance, and how they used detectors to find listening devices in their cars or under the paving at her grandmother’s house, even the secret cameras hidden in the walls of a nearby school and hospital. She described how her father, Salvatore Pesce, had lived in a bunker under her grandmother’s house, linked to the surface by a passage hidden inside a barrel, before he was arrested in 2005. She talked about the family’s links to judges, carabinieri and government officials. She told the story of how her cousin, Francesco, would stay outside the polling station on election day, telling voters: ‘Vote for so-and-so, he’s a friend.’ She ran through Rosarno’s history of killings and clan wars, especially between the Pesces and their rivals, the Belloccos. The rules were straightforward, she said. ‘You killed one of ours, we killed one of yours.’ The same went for traitors. When a cousin, Rosa Ferraro, discovered that Salvatore had put the Pesce family supermarket in her name, and was using it to launder money and defraud a salami maker, Ferraro had denounced him in the street. To the Pesces, said Giuseppina, such disgrace could only be answered with death. Rosa’s imminent murder had only been narrowly avoided by her surrender to the authorities.

  Alessandra then led Giuseppina through her own decision to testify against her family. Giuseppina began by saying that her marriage to Rocco Palaia had been loveless. ‘He never worked and he was never at home if one of the babies was ill,’ she said. ‘He wasn’t home for a Sunday walk with his family. He didn’t even give me money for medicine.’ She cried when she talked about Domenico Costantino, and how she had finally met a man who loved and respected her for who she was. Still, once her affair was discovered, Giuseppina knew she was dead. Asked who would administer her punishment, Giuseppina replied that her husband, Rocco, had told her that the family had ‘a pit ready for me’ but that it would be her brother, Francesco, who would pull the trigger. ‘It has to be the eldest son in the family,’ she said.

  This attachment to primogeniture typified the backwardness of mafia life, said Giuseppina. So did the violent misogyny. It had been standard mafia behaviour for her family to blackmail her into signing a retraction by holding her children hostage. So was beating and starving her children when she defied the clan and resumed her cooperation. Giuseppina had been able to give the culture of the mafia some thought during her months at Paliano. She now delivered her conclusions to the court. The ’Ndrangheta men turned love and sanctuary into hate, intimidation and fear, she said. ‘In a sense, whatever problems we have as a family, it came from that, the whole environment in which we were living,’ she said. ‘That’s the evil I see.’ That was the reason that she, her sister, her mother and others were in jail. For the women, the mafia was evil in the way it made them complicit in their men’s crimes ‘… in the sense that this chain doesn’t break – this willingness to go on committing crimes’. It was the mafia’s perversion of family that meant ‘women are always going to meet with prisoners and now are prisoners ourselves’. But that corruption of family love was also ‘why I couldn’t stand the idea of my children without me and why I made this choice: so my children might avoid my fate and have a better life, where they are their own masters and can choose what they want to do. That’s also why I cut all contact with my brother. Because as a man, he’ll never accept my choice.’

  As she spoke, Giuseppina could hear coughing from the defendants’ dock. It happened whenever she mentioned her brother. Even from hundreds of miles away down a video line, she recognised the voice and understood the message. ‘Her brother was saying: “I hear you,”’ said Alessandra. ‘“I hear what you’re saying about me.”’ To Aless
andra’s relief, Giuseppina was unperturbed. Turning to Alessandra during a break, she joked, ‘Does my brother have a sore throat?’

  It was the first of several attempts by the Pesces to throw Giuseppina off balance during the trial. Her mother still refused to use her daughter’s name, referring to her only as ‘the collaborator’. Through a prison guard, her sister Marina sent her a photograph of the two of them together with their children. ‘That was very destabilising for Giuseppina,’ said Alessandra. ‘She loved her sister a lot. That was very strong pressure on her, and she just had to find a way to handle it.’

  Giuseppina found the presence of her father, Salvatore, hardest to bear. She had often told Alessandra that among her family, she was closest to her father. She would cry when she spoke of him, saying he was the only one who ever understood her and that if he hadn’t been in jail, he would have protected her from Rocco.

  In court, as Giuseppina finished her final day of evidence, her father asked to make a statement. Alessandra sat motionless. As Salvatore walked from the dock to the witness stand, Giuseppina could see him for the first time. He was wearing a white shirt with blue stripes. ‘Giuseppina started crying as soon as she saw him,’ said Alessandra. ‘The shirt was the last present she had ever given him. It was her father’s way of reminding her of her blood ties, of telling her who she was. On the screen, I could see Giuseppina’s tears streaming down her cheeks.’

  Quickly and quietly, Alessandra suggested Giuseppina take a break. With Giuseppina safely out of earshot, Salvatore Pesce then began to speak. Initially, he turned his anger on Alessandra, accusing her of abusing her office and forcing Giuseppina to lie by threatening to take her children away and giving her drugs. He said Alessandra had exceeded her powers by arresting Giuseppina’s mother and sister, Angela Ferraro and Marina Pesce, in Milan. ‘You have acted unlawfully,’ he shouted at Alessandra. ‘And why? You want to die?’

  Alessandra interrupted to request the court transcript be forwarded to the director of public prosecutions in Rome to decide whether Salvatore’s threat to her constituted an offence. Salvatore was then allowed to continue. ‘I want to tell my daughter that everybody loves her,’ he said. ‘After this is all over, when all the lights have been turned out and all these careers have been improved and when you’re all by yourself, you will find us here waiting for you. We’ll be here.’

  Alessandra marvelled at how, in open court, Giuseppina’s father could tug at his daughter’s heart while threatening her in the same breath. Was there no end to these men’s malice?

  Weighing herself during the week of Giuseppina’s testimony, Alessandra calculated that she lost two or three kilograms a day. She was surprised to see Giuseppina coping far better. ‘She carried on through the trial – with great pain and suffering but also with great strength,’ said Alessandra.

  Alessandra knew Giuseppina drew most of her courage from the same source that had always inspired her: her children. A few days before Giuseppina testified, her eldest daughter, Angela, had given her a necklace with a silver cross on it. ‘That was another message,’ said Alessandra. ‘Angela was telling her: “If you feel afraid, if you feel scared, touch the necklace and think of us.” During the trial, she had a moment or two when I thought she was collapsing. But she immediately recovered, and I know her strength came from thinking about her children and how she was doing this for them. That gave her all the strength she needed.’

  Alessandra pondered the maternal affection she felt for Giuseppina, once again characterising their connection as ‘umbilical’. She wondered how it compared with the bond that still existed between Giuseppina and her family. The trial hearings would continue for the rest of 2012 and sentencing wasn’t expected until May 2013. Few sights were more likely to rekindle a daughter’s love for her parents than the spectacle of them in a cage. The day the case concluded, however, would likely be the last Giuseppina would ever see her parents and her family. Giuseppina needed to come to terms with their inevitable separation.

  After the stress of testifying, Alessandra and Michele Prestipino left Giuseppina alone for a few weeks. At Paliano, it was summer and the tomatoes and aubergines were ripening in the penitentiary garden, ready for the pentiti to pick in the early evening to make giant trays of parmigiana in the kitchens. One hot July day, when they judged enough time had passed, Alessandra and Prestipino flew up to Rome and took the drive east out into Lazio and to Paliano. The two prosecutors arrived in the early afternoon. In their honour, warden Nadia Cersosimo had organised a surprise supper, attended by all the staff and inmates, cooked using vegetables and herbs from the garden. The guests ate and chatted amiably with the pentiti. Afterwards, Giuseppina presented Alessandra and Prestipino with pickles and jams whose lids she had decorated with embroidered doilies: a simple design of cherries and apricots next to the initials of Paliano district. Regarding Giuseppina, it struck Alessandra that her witness had changed once more. For the first time, she wrote, ‘I had the distinct impression that I had replaced her family in her emotions.’ That family loyalty, that unquestioning bond – it was gone.

  If anything, Alessandra began to realise, it was now she who was becoming too attached to Giuseppina. In quieter moments, she would admonish herself for imagining that their bond could ever be more than temporary. She would have to move on to other cases. Giuseppina would need to live her own life. Still, Alessandra’s staff were incredulous when, a few weeks after her visit to Paliano and hours before she left on her annual August holiday, she took a call from Giuseppina on her office line, a number which an ’Ndranghetista should never have possessed. Giuseppina was upset over arrangements for her children’s custody. Some bureaucrat was messing her around.

  Alessandra’s staff knew better than to interrupt. Like any good mother, the boss never stopped worrying.

  XXIV

  When the Lea Garofalo trial collapsed in November 2011, it had seemed like a disaster. Within a week, however, a new judge, Anna Introini, was appointed and immediately added new urgency to the proceedings.

  Introini was one of the most senior women in the Italian judiciary. A fifty-nine-year-old veteran of several mafia cases, as well as attempts to prosecute Silvio Berlusconi, her experience had left her with little patience for defence gymnastics or procedural delays, let alone mafia misogyny. Mindful that Carlo’s term of custody expired on 28 July 2012, Introini ruled, over the defence’s objections, that no previous hearings need be repeated and that Denise’s damning testimony still stood. She also instituted an accelerated timetable of two court days a week.

  When hearings resumed in December 2011, the weight of testimony against Carlo and his ’ndrina quickly mounted. A fellow prisoner at San Vittore in Milan testified – over Massimo Sabatino’s shouted denunciations – that he had heard Sabatino describe how Carlo had asked him in May 2009 to dress as a washing machine repair man and kidnap Lea in Campobasso.1 A number of Carlo’s acquaintances spoke of their fear of him. Others had such trouble with their memories that they unwittingly gave the same impression. Proceedings were further accelerated by Carlo’s refusal to take the stand. One day, sending a message to the ’Ndrangheta that he was observing omertà, he cupped his hands over his ears. ‘The message was: “There’s no problem, don’t worry, feel safe, I’m not going to talk”,’ said Alessandra. Still, by not testifying, Carlo couldn’t help but speed up his trial. By the time Matteo Cosenza wrote his letter to Denise in Il Quotidiano on 8 March, Judge Introini had said she would announce a verdict and sentence on 30 March 2012.

  When the day came, Introini passed word that she would deliver judgment at 8.30 p.m. Outside court, the hall was packed. On one side, relatives of the defendants whispered with their lawyers. On the other, student activists huddled around Enza Rando, passing her letters of support for Denise. Journalists hovered. In the caged dock Carlo, his brothers Giuseppe and Vito, Massimo Sabatino, Rosario Curcio and Carmine Venturino greeted their relatives through the bars.

  Just a
fter 8 p.m., a court official announced proceedings were about to start. As the reporters squeezed into the press seats, Carlo chatted quietly with his ’ndrina. When Judge Introini entered, the court fell silent. Introini took her seat. ‘In the name of the Italian people,’ she said, ‘the Court of Assizes condemns Carlo Cosco, Giuseppe Cosco, Vito Cosco, Rosario Curcio, Massimo Sabatino and Carmine Venturino …’ Judge Introini ruled that all six men had taken part in Lea’s murder. She convicted all six of helping to dispose of Lea’s body by dissolving it in acid and of pretending that Lea was alive and well and living in Australia. Introini gave life sentences to all. She specified that Carlo and Vito should serve their first two years in solitary, while the other four should serve one. All six men were also ordered to pay a total of €200,000 to Denise, €50,000 each to Lea’s sister Marisa and her mother, and €25,000 to the city of Milan.

  It was hard to imagine a tougher set of sentences. Alessandra was delighted. The ’Ndrangheta seemed shocked. In the public gallery, Carmine Venturino’s mother and sister began to cry. Other relatives screamed in despair. ‘Are you happy now?’ yelled one woman at the activists.

  Outside court, Enza read a prepared statement. ‘The most important part of today is that a young girl of a murdered mother has had the courage to bear witness for justice,’ she said. ‘She broke through the fear and silence and made her contribution to justice and truth.’ Libera’s founder, the priest Don Luigi Ciotti, added: ‘This sentence will go down in history. We must bow before this young girl who found the nerve to break omertà and restore dignity, truth and justice to her mother.’2