Pupetta Maresca

Assunta Maresca (Castellamare di Stabia, January 19, 1935) better known as Pupetta (Little Doll) was a former beauty queen who became a well-known figure in the Camorra. She made the international newspaper headlines in the mid-1950s when she killed the murderer of her husband in revenge.

She was the daughter of Vincenzo Maresca, a Camorrista who controlled their hometown Castellamare di Stabia, south of Naples. The family was known as the Lampetielli, the lightning knives, for their expert use of switchblades and made their money in contraband cigarettes. She was the only girl in a family of four brothers. Tiny, pretty, and spoilt, she was nicknamed Pupetta (Little Doll). At the age of 19, she won a beauty contest and became Miss Rovegliano, a suburban village of Naples.

She was courted by a wealthy and powerful local guappo, or Camorra boss, from Palma Campania, Pasquale Simonetti, known as Pasquale 'e Nola, who worked in the fruit and vegetable market in Naples and dealt in smuggled goods. On April 27, 1955, they married.

Simonetti’s style and power bothered other Camorristi, and one day in 1955 he was shot by Gaetano Orlando, a hitman commissioned by his rival Antonio Esposito, another Camorrista. The six months pregnant Pupetta was devastated. She believed the police knew who the perpetrator was but were not prepared to do anything about it. On August 4, 1955, she drove to Naples with her younger brother, Ciro. When they met Esposito, she reached into her handbag and pulled out a Smith & Wesson .38. Holding it with both hands ("I was afraid I would miss," she explained later), she opened fire and killed Esposito in broad daylight.

On October 14, 1955, she was arrested. The trial started in April 1959 at the Court of Assizes in Naples. The killing and the following trial made international headlines. At the trial, she defiantly declared: "I would do it again!" and the whole courtroom burst into cheers.

One newspaper called her "The Diva of Crime" and for the first time in history the Court in Naples permitted microphones to be used so that the crowds could hear what was going on. Proposals of marriage flooded in and one musician was composing a song in Pupetta's honour called La legge d'onore – the Law of Honour. Nevertheless, she was sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment, later reduced to 13 years and 4 months by the Court of Appeal.

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