Scampia feud

The Scampia feud (in Italian: La faida di Scampia) was a feud between the Camorra gangs in the Neapolitan quartiere of Scampia which broke out in 2004 and 2005. The fight was between the Di Lauro clan, from Secondigliano, and the so-called "secessionists" (Italian "scissionisti"), a breakaway faction in the northern suburbs of Naples that tried to assert its control over drugs and prostitution rackets in the area.

Paolo Di Lauro, head of the Camorra clan that runs the northern suburbs, was in charge of a tightly managed drug empire that imported cocaine and heroin and distributed it through an army of dealers. Di Lauro granted neighborhood ringleaders a certain amount of autonomy in exchange for the monopoly and cuts of the proceeds. He went into hiding in 2002 as authorities closed in. He left the business to Vincenzo Di Lauro, one of his ten sons. After the arrest of Vincenzo in 2004, Cosimo Di Lauro took charge.

Cosimo Di Lauro wanted to centralize the drug-dealing operation that had been run as a franchise in which dealers paid the Di Lauros a fee for doing business and were allowed to buy the drugs from any available source. The young Di Lauro removed older gangsters and replaced them with young criminals new to the business. In revolt, a faction now known as the "secessionists" challenged the Di Lauros in October 2004. One of the local dealers, Raffaele Amato, disputed the new rules, fled to Spain and organized a revolt against his former bosses. In Scampia, they are known as the Spaniards. Di Lauro responded by ordering the killing of two rebel associates, Fulvio Montanino and Claudio Salerno on October 28, 2004. During their funeral three days later, police arrested two men armed with machine guns who were planning to fire on the funeral procession. The two bands fought each other with a brutality that stunned even hardened Carabinieri.

In November 2004, 22 year old Gelsomina Verde was abducted and brutally beaten, probably in an effort to get her to disclose the whereabouts of her former boyfriend, Gennaro Notturno, a Scissionisti clan member. The two had broken up weeks prior to her abduction. She was shot three times in the neck and her body put in a car that was set on fire.

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