Umberto Ammaturo
| Umberto Ammaturo | |
|---|---|
| Born |
May 21, 1941 Naples, Campania, Italy |
| Nationality | Italian |
| Other names |
"'O Pazzo" (The mad one) |
| Known for | High ranking member of the Nuova Famiglia (formerly) |
| Allegiance | Camorra (formerly) |
Umberto Ammaturo (born May 21, 1941), also known as 'O pazzo (the mad one), is a former Italian criminal and a member of the Neapolitan Camorra, a Mafia-type organisation in Italy. He specialized in cocaine trafficking from South America. He was included in the list of most wanted fugitives in Italy until his capture in May 1993. A month later he decided to become a pentito, a state witness breaking omertà, or code of silence.
He was born in a large Neapolitan family. His father ran a wine business which suffered economic difficulties. On top of that, his mother died when Umberto was just seven-years old, leaving his father to look after seven small children. Streetwise and intelligent, Umberto learned crime as a street urchin (guaglione). A petty criminal in the mid 1950s, he evolved into a cigarette smuggler in the 1960s. He was active in Santa Lucia, the seafront area in Naples.
He was related to Felice Malvento (his brother Antonio was married to Luisa Malvento), a cigarette smuggler with contacts to Sicilian mafiosi such as Tommaso Buscetta. He was first arrested in 1962. In 1965, the handsome Ammaturo met Pupetta Maresca a former beauty queen who had made international headlines in the 1950s when she killed in revenge the murderer of her husband, a Camorra boss named Pasquale Simonetti. She had met a lot of sympathy among ordinary Neapolitans for her deed. Maresca bore him twins.
He received serious police attention when he was arrested again in 1972 with Nunzio Guida, the Camorra’s leader in Milan. In 1974 he was caught smuggling cocaine through the diplomatic bag of the consul of Panama with Aniello Nuvoletta. Two years later he feigned to be ill with cancer and was sent to a hospital from which he escaped.
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