ROME LETTER:When a mother was gunned down in Naples, the Camorra were initially suspected, but a terrible truth lay closer to home, writes PADDY AGNEW
WHAT WOULD you do for a job? Would you sleep with your boss? This is hardly a new question but in Naples it takes on a distinctly sinister air since, if recent reports are to be believed, the question is not so much would you sleep with someone, but rather would you go out and kill someone for a job.
That, at least, has to be one of the first conclusions drawn from the killing last week of 51-year-old “Mother Courage”, Teresa Buonocore.
Given that she was killed by four nine-calibre bullets fired from close range as she drove through busy traffic last Monday morning, investigators might have been tempted to conclude that this was a hit job, carried out by the Camorra, the Neapolitan Mafia.
After all, the killing had almost certainly been carried out by one or two killers on a motorbike, the perfect means for weaving through the traffic in order to get close to the victim and an even better one for affecting a quick getaway. Such a killing appeared to have Camorra stamped all over it.
However, something did not quite convince the investigators. For a start, Buonocore, as far as they could ascertain, had no links to or involvement with the Camorra. Second, it soon emerged that earlier this year, Buonocore had testified against one of her neighbours, a certain Errico Perillo, who subsequently received a 15-year prison sentence for having sexually abused three children, one of whom was Buonocore’s eight-year-old daughter.
Perillo, too, was well known to the police, having previously been convicted of manslaughter and arms-related charges.
Within three days, police had arrested two young men, 26-year-old Alberto Amendola and 21-year-old Giovanni Avolio, charging them with the killing. Interrogated by police, both men admitted “responsibility” for the killing even if, at this stage, it is not quite clear just who was the driver and who was the passenger or, to put it another way, which of the two pulled the trigger.
Furthermore, both men claimed they had been “hired”, allegedly on behalf of the sexual molester Errico Perillo, who is serving his 15-year sentence in Modena prison.
Avolio claims to have been offered a €10,000 “fee” while the older of the pair, Amendola, claims that he had been promised a job in a postal-services firm run by the Perillo family.
Avolio furthermore told investigators that his accomplice Amendola had told him the woman must be killed because she “had done a number on a friend of his”.
Avolio reportedly claims the killing had been planned the day before during a beach party in Portici, Naples, adding that in order to be sure of “hitting” the right woman, he had checked out photographs of her on Facebook.
Incidentally, on his own Facebook page, Avolio claims that the US mafia godfather Al Capone represents a “mythical” figure for him while his page also contains the following observation: “You achieve a lot more with a polite word and a gun in your hand than with just a polite word”.
Avolio’s alleged involvement in the killing was apparently too much to bear for his mother, 41-year-old Flora Scognamiglio who, two days after the arrest of her son, tried to kill herself by jumping from the second-floor balcony of her Portici apartment. A canopy broke her fall, leaving her with a broken leg and other injuries.
A further strange development in this sad tale came four days after the killing when someone left an incendiary device outside the postal-services premises of the Perillo family.
Was this some form of community protest against the family, given that both Errico Perillo’s wife, Patrizia Nicolino, and his brother, Lorenzo Perillo, are also under investigation in relation to what looks very much like a vendetta or revenge killing?
While many aspects of this killing have yet to be clarified, what seems clear is that “Mother Courage” Teresa Buonocore paid with her life because she had been determined and brave enough to denounce a violent paedophile, notwithstanding the man’s criminal record. Her death has not gone unnoticed on Facebook, where hundreds of people have signed up with newly formed “Mother Courage” pages/groups. Typical is this Facebook message: “Your children now have an angel in heaven to protect them forever, just as you did right to the end of your brief life on earth. May you be an example for all women and mothers, ready to give their lives for their greatest treasure, their children.”
Others are less sanguine. Reflecting on this shocking story, lawyer Elena Coccia, the woman who had acted on behalf of Teresa Buonocore during the Perillo trial, commented: “Faced with a murder like this, you really lose all hope for the future of this city.”