Cosimo Di Lauro, the murderous boss, the mind that unleashed the fierce war between clans in Scampia, died this Monday in the Milan Opera prison, where he had been imprisoned since January 21, 2005, when he was arrested as the instigator of the first murders that led to war between his clan and the splinter wing of Amato-Pagano.
He was being held in maximum security, and on Monday morning his defense lawyers Saverio Senese and Salvatore Pettirossi received a fax classified as “very urgent”. Four lines written on the computer. Subject: “Inmate in 41 bis Cosimo Di Lauro, born in Naples on December 8, 1973. With reference to the inmate indicated in the subject, we inform you that today at 7:10 AM his death was confirmed. Best regards.”
The pigtailed boss, who was wearing a leather jacket and skinny jeans when he was arrested and who became the first icon of evil in Internet times, died in his cell. The causes of his death are still unknown. His lawyers had asked for a psychiatric examination, suspecting that he suffered from mental disorders, but no doctor ever visited him.
He had mental disorders, hallucinations, he refused to attend therapy, he did not want to see his relatives. In 2018, Cosimo Di Lauro’s lawyers, Saverio Senese and Salvatore Pettirossi, asked the judges of the Third Criminal Court of Naples to “suspend the trial and order a psychiatric report” to determine “the psychophysical health conditions” and their ability to “consciously assist the process”.
“He takes massive doses of psychiatric medications administered for years as a psychiatric patient.” For Cosimo’s lawyers, whose causes of death will be determined by autopsy, their client should not remain in prison and should be subjected to specific treatments. More than ten years ago, on January 15, 2008, an expert report arrived showing “how the current health conditions, far from being born suddenly or as a result of a simulation, are rather the result of a slow process “.
Doctors spoke of anxiety, mental disorders and strange behavior “such as laughing out loud even in the middle of the night”. The Milan Prosecutor’s Office has ordered a medical-legal and toxicological consultation to clarify the causes of his death, as well as what the health conditions were in Cosimo Di Lauro’s last period. The prosecutor on duty Roberto Fontana has opened a file for manslaughter against unknown persons, a “prudential” act to carry out the autopsy and the medico-legal and toxicological investigations. As far as is known, no obvious signs or elements were found on the capo’s body and in the cell that could lead to suspicion of suicide or violent death.
Di Lauro was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Massimo Marino, Gennaro’s cousin, known as ‘Mekkey’. It was the first revenge for the double murder of Fulvio Montanino and Claudio Salierno, Cosimo’s first childhood friend, and he decided to assassinate Massimo because Gennaro had been arrested.
He was also sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Mariano Nocera, a man from the Abete-Abbinante clan. He killed the latter because he did not obey Cosimo’s order, who wanted to have the last word on every activity in the neighborhood.
He was also accused of the death of Carmela Actress, mother of another mafia capo, murdered for hiding her son from the fury of the camorra during a war between clans that left more than 100 dead in less than a year.
Cosimo was fully acquitted of the murder of Gelsomina Verde and the murder of Attilio Romanò, innocent victims of the camorra. The first was tortured, killed and burned because she did not want to reveal the hiding place of a man from the opposite clan to the one she knew, and the second was killed in a phone store because they mistook him for another.
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