compiled by Patrick H. Moore
Although the hit cable TV series, “The Sopranos”, certainly gave crime boss Tony Soprano a certain sensitivity to offset his ruthless crime boss side, in the real world, organized crime has rarely been known for “touchy-feely” or life-affirming principles. Nowhere is this more apparent than in a recent gruesome murder perpetrated by Italian gangster, Simone Pepe.
Claudio Lavanga of NBC News writes:
An Italian mobster fed a rival gangster to starving pigs — and then marveled at how the victim screamed and how the swine gorged themselves, police say.
The gruesome tale — right out the movie “Hannibal” — came to light when police released a wiretapped phone call by Simone Pepe, a member of the ‘Ndrangheta, the most powerful and violent of Italy’s four Mafias. The caller recounts how he used an iron bar to beat Francesco Raccosta, a member of another family in the Calabrian region, and then threw him into a sty.
“It was so satisfying hearing him scream … mamma mia, he could scream!” said the cold-hearted Pepe, adding that there wasn’t “a thing left” after the feeding frenzy. ”People say sometimes they [the pigs] leave something,” he added. ”In the end there was nothing left…those pigs could certainly eat.”
The joke, however, may be on Pepe, 24, who, according to reports, was allegedly trying to avenge the murder of a mob boss, Domenico Bonarrigo. Pepe was arrested last week during a crackdown on the Mafia. Raccosta’s body, unsurprisingly, had not been located since he was reported missing last year in March 2012 along with fellow mobster Carmine Putrino. Police believe Putrino was murdered at the same time as Raccosta and was possibly also fed to the pigs. In any event, his body has never been discovered.
According to detectives, Racosta’s horrifying death was the latest bloody installment in a 60-year feud between warring members of an Italian crime syndicate.
Based apparently on the recorded telephone conversation, police have stated that Raccosta had begged Pepe for his life to no avail. A police spokesman said:
‘This feud has been going on since the 1950s and has claimed numerous lives, among them a nine-year-old girl shot as she sat in her grandfather’s car. Pepe was particularly brutal and by feeding his victim to pigs he thought he would earn the respect of other rivals as well as crime figures within his own clan.’
Officers also believe Pepe, the boss of the Mazzagatti clan in Oppido Mamertina, near Reggio Calabria, was responsible for at least three other murders within the same 24-hour period. The ’Ndrangheta crime family is said to be more powerful, more ruthless and wealthier than the Mafia on the neighbouring island of Sicily.
Pepe was one of 20 people arrested this week in an operation which also led to police confiscating millions of euros as well as property in the Reggio Calabria area and in Rome. Since his arrest, Pepe has confessed to his involvement in the murders, which he said were carried out in revenge for the killing of his mafia boss, or godfather, Domenico Bonarrigo.
Detectives code-named the investigation Erinni, who in Greek mythology were the goddesses of vengeance.
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The killing has echoes of the film “Snatch”, made in 2000 by British director Guy Ritchie. In “Snatch”, a gang lord called Brick Top describes how 16 pigs can devour a 200-pound-man in only eight minutes. The expression ‘greedy as a pig’ apparently has its origins in this grim fact.