Vassallo Murder, Nine Under Investigation: But Who Is the Killer?

Vassallo Murder, Nine Under Investigation: But Who Is the Killer?

This is the million dollar question and to which the Salerno Prosecutor's Office seems unable to give an answer at this stage of the new investigation. Some new investigations, old leads revived but since the alleged instigator is deceased (and will not be able to defend himself) perhaps we will never know who pulled the trigger on the evening of September 5, twelve years ago. Certainly an inexperienced killer because he had to fire nine shots to kill Angelo Vassallo from close range.

According to the new investigation by the Salerno Prosecutor's Office, Mayor "Pescatore" said 'no' to an attempted blackmail and corruption by an international drug broker that decreed his death. This is the motive identified for the death of Angelo Vassallo.

A crime in which there was no shortage of misdirection, phone calls, a crossing of minutes and destinies, a tangle of sometimes dissonant testimonies. These are the implications of the investigation that yesterday led to the implementation of a search warrant against nine suspects accused - on various counts - of homicide aggravated by mafia association aimed at drug trafficking.

Yesterday's seems to be a dramatic turn of events in the investigation – which has repeatedly ended in a dead end – into the death of the mayor of Pollica, killed on September 5, 2010.

Yet, the new formulation of the circumstantial evidence, the names of the suspects, and the evidence collected in recent years by the Salerno Prosecutor's Office raise new disturbing questions about Vassallo's killing.

 Vassallo Murder, But Who Is the Killer?

But beyond the question of who the killer is: there is also a second one. Judging from the elements that have emerged in these hours, since 2016, the investigators had a clear picture of the motive, responsibility, co-interests and involvements, why only today, six years after that date and twelve years after the crime, have the charges been formalized?

It is a complicated picture with aspects that often do not match each other and that were put together by the Prosecutor's Office to formulate the charge that, if it holds up, should bring the nine suspects before a judge.

But first things first.

Yesterday morning a search warrant was executed, issued by the Salerno prosecutor's office headed by prosecutor Giuseppe Borrelli, as part of the investigation into the death of Angelo Vassallo.

Investigated for aggravated homicide by mafia association for the purpose of drug trafficking: Lieutenant Colonel Fabio Cagnazzo, 51 years old and two men from his investigative team from Castello di Cisterna, former carabiniere Luigi Molaro from Cercola, 42 years old; former brigadier from Caserta Lazzaro Cioffi, 60 years old from Casagiove, arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison as part of an investigation for corruption and drug trafficking.

Together with the three carabinieri, two informers from Scafati, originally from Castellammare di Stabia, Romolo and Salvatore Ridosso – father and son – and the entrepreneur from Scafati Giuseppe Cipriano, former owner of the Odeon cinema and at the time of the crime manager of two cinemas in Acciaroli and Agnone Cilento, are being investigated.

Vassallo Murder, the alleged instigator died two years ago

The instigator of the crime, according to the prosecution, was Raffaele Maurelli, nicknamed 'Lello 'o nir' o tic tac, an entrepreneur originally from Castellammare di Stabia and resident in Scafati, cousin of the Ridossos, involved in international drug trafficking. Maurelli, arrested and released in 2017, believed to be a drug broker on behalf of the Di Lauro clan of Naples, died two years ago.

According to what emerges from the documents of the search warrant of the Salerno Prosecutor's Office, it was Maurelli who organized the murder of Angelo Vassallo, through Giuseppe Cipriano after having attempted to bribe, and using the two Ridossos for a reconnaissance at the place of the murder a few days before the crime. All this to prevent the mayor from reporting drug trafficking, in particular cocaine, between Castellammare di Stabia and Cilento.

The reconstruction by the Salerno Prosecutor's Office is documented by wiretaps and testimonies, but in this puzzle there seem to be pieces that don't fit together perfectly.

Vassallo Murder was about to report everyone to the Chief Prosecutor of Vallo della Lucania

In August 2010, Vassallo, according to the investigation, contacted the chief prosecutor of Vallo della Lucania, Alfredo Greco, to tell him that he had discovered a 'dinghy' that was landing drugs in the port of Acciaroli. He made direct contact with Greco because he did not trust the Carabinieri of the Pollica station, so much so that he had organized 'his' investigative team with the municipal police of his command to collect clues and investigate the strange landings.

He asked, in a phone call, the prosecutor Greco to speak with a 'reliable' carabiniere and that meeting which was supposed to lead to a complaint was supposed to be held on September 6, 2010. Vassallo did not have time to formalize accusations and concerns and was killed on September 5.

According to the Prosecutor's Office, the promoter of the drug trafficking was Maurelli, Giuseppe Cipriano was his pawn and the Ridossos, father and son, were his accomplices.

 Vassallo Murder, Sandokan's Son Also Speaks About Drug Trafficking in Acciaroli

The broker with contacts with the Di Lauro clan – according to the repentant Nicola Schiavone – would have identified a warehouse in Acciaroli where to store the drugs. The structure would have been made available by the Palladino brothers, Domenico (at the time a municipal councilor of Pollica), Giovanni and Federico. The three entrepreneurs from Cilento, owners of some accommodation facilities, in particular the Tre Palme hotel, hosted at that time, through Lieutenant Colonel Cagnazzo, people under protection, mostly relatives of collaborators of justice from the Naples area.

According to the prosecution, the lieutenant colonel of the Carabinieri would have carried out several attempts to divert attention after the Vassallo murder to cover up drug trafficking and the perpetrators of the Vassallo murder. A diversion for which Cagnazzo is not accused since a few months after the crime he was investigated by the Salerno Prosecutor's Office which subsequently shelved the charges against him and Luigi Molaro.

A cover-up that today, twelve years later, is one of the fundamental pillars of the accusations. In particular, the Prosecutor's Office even fears direct involvement in the murder. In particular, reference is made in the search warrant to a 'silent' phone call that the carabiniere Luigi Molaro made to Cagnazzo two minutes after the Vassallo murder, at 21.14:5 p.m. on September 2010, XNUMX.

Vassallo Murder, the Cover-up Began at a Dinner Between Cagnazzo and Molaro

Immediately after, the two meet for dinner and then their alleged activity of "diversion of investigations" begins. These are "disturbing data", according to the DDA of Salerno, which searched, seized the cell phones and investigated the two military personnel of the Arma together with Lazzaro Cioffi, who are also accused of the murder precisely because the subsequent diversion of information would have been, in fact, "pre-ordained".

Lieutenant Colonel Cagnazzo, it emerges from the investigation, was a "great friend" of the brothers Domenico, Giovanni and Federico Palladino, entrepreneurs from Acciaroli and believed to be actively involved in the drug trafficking whose discovery by the 'fisherman mayor' would have cost him his life.

The officer would also have facilitated a business project of the three, regarding the management of some gas stations, advising them to also involve his trusted carabiniere Cioffi. What arouses the investigators' suspicions is what is defined as the "activism" of Cagnazzo and Molaro, officially on vacation in Acciaroli, immediately after the murder of Vassallo.

Vassallo Murder, the false lead on Bruno Humberto Damiano 'o Brasileiro

Cagnazzo, in fact, was at the scene of the crime at the time of the investigations carried out by the competent judicial police; he “informally” interviewed a possible witness (another carabiniere who lived nearby) and then, together with Molaro, took possession of the recordings from the surveillance cameras of a commercial establishment: footage used, according to the prosecution, “to direct the investigative activities” towards Bruno Humberto Damiano, alias 'o Brasileiro, a drug dealer on whom Cagnazzo had deliberately directed suspicions to cover up the real perpetrators. Damiano was investigated by the Salerno prosecutor's office for the murder and his case was subsequently archived.

According to the Salerno DDA, the activity of Cagnazzo and his men constitutes a “clear overstepping of their competences by the officer and his former subordinate” and that, “according to the state of the documents, appears to be an objective diversion of the investigations”. A diversion, however, that would not have been improvised after the murder but studied at the table, “preordained”.

In support of this hypothesis, the investigators cite, among other things, "the disturbing data consisting of the unanswered call received by Cagnazzo at 21.14 pm on 5 September 2010, from the carabiniere Molaro, with whom he allegedly joined a few moments later to participate in a dinner".

All this, "in perfect temporal coincidence with the ambush on the mayor (exactly two minutes later)" and also with an "intimidating attack carried out by the officer against" the owner of a real estate agency in Casa Velino who had frequented Vassallo assiduously in the days preceding the killing and who, immediately afterwards, had reported to several people that the mayor had discovered the drug trafficking in which the Palladino brothers and Cagnazzo were allegedly involved (the man was "violently beaten in Acciaroli" on 10 October 2010).

These circumstances, the DDA writes, "leave the state to believe, on an evidentiary level, the possibility that the subsequent misleading intervention carried out by Lieutenant Colonel Cagnazzo and Molaro could have been pre-planned, with obvious repercussions on their responsibility for the crime of voluntary homicide".

But how does all this connect to an episode told by Salvatore Ridosso of an inspection to spy on the moves of Mayor Vassallo done together with Cipriano and his father Romolo?

Vassallo Murder, the first story of the repentant Salvatore Ridosso to the Carabinieri of the Scalea company

According to the investigators' reconstruction, in 2014 Salvatore Ridosso confided in a lieutenant of the Carabinieri of the Scalea company, making the first revelations about the Vassallo murder.

He claims to have received a visit from Lazzaro Cioffi, a carabiniere he knew, who was concerned about the investigations involving him for the Vassallo murder. Yet in 2014 Cioffi had not yet been investigated. He was formally indicted for the Pollica crime in 2018 when he was arrested by the Dda of Naples for his involvement in drug trafficking with members of the Camorra of the Parco Verde di Caivano, a trial in which he was sentenced to 15 years of imprisonment in the first instance.

Salvatore Ridosso says he received a visit from Cioffi who expressed his concerns about the investigations.

And the lieutenant from Scalea collects his statements in two reports that he then delivers to the Salerno Prosecutor's Office.

Two years must pass before the repentant from Scafati is heard again by the prosecutors of Salerno in the context of the investigation for the murder. An interrogation that takes place between June and July of 2016. The lieutenant, in October of 2016, says that Salvatore Ridosso in both circumstances in which he was heard by him in 2014, reiterated that neither he nor his father Romolo were involved in the murder, indeed he spoke of a trap set for him by Cipriano and Maurelli to take them to the scene where the crime allegedly took place on September 5, 2010.

 Vassallo Murder, the Role of Giuseppe Cipriano

Giuseppe Cipriano was formally investigated in 2018 for his participation in the murder of Angelo Vassallo and clarified in a 2018 interrogation that he had never gone by car with Salvatore and Romolo Ridosso for an inspection in Acciaroli to kill Vassallo, and that he had received a visit from Romolo Ridosso in Acciaroli on a couple of occasions between 2006 and 2008.

The lieutenant who collected Salvatore Ridosso's confidences, questioned on the record, says: “If I remember correctly, he (Salvatore Ridosso, ed.) told me that the mayor had discovered drug trafficking that took place through boats that left from the port of Castellammare di Stabia. The drugs were taken in the Secondigliano area by some members of the Amato/Pagano clan, loaded onto boats at the port of Castellammare and from there taken to the port of Acciaroli from where they were then distributed to Calabria and the Cilento area”.

 Vassallo Murder, the Blackmail of the Alleged Instigator Maurelli

The lieutenant reports having learned from Salvatore Ridosso that Maurelli had attempted to blackmail Vassallo because he had learned that his daughter was involved in drug use and that the mayor himself was not above reproach in his strictly private life. “The aim of the blackmail was to obtain a concession for the management of a beach in Pollica where quantities of narcotics coming from the Naples area could be landed” the investigators write in the search warrant. Behind Maurelli, according to what Ridosso reports, there was also the Aquino Annunziata clan that had decided to store the drugs in a warehouse in Pollica.

@ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

1.continued