Gennaro Panzuto knew that, sooner or later, that unfinished business with justice would arrive on his doorstep. So, when officers from the Naples Flying Squad knocked on his Frosinone home on Saturday morning, he didn't resist. "Genny Terremoto," 51, a longtime Torretta boss who later joined the ranks of justice collaborators, answered with the calm of someone who knows the rules of the game well.
The prison doors have reopened for him: he must serve an 8-year sentence for drug trafficking-related crimes.
The blitz far from Naples
The arrest warrant, issued by the Naples Prosecutor General's Office just 24 hours before his arrest, was executed by members of the Organized Crime Unit, led by director Mario Grassia and deputy commissioner Giuseppe Sasso. Investigators tracked him down in Lazio, where Panzuto had moved some time ago, perhaps seeking a tranquility hard to find in the shadow of Vesuvius.
From blood crimes to London
Panzuto's criminal profile is that of a high-ranking criminal. Trained as a Rolex robber (with heists as far away as Spain), he became the armed wing and mastermind of the Piccirillo clan. Years spent dangerously in the back alleys of Torretta were marked by gunfights with rivals from the Frizziero group and close alliances with the Licciardis of Secondigliano and the Torre Annunziata clans.
His rise was halted in London, where he managed the clan's affairs, having been tracked down and handcuffed by the then commissioner Raffaele Giardiello.
Fourteen years under protection
Then came the decision to turn his back on the Camorra. For fourteen years, Panzuto filled the DDA records, exposing the secrets of the Torretta and Sanità clans. In 2021, having been released from protection, he returned to Naples, braving the threat of cross-party vendettas.
In recent years, his image had become almost public: very active on social media, he did not refuse interviews and often commented on the dynamics of the city's crime, portraying himself as a profoundly changed man, far removed from the logic of the "system."
From the set to the cell
The story of "Genny Terremoto" has even reached the big screen. A father of nine, Panzuto paradoxically played a police inspector in the film "Nati pre-giudicati."
On set, she starred alongside a true symbol of the law, former police officer and arrest record holder Vittorio Porcini. A blurring of reality and fiction ended Saturday morning when, this time, the handcuffs snapped on his wrists for drug-related incidents that had never been fully resolved from his past.
It seems to me to be a complex and ambiguous affair, I don't want to judge, Gennaro said he had changed but the facts speak differently, and the handcuffs have arrived, the justice system reads the reports and then decides, in the end the company remains skeptical and many things are unclear.