Naples: Here's how informants framed Giuseppe Prisco, arrested in Catalonia.

Naples – The end of Giuseppe Prisco's journey has the bitter taste of Catalan asphalt and the perfect timing of a movie script. The thirty-three-year-old Neapolitan, a prominent figure in Ponticelli's Camorra network, was arrested last weekend in Spain, where he was hiding under a thick blanket of false documents and international cover-ups. He had a European Arrest Warrant signed by the investigating judge of the Court of Naples, at the request of the Naples District Anti-Mafia Directorate.

The raid, carried out by Spanish authorities in close collaboration with the Italian State Police, came at a breathtakingly timely pace: just twenty-four hours before his capture, the Naples Court had sentenced him to life imprisonment in the first instance.

Prisco is believed, along with fellow mafia boss Michele Minichini, to have carried out the murder of Salvatore D'Orsi, aka "Polpetta," killed at age 28 on the evening of March 12, 2018, in Via Oplonti. This ruthless execution has been revealed piece by piece in the unpublished statements of collaborators with justice. Behind that crime lies the bloody rise of the Minichini-De Stefano-De Luca Bossa cartel and the clash with the "Bodo" ​​clan of the De Micco clan.

The Night of the Seven Bullets: "Come down, I've been shot."

To understand Prisco's conviction, we need to go back eight years, to a cold late winter evening in the eastern suburbs of Naples. It's 23:30 PM on March 12, 2018. Vincenzo D'Orsi is at home, in the heart of Lotto Zero. Suddenly, the intercom rings insistently. From the speaker, the desperate voice of his son Salvatore crackles:

“Come down, come down, they shot me.”

The father rushes out into the street. Salvatore "Polpetta" lies dying on the ground in front of number 49 Via Oplonti. His body is ravaged by bullets, but he's still breathing. The desperate rush to the emergency room at Villa Betania Hospital will prove futile: the boy will die the next day.

The investigation begins. Interviewed with preliminary information, the victim's brother immediately sheds light on the possible motive, as the Flying Squad investigators note in their first statement: "My brother ran the on-call drug dealing business, delivering the drugs directly to the customer. He frequented ... omitted..., affiliated with the De Micco clan." But there's a geopolitical detail that Ciro has recorded in the report, a detail that the DDA considers key: "After the arrests of the 'Bodos' (the De Miccos, ed.), the area where we live passed into the hands of different individuals, particularly Michele Minichini. My brother had no connection with these new leaders. Perhaps the arrival of this new group created difficulties."

The wiretaps on the victim's phones yield no results. To solve the Via Oplonti mystery, magistrates will have to wait for the clan's wall of silence to break down from within.

Tommaso Schisa's statement: "Minichini told me that Prisco and the Chinese man had also participated."
The first major breach in the surface truths came on October 2, 2019. Tommaso Schisa, son of Luisa De Stefano, the clan's "pasionaria," sat before the prosecutor. Schisa was a raging torrent and dated the crime immediately after his release from prison.

"After my release from prison in March 2018, the meatball murder was committed on Via Bartolo Longo, again by Michele Minichini and Giuseppe Prisco. Michele Minichini told me that the Chinese Francesco (Audino Francesco, a leading member of the De Luca Bossa clan, ed.) and Giuseppe De Luca Bossa also participated. Minichini and Prisco were the perpetrators."

During the interrogation, Schisa answered the magistrate's questions in detail:

This guy sold weed for the De Micco clan and was a Mazzarella sympathizer. Michele Minichini told me this after his release from prison, when I went to his mother's house, even though I couldn't have done so because I was under an obligation to stay in Marigliano. At that time, Michele Minichini told me about the Polpetta murder and also told me that since he couldn't come to Marigliano and since he had conquered Ponticelli, I had to return.

The collaborator adds a familiar piece:

Before I went to Michele Minichini's house, my mother had already told me that he had committed this murder in Ponticelli. It was committed on Via Bartolo Longo, and they had waited for him under the building. She didn't tell me what gun they used. I don't know any other details.

The "Godmother's" confession: "It was me, Vincenza Maione, and Michele who decided on her death."
While Schisa's story provides the framework, it's the interrogation of his mother, the mafia boss Luisa De Stefano, on September 24, 2024, that reveals the strategic hub behind the ambush. De Stefano doesn't mince words, she accuses herself, and describes the victim as a "filatore," or insider, a spy for her rivals.

The murder of "Polpetta"... the latter was a "spinner" for the De Micco clan and used to wait for Michele Minichini when he went to De Luca Bossa Anna's house. Several times, Michele Minichini warned Giuseppe Esposito, known as "Pepe o' sghizzo," to stop his nephew, Polpetta, from acting as a "spinner." The perpetrators were Michele Minichini and Giuseppe Prisco. Polpetta was shot outside his building while he was ringing the doorbell.

The prison confession captured by Eduardo Mammoliti

A third informer, Eduardo Fiorentino Mammoliti, completes the investigation into the ambush. His statement describes a method of communication worthy of old mafia films: he learned the details of the murder through the cell windows of the Secondigliano prison, where he was held along with Michele Minichini.

I was arrested on January 4, 2018... I was being held in Secondigliano prison in Ward S2, Section Four. Michele Minichini was also being held in the same ward, but in Section Two. We greeted each other by looking out from some windows in that ward, which were very close to each other. In particular, I looked out of the window in the corridor of Section Four, while he looked out of the window of the barbershop on the floor below.

It is at that moment that the boss sends his message:

On one of those occasions, Minichini said something to me along the lines of "I always love you, I gave you satisfaction for the murder of your uncle Salvatore," and explained that he had killed "Polpetta." The latter had been the "spinner" in the murder of my uncle Salvatore Solla, which occurred on December 23, 2016. He told me that Giuseppe Prisco, the son of "A barona," had also participated. Specifically, the two went to the home of "Polpetta," who lived in one of the buildings in Lotto Zero... Giuseppe Prisco rang the intercom and asked "Polpetta" to come down, and then Michele Minichini shot him. He also told me that they went there on a scooter.

Mammoliti then reveals a second, close encounter, during conversations with family members:

I didn't learn the detail about Giuseppe Prisco ringing the doorbell during our conversation when we were leaning out the windows, but later when Michele Minichini and I met during the discussions we were supposed to have with our visitors... Michele Minichini told me that Giuseppe Prisco had accompanied him, had rung the doorbell, and was present when Michele Minichini fired the shot. "Polpetta" was shot as soon as he got out of his house. I don't know if Minichini was still on the scooter, while Prisco must have gotten out after knocking on the doorbell.

The real motive: the boss's slap for the autonomous square

But in the Camorra, revenge is often an excuse to cover up money. Mammoliti himself confessed to the DDA magistrates that he never believed the theory of family "satisfaction" over his uncle's death. Minichini simply wanted to gain credibility to secure financial support once he was released. The financial truth emerges from the confidences he received in prison from another inmate, Giulio Ceglie, a close associate of De Stefano:

I never believed what Michele Minichini told me... I think the motive for the murder was different. In 2018, I was in the same room as Giulio Ceglie... I told Ceglie that I wasn't convinced that "Polpetta" had played a "spinner" in my uncle's murder, and he agreed with me, telling me that a few days before "Polpetta"'s murder, Giuseppe De Luca Bossa had slapped him twice. This happened because Sveglia told De Luca Bossa that Salvatore Orsi had set up an independent drug dealing operation at Lotto Zero.

Two public slaps. The mark of dishonor and the death sentence for a young man who dared to set up his own business, selling drugs without paying his dues to Ponticelli's new bosses.

The magistrates' conclusions, validated by the investigating judge, put an end to the speculation: "Luisa De Stefano is the one who planned the murder, along with Michele Minichini; the perpetrators were Michele Minichini himself and Giuseppe Prisco." Prisco, the man who got off his scooter to ring that damned intercom, has found the end of his escape in Catalonia. A prison cell and a life sentence await him in Italy.

(In the photo, from left: Giuseppe Pirsco, Michele Minichini, the victim Salvatore D'Orsi Polpetta, and then the three informants: Luisa De Stefano, her son Tommaso Schisa, and Eduardo Fiorentino Mammoliti)