"My brother repents? You're the ones who sell out." The social media defense of boss Ciro Rinaldi Mauè

Naples – A recent prison photo, printed and displayed on social media to silence the rumors that, in the backstreets of eastern Naples, are considered a criminal conviction: those about the boss's alleged collaboration with the justice system.

Susetta Rinaldi chooses the TikTok platform to protect the criminal honor of her brother, Ciro Rinaldi, known as "Mauè", the undisputed leader of the eponymous clan from San Giovanni a Teduccio, who has been held in maximum security since February 2019.

"Are you sorry? From what I see, the roles are being reversed. They want to attribute what they are to you," the woman wrote alongside the photo of the Villa district boss. A vitriolic message that highlights the system's codes: "Unfortunately, there's a lot of jealousy, because they all want to be like you. Do they know they're born in turn? And it doesn't take much to be born with your feelings and your silence."

The shadow of feud and blood in the family

Susetta Rinaldi's words come at a time of extreme tension and deep personal pain. She is the mother of Savio De Marco, the 32-year-old killed on March 2nd in Via Sorrento, on his daughter's fourteenth birthday. This murder has brought renewed scrutiny to the powder keg of eastern Naples, where the Reale-Rinaldi clan and their historic rivals, the D'Amico-Mazzarella clan, have been vying for decades for control of drug dealing and extortion hubs.

The woman's social media indictment then quickly shifts to the alleged benefits received by other inmates in the area, insinuating the suspicion of tip-offs to law enforcement: "After all our suffering, they never gave you a single minute of freedom, and yet they were immediately granted furloughs for nothing... and why is this? Can you tell me who the informants are?"

From the Villa neighborhood to life imprisonment: the story of "Mauè"

The fear that "Mauè"'s figure might falter in the face of the possibility of a repentance clashes with the criminal caliber that magistrates from the District Anti-Mafia Directorate attribute to Ciro Rinaldi. A key figure in the bloody split from the Mazzarella clan, Rinaldi led the Villa neighborhood clan for years, forging strategic alliances with powerful groups in nearby Ponticelli, such as the infamous "Barbudos" of the Sanità neighborhood.

His judicial career reached the point of no return with the life sentence, upheld by the Supreme Court, for the double murder of Luigi Mignano and the wounding of his son Pasquale, which occurred in 2019 outside a Catholic school, and for the assassination of Raffaele Cepparulo, boss of the "Barbudos".

Arrested by the Carabinieri in an anonymous apartment in San Pietro a Patierno after a brief period as a fugitive, Rinaldi is considered by investigators to be an old-school boss, keeper of the secrets of the Camorra in eastern Naples.

The code of honor claimed on the web

It is precisely this supposedly orthodox conduct that the sister appeals to in her post, which has garnered hundreds of comments and interactions in the eastern suburbs: "Let's not forget that the newspapers are talking about it; you sold yourselves for money. My brothers never fought with good guys, they never touched women and children. Things are known, who you are and who they are." A manifesto of loyalty to the clan's dictates, shouted via smartphone to shield the Rinaldi name from what, in their code, remains the worst of dishonors.