"My hands are black, I cleaned Kalashnikovs." The shocking confession of the Bronx boss from Caivano.

The turf war in Caivano isn't fought just with threats, but also with heavy artillery. At the center of the investigation by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate is the infamous "Bronx" clan, a drug-dealing stronghold that answers directly to the orders of the imprisoned boss Antonio Angelino, known as Tibiuccio.

Roberto Alfio Maugeri was in charge of operations on the ground, when tensions with rival criminal groups were palpable. He was the silent director who, while moving the drug dealing pieces and managing the trafficking, got his hands dirty—literally—maintaining the clan's clandestine warfare.

The bugs planted by investigators provide a glimpse into a criminal daily life lived on the brink of extinction, where Kalashnikovs are treated like work tools to be cleaned of the rust accumulated during months of disuse in hideouts.

The confession at home: "I made my hands black with Kalashnikovs"

It's February 6, 2024. Maugeri is inside his home with Giovanni Baratto, a familiar face in the court archives and currently in prison. The ringleader makes no secret of the herculean effort he'd undertaken just hours earlier to restore the clan's firepower. His account to Baratto is a raw, unfiltered stream of consciousness:

"My hands are black. I've been cleaning the weapons since this morning. Kalashnikovs, machine guns, they were really, really rusty, all rusty, they sat unused for a month. I got tired cleaning that stuff..."

There's no time to rest. That same evening, while words are being translated into action within the Casoria home, packaging the drug doses, Maugeri receives his collaborator Vincenzo De Rosa. He addresses him, displaying the unmistakable signs of a day spent tinkering with chemical solvents and firing mechanisms:
“Come on, I killed myself today. Look at these hands. I cleaned all the stuff there. Look, my nails hurt… Yeah. I bought some product for iron, it's scary, for rust.”

The inventory of death: three Kalashnikovs and a precision machine gun

The conversation quickly shifts to the group's military accounts. De Rosa listens in disbelief as Maugeri reels off the ghastly list of weapons at the gang's disposal, ready to intervene at any moment to defend drug dealing areas or enforce extortion:
“Anyway, there are 3 Kalashnikovs there, two like the guards… Yes, 4-5 pistols, a machine gun with a precision sight on top with a rubber handle is scary.”

A war inventory that, paradoxically, also sparked internal complaints. De Rosa himself, in fact, began to grumble about the disproportion between the clan's ambitions and the weapons actually held by individual members, complaining about a supply he deemed insufficient:
“I have two pistols, we don't keep a Kalashnikov, we don't keep anything… All pistols.”

In an attempt to fend off criticism, the young man recalls having a hidden weapon of his own, although his memory is starting to fail him on the logistical details of the concealment: “A submachine gun, perhaps… I don't know if I keep it down in the garage or… it's down here…”

The mistaken shot: "I was killing in Marettiello"

But the most surreal and disturbing moment of the entire judicial investigation emerges when Maugeri recalls a dramatic accident that occurred a few hours earlier, also on the morning of February 6th. Also sitting around the table are Gianfranco Bervicato and Mario Marzaiuolo, known as Marittiello.

Maugeri was dipping a gun in degreasing liquid to clean it of residue. Convinced he'd emptied the chamber, he didn't realize the gun had a round in the chamber. The incident, as described to his accomplices, had the air of a tragedy narrowly avoided:
“I was killing in Marettiello. I had a blow. He brought me that seven, the one you fixed for me, remember? The one you fixed for me, remember, he took 300 euros. The front end was stuck, and Gianfranco was holding it in his hand. Then, after convincing me that I'd removed the end, I put it in the water, but the barrel still wouldn't go down, and suddenly, woah…”

Marzaiuolo's immediate reaction, between shock and disbelief at having miraculously remained unharmed, closes the sequence with a hysterical laugh that captures the cynicism of the criminal underworld:
“Marettiello: hahaha you got me you got me.”

A bullet fired by mistake that could have spelled the end of a life, but which, for the judicial record, represents yet another unequivocal proof of a social danger armed to the teeth.