The wife of Giovanni Licciardi, son of Gennaro, known as “the monkey”, founder of the homonymous clan of the Neapolitan underworld oligarchy called “Alleanza di Secondigliano” must have been out of reach for everyone. But Salvatore Esposito, known to everyone as “Totoriello”, still wanted to start an extramarital affair with that woman. A serious mistake that led him to a terrible death: shot dead, by order of the Licciardis, and dissolved in acid so that no one could mourn his remains.
Murder 10 years ago
To discover that ‘honor killing’, a cold-case that dates back to 27 September 2013, were the Carabinieri del Ros and the Provincial Command of Naples, who from a sentence pronounced during an intercepted conversation in the context of another investigation have sensed the end of Esposito. The Ros of Naples reconstructed the incident and arrested three of the four instigators, prominent members of the Licciardi clan: Paolo Abbatiello, Gianfranco Leva and Raffaele Prota (the latter already in prison for another reason), aged 57, 66 and 57. The fourth instigator of the murder is believed to be the boss Giuseppe Simioli, 57, a collaborator of justice: for him the investigating judge has not ordered his arrest, but he will still be tried for the murder.
The trap
Esposito was lured into a trap: an impromptu meeting was simulated and with the excuse of going to see the husband of Maria Licciardi, Gennaro’s sister, also arrested a few years ago by the ROS, they deviated the route to deliver Totoriello to his killers. It all happened in the impervious area of the Chiaiano tuff quarries. There he was shot dead and then dissolved in a can of acid brought to the boil with a burner.
Principals and material executors
To carry out the orders of the principals, according to what emerged from the investigations, were Carlo Nappi, Crescenzo Polverino, Giuseppe Ruggiero and Alessandro De Luca, all already in prison but for another murder. For their indictment, however, the judge held that the statements of a single repentant, namely Simioli, were not enough.
At a certain point Esposito realizes that the written script had his death as an epilogue: he begins to sweat. His captors, all armed with pistols to nip a possible escape in the bud, manage to conceal their intentions and there will be no escape for him.
According to what was ascertained by Ros, Abbatiello, Leva and Prota, after having discovered the affair and having revealed it to Giovanni Licciardi’s family, asked Giuseppe Simioli, regent of the Polverino clan of Marano di Napoli, for his willingness to commit the crime with his affiliates and in the territory falling within its geo-criminal jurisdiction.
A technique used by the Cosa Nostra
And so it was: the technique used to make the body disappear, moreover, turns out to be the same used by Cosa Nostra in 1984 to destroy, on behalf of the boss Lorenzo Nuvoletta, the corpses of Vittorio and Luigi Vastarella, Gennaro Salvi, Gaetano Di Costanzo and Antonio Mauriello. For those murders committed in Marano di Napoli on 19 September 1984 in the context of the Camorra war between the criminal families Gionta-Nuvoletta and Alfieri-Bardellino, the deceased “boss of bosses” was definitively sentenced in the capacity of instigator of the Sicilian mafia Salvatore “Totò” Riina.