Women Bosses in Italian Organized Crime

They go by such nicknames as "Fat Cat" and "Tomboy." Their simmering power struggles once drove them into the streets, guns blazing. They rule their crime families with steely determination, and also raise the kids and stir the pasta. Move over, Don Corleone. Godmothers are rising in the ranks of the Camorra, the Naples' area crime syndicate, say law enforcement officials and crime experts.

Women have long played a strong role in Camorra crime families, muscling, sometimes murdering, their way to the top. Their influence stretches back as far as the 1950s when a pregnant former beauty queen dubbed "pupetta" (little doll) shot dead the man who had ordered a hit on her husband, and allegedly settled into a life of crime.

Now, as the state steps up its war against the Camorra, rounding up scores of suspected mobsters, the women are increasingly taking over the helm from their men, experts say. "There is a growing number of women who hold executive roles" in the Camorra, Gen. Gaetano Maruccia, commander of the Carabinieri paramilitary police in the Naples area, told The Associated Press.

This family dimension of the Camorra finds its echo in mainstream Italian society — a family often will entrust its business to a woman relative rather than an outsider.

For generations, when mobsters were arrested, mothers and wives would descend screaming into Naples' chaotic streets, throwing insults and sometimes punches at police arresting their men. But as investigators increasingly regard women as significant Camorra figures, handcuffs have been snapping shut around their wrists, too.

• "Godmothers: Italy sees rise of women in Neapolitan crime", USA Today, 8/23/09.
• "Analysis: Naples, a city in the grip of the Camorra, Times Online, 11/1/06.