THE CAMORRA’S VENGEANCE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 36, 27 September 1911, Page 8

THE CAMORRA’S VENGEANCE.

Another terrible case of vengeance meted out by the supreme tribunal of the Camorra has come to light at, Torre del Greco, on the Bay of Naples, where five years ago Gennaro Cuocolo, the betrayer of the Camorra, was done to death with 47 dagger thrusts. Two brothers named Speranza, endowed with Herculean strength an l courage, incurred the wrath of the secret somety for having repeatedly refused an invitation to join the Camma-i, because on several occasions they had lent a helping hand to the police in arresting dangerous fugitives trom justice. Giovanni Speranza, tee elder of the two brothers had under provocation, oven challenged the chief of the Torre del Greco Camorra, Ccstoniino llivieccio, to a duel, which was fought with revolvers without a decisive result. It was then resolved that Speranza must be got rid of, and by the aid of Caraorrist witnesses a charge of having attempt:! to extort money by threats with a loaded revolver from a local citizen was trumped up against Speranza, who, in consequence, was arrested and kept indefinitely in prison awaiting trial. The whole affair has since been proved to. be a wicked plot on the part of the powerfully-or-ganised branch of the Camorra at Torre del Greco, which, moreover, succeeded in extorting £SO from Speranza’s mother on the pretext that unless the secret society intervened her son’s incarceration would probably be prolonged by several years. LOTS CAST. . ' , Giovanni Speranza, on learning of this trick, wrote from the prison coll warning llivieccio that as soon as he was released he would be avenged, llivieccio, in his turn, summoned a mooting of the Supremo Tribunal of the Camorra, composed of Ilafi'aqlo and Antonio Sorrentino, and three, others—Poggiardino, Savastro, and Cota. On the night of July 15th the supreme six pronounced sentence of death aaginst. Giovanni Speranza. Lots were cast for the task of executing the death warrant, and it fell to a Camorrist ox-convict named Pasqnale Palumbo, who was called and ordered to carry out the mandate in Torre del Greco prison itself at the earliest possible moment. On the following day, Palumbo, pretending to be drunk, flourished a formidable-looking knife in the streets of the town, and got himself arrested by a Carabinieri, being well aware that ho would be relegated to the same big common room where Speranza was incarcerated. No immediate opportunity of carrying out the fould deed of blood presented itself, fn fact, Palumbo soon conceived a fel-low-feeling for Speranza, unbosomed himself of tbs plot, and in dread lest the Camorra might at any moment despatch other less scrupulous wouldbe assassins to the prison, urged Speranza to (lee afar, which ho managed to Jo after tearing asunder the iron bars of the prison window. On Palumbo’s confession to the, authorities, and bis story being confirmed by independent testimony, all the ringleaders of the local Camorra concerned were arrested. “11 Maitino,” of Naples, drawing attention to the fact that the secret societies wore determined to defy all ‘present endeavours to suppress them, recalls a similar case enacted in the Visaiia Prison in 18S0, when a couple of cut-throats, commissioned to kill two famous Camorra officials detained

there who had, betrayed the secrets of the society, burst into the prison in disguise and straightway stabbed their victim to death with daggers in the presence of other Caniorrists and the prison warders, who refrained from interfering.—Naples correspondent “Daily Chronicle.”