Cosimo Di Lauro (Naples, 1973-Opera, 2022) was never the smartest in the family. He is also not the most gifted for business or for social relations. Without great aptitude for what the position required and with too many impulses of vanity, he wanted to show that he could be the prince of one of the most respected families of the Neapolitan Camorra and ended up causing his implosion. Sentenced to two life sentences for various murders and belonging to a mafia association, locked up in a Milanese prison under the 41 Bis solitary confinement regime -applied to Italian mafiosi-, he died on Monday at the age of 49 in his cell under circumstances not yet determined. . “He died today, alone, desperate, literally mad in a prison. He could have tried to redeem himself but he didn’t want to regret it. He didn’t want to be the first in the family to do it. Everyone has betrayed him, he betrayed everything ”, published the writer Roberto Saviano on his social networks.
The drama of Cosimo Di Lauro, precisely, is that his greatest merit was becoming the source of inspiration for the protagonist of the Gomorrah series, based on the book of the same name by Saviano. In the image and likeness of that rowdy who insisted on being nicknamed Designer Don (because of his fondness for clothes from great fashion designers), Saviano created a spoiled, impulsive and cruel young man who inherited one of the greatest criminal empires in history. of the Italian mafia. But even in the television product, the height of the character and his ability to manage the rowdy environment was greater than in reality. Cosimo always lived in the shadow of some of his little brothers and, above all, of his father, Paolo Di Lauro: the legendary patriarch of the clan who forged his criminal legend in the Neapolitan suburbs. From him he received an empire by blood and imploded it with a bloody war that turned hitherto allies into enemies.
Saviano, one of the intellectuals who has most deciphered the character and the world to which he belonged, gives some keys to the phone. “Cosimo was an incredible figure, in the worst aspect. The man who wanted to show his father and those around him that he was worth it, that he counted. And as soon as he had the chance, he blew up the perfect rules his father had designed: a confederation of free-wheeling brawlers. But Cosimo turned them into employees. When I thought of Gennaro Savastano I thought of him, but also of one of his brothers. The scene, for example, in which Genny controls the City Hall of a city is based on his brother Domenico”, he points out. “He is a boy who tried all his life for the approval of his father and to enter the heart of his mother. But he didn’t get it. And for this he used the most ruthless violence to achieve power”, he insists.
Father’s shadow
It is impossible to understand Cosimo, a vain guy with long hair and always black clothes, without the trace of his father. Paolo Di Lauro, adopted son of a humble family in the Secondigliano neighbourhood, seasoned as a counterfeit street vendor, began working under the orders of Aniello Lamonica, a historical capo in the area in the eighties, also known as The Butcher for his custom of ripping out the hearts of their victims. Extortion, beatings, cigarette smuggling… But Di Lauro was hungry and, as usually happens in these cases, he ended up murdering his protector, became independent and understood better than anyone where the future of Scampia lay, the place where they had been built. some huge official protection buildings that ended up being converted into one of the largest drug supermarkets in Europe.
The disgrace in which the patriarch of the clan plunged that area, a hermit who hardly left home during his long reign, did not prevent him from always being perceived as a benefactor. Heaven, his affiliates maintained, thanked him with 10 sons. In the account books that the police seized from him, they appear as F1, F2, F3…(for example, son) in cold chronological order. Cosimo, as the firstborn, was always known in summaries as F1.
The millionaire, who was living on a boat in the port of Naples after his escape, had revolutionized the business. He strengthened ties with Colombian producers, managing to lower the price of cocaine at origin. He liquidated the intermediaries and opened the market, competing face to face with the other large European organizations. The clan distributed throughout Italy and in the neighborhood —the iconic Scampia candles— managed to create more than 20 drug sales stalls.
Cosimo’s moment came after the escape of his father. As the firstborn he took the reins of the clan, albeit briefly. He imposed new rules and assassinated the organization’s senators to replace them with younger lieutenants whom he trusted more. The movement, without the apparent consent of his father, caused the faida that in 2004 and 2005 pitted the Di Lauro clan against a group of dissidents led by Raffaele Amato, known as The Secessionists or The Spaniards —Amato was in charge of links with Spain — which left more than a hundred dead in the streets of Naples and its surroundings.
That terribly weakened the organization and in 2005 the patriarch, without the police having ever been able to hear his voice in any of the hundreds of intercepted calls, ended up sentenced to three life sentences in solitary confinement. Cosimo, too, was arrested shortly after. Marco, F4 in the accounting jargon of his father, ended up being the head of the organization almost by elimination. But he was also arrested in 2019. His urban and social heritage can still be seen in Secondigliano, a neighborhood on the northern outskirts of Naples that has struggled in recent years to heal wounds and escape the stigma caused by the reign of the Di Lauros.
