The main investigator, Carabinieri Captain Carlo Fabbroni, transformed the trial into one against the Camorra as a whole, intending to use it to strike the final blow to the criminal organisation.

[1][3][4][5][6] The often tumultuous and spectacular trial attracted a lot of attention of newspapers and the general public both in Italy as well as in the United States, including by Pathé's Gazette.

[7] In 1927, the main incriminating witness retracted his version of the facts, but Italy's dictatorial Prime Minister Benito Mussolini did not authorise the revision of the trial.

Gennaro Cuocolo and his wife, Maria Cutinelli, were murdered on 6 June 1906, suspected of being police informers,[8] and opposing the Camorra leadership.

However, the investigation did not produce reliable evidence and the suspects were released from jail 50 days later, not in the least thanks to the intervention of the priest Ciro Vitozzi, the "guardian angel" of the Camorra and Erricone's godfather.

[1][2][8][14] The hypothesis that the double murder was Camorra-related did not convince the investigating judge and the judiciary was persuaded that the trail to follow was that of revenge, of a reprisal for matters of booty.

On the basis of Vitozzi's declarations and the testimony of Giacomo Ascrittore, a regular police informer and member of the Camorra, the local police and judiciary of Naples identified Gaetano Amodeo and Tommaso De Angelis, two receivers and former collaborators of Cuocolo, as the real killers, because Cuocolo had refused to share the proceeds of a jewellery theft.

[15][16][17] Captain Carlo Fabbroni of the Carabinieri, the national gendarmerie of Italy, did not think so, and decided for an open confrontation with the local police.

[18] Fabbroni and his right-hand man Marshal Erminio Capezzuti worked relentlessly on the incrimination of Alfano and his associates by interrogating and threatening a large number of criminals.

The investigation gained new momentum in February 1907, when Gennaro Abbatemaggio, known as 'o Cucchieriello because of his work as a coachman, a young camorrista and police informer serving a jail sentence in Naples, testified that the decision to kill Cuocolo had been taken at a meeting at the restaurant chaired by Alfano.

Giovanni Rapi, the Camorra's "treasurer", had an interest in several private banks in New York where the savings of immigrants were forwarded to Italy.

Another defendant, Gennaro De Marinis, who was sentenced to 30 years as well, slashed his throat with a piece of glass in the Court when the verdict was delivered.

"All the prisoners acted like maniacs," the Tribune report said, and the guards had difficulty maintaining order and carry the wounded Di Marinis out of the cage.

[7][33] According to Camorra legend not long after the Cuocolo verdict, on 25 May 1915, a few remaining camorristi met in the Sanita area of Naples and disbanded the organisation.

[34] [35]The trial also confirmed the Camorra’s social marginality and political subalternity to the ruling powers in the kingdom of Italy who, after using it, had no difficulty in eliminating it.

[33] Many legal experts, both contemporary and later, advanced doubts about the regularity of the investigation and considered the trial 'false' and based on 'rigged papers' motivated to inflict a setback on the Neapolitan underworld even at the cost of falsifying evidence.

[36] The murders and trial followed a series of scandals that had exposed the infiltration of the Camorra in Naples society and the city's governance structures.

[45] In 1930, a request for pardon was made by the Neapolitan newspaper Il Mattino, which at the time of the trial had strongly supported the work of Fabbroni and the prosecution.

[30] Il Mattino sent its crime expert Ernesto Serao to Viterbo and devoted two or three pages a day to the event, usually in support of the indictment of Captain Fabbroni.

[34] The trial not only made headlines in Italy, but worldwide, and there was substantial official and media attention in the United States, from New York City in particular.

[52] According to Train, U.S. newspapers "indulged in torrents of bitter criticism at the manner in which the trial of the Camorra prisoners at Viterbo is being conducted, and have commonly compared the court itself to a 'bear garden', a 'circus,' or a 'cage of monkeys,'" with the unexpressed suggestion that if the case had been tried in the U.S. it would have been more effectively been disposed of.