[3] While still a child, the landowner told Cutolo's father that the following year the field would be used for a different purpose and that his services were no longer required.

[4] A bad student, violent and inattentive, at 12 Cutolo was already roaming the streets with a gang of teenagers, committing petty burglaries and harassing shopkeepers.

Spavone survived the ambush, but the shotgun blast left considerable damage to his facial structure, which required plastic surgery.

He began by befriending young inmates unfamiliar with jail, giving them a sense of identity and worth, so much so that when they were released they would send Cutolo 'flowers' (i.e. money), which enabled him to increase his network.

According to some pentiti, Cutolo's career started with his affiliation with the 'Ndrangheta, supported by important bosses such as Piromalli, Paolo De Stefano, and Mammoliti.

[5] The NCO strongholds were the towns to the east of Naples, such as Ottaviano, and Cutolo appealed to a Campanian rather than Neapolitan sense of identity, perhaps as a result of his poor peasant background.

"[2] Through his book of thoughts and poems, Poesie e pensieri and his many interviews with journalists, Cutolo was able to create a strong sense of identity among his members.

Even though his book was impounded by magistrates within days of its publication, many prisoners, alienated from society both inside and outside jail, wrote to Cutolo and other NCO leaders asking for a copy.

[7] Cutolo spent a great amount of time researching the 19th century Camorra and reconstructed the old Camorristic ritual of initiation.

In his cell, he created a ceremony in which the initiate received the award of the primo regalo ("first gift"), also called abbraccio ("embrace") or fiore ("flower").

[11] She ruled in the Castle Mediceo, the headquarters of the organisation: a vast 16th-century palace with 365 rooms and a large park with tennis courts and swimming pool.

The castle was bought for several billion lire, and provided direct contact for Cutolo from the prisons of Poggioreale and Ascoli Piceno.

[7][12] Brilliant with figures, Rosetta Cutolo negotiated with South American cocaine barons, narrowly failed to blow up a police headquarters and was glamorised in a film, The Professor.

[13] After her plan to blow up a police headquarters narrowly failed, her stronghold was raided; Cutolo escaped under a rug in a car driven past checkpoints by the neighbourhood priest.

Nevertheless, it is clear that Cutolo had always wanted to maintain a male-only organization based on principles such as criminal fraternity and so could never be seen giving a role to his sister.

In 1981, one of them, Giuseppe Rogoli, founded the Sacra Corona Unita, a new Mafia invoking the regional Pugliese identity against the intrusion of the foreign Neapolitans.

[16] The NCO spread like wildfire in the crisis-ridden Campanian towns of the late 1970s, offering alienated youths an alternative to a lifetime of unemployment or poorly paid jobs.

While the traditional Camorristic families held territorial powers and the consequent responsibility over their controlled areas, the NCO had no qualms over breaking the established social fabric by extorting shopkeepers, small factories and businesses, and building contractors.

On one side there was Cutolo's NCO, which dealt mainly in cocaine and protection rackets, preserving a strong regional sense of identify.

He requested that if other criminal groups wanted to keep their business, they had to pay the NCO protection on all their activities, including a percentage for each carton of cigarettes smuggled into Naples.

For instance, Michele Zaza, the biggest Neapolitan cigarette smuggler, was reported to have paid the NCO more than 4 billion lire in the first three months after the imposition of the racket.

In 1978, Zaza formed a 'honourable brotherhood' (onorata fratellanza) in an attempt to get the Sicilian mafia-aligned Camorra gangs to oppose Cutolo and his NCO, although without much success.

It consisted of various powerful and charismatic Camorra clan leaders from the areas around Naples, such Carmine Alfieri of Saviano, Pasquale Galasso of Poggiomarino, Mario Fabbrocino of the Vesuvius area, the Nuvoletta clan of Marano, Antonio Bardellino from Casal di Principe (patriarch of the so-called "Casalesi") and Michele Zaza, known as o Pazzo or the Madman from Portici who made France his base of operations.

[19][20] Cutolo was instrumental in obtaining the release of Ciro Cirillo, the Christian Democrat member of the regional government of Campania (assessore) in charge of Urban Planning, who had been abducted by the Red Brigades in April 1981.

When his main 'military' chief, Vincenzo Casillo was killed in January 1983 by the allies of Alfieri, it was clear Cutolo had lost the war.

I am the reincarnation of the most glorious moments of the Neapolitan past, I am the messiah for the suffering prisoners, I dispense justice, I am the only real judge who takes from the usurers and gives to the poor.

According to Adriano Baglivo of the Corriere della Sera, the old lady came back to consciousness due to the emergency care of a physician familiar with her history of catatonic attacks.

[3] When Valerio Fioravanti, a Neo-fascist and fellow Poggioreale inmate sentenced for political terrorism asked Cutolo the reason for his charisma, he replied: "Naples is divided into lords and beggars.

"[1] In prison, Cutolo received a significant amount of fan mail from youth who were impressed with his achievements as well as his ability to outsmart the authorities.

For instance, a letter from two teenage girls from Acerra which were intercepted by prison authorities read as follows: Seeing that it is difficult for us to find somebody who can understand, and having watched your interview on television, we thought of explaining our situation to you, a person whom we truly admire... We don't like this society and soon we will go to Milan and we will live there and become successful, giving a lesson to the people of this dirty country.