Confessions of a mafia boss

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 27 February 2020

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Across Italy hundreds of mafia leaders, hitmen and drug-traffickers are being jailed thanks to the most powerful weapon now in the hands of Italy’s anti-mafia investigators: the words of one clan against another. Italy’s state collaborator scheme has seen mafia chiefs breaking the code of silence - in return for a lifetime in witness protection, rather than a life behind bars. For Assignment, Dominic Casciani gets exclusive access to an anti-mafia prison to meet one of Naples' most important “Penitents” - a boss and killer whose evidence has jailed his associates. In the city itself, he witnesses, alongside hardened investigators, the ongoing nightly battle against the Camorra - and also hears voices of hope across the city that the tide has finally turned.

Presenter: Dominic Casciani Producer: Sheila Cook

Image: Gennaro Panzuto Credit: Private

Transcript

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0:00.0	My crimes range from murder, attempted murder, mafia association,
0:09.0	my crimes range from murder, attempted murder, mafia association, drug trafficking, arms trafficking, money laundering and extortion.
0:18.0	The usual. General Panzutto is a man with an extraordinary story, a story of crimes committed
0:29.8	across Europe, a flight from justice, and long empty years have come into terms with what
0:36.2	he did.
0:38.7	Welcome to assignment on the BBC World Service.
0:41.4	I'm Dominic Cashiani. I'm in the maximum security prison high in the Italian Alps.
0:55.0	Zava?
0:57.0	Dominic.
0:58.0	General of Anselman.
1:00.0	Yeah, sir.
1:01.0	I'm in the maximum security prison high in the Italian Alps to hear Janaro Panzuto tell that story.
1:07.0	We meet in a whitewashed cell that's baking in the heat.
1:10.0	As we begin to talk, prison guards occasionally look through as their prisoner
1:15.6	wants a mafia boss and Naples tells me how he killed for criminal control of the city.
1:20.8	I don't remember the faces.
1:25.0	I don't remember them anymore.
1:28.0	But what I do remember, thundering around my mind until today,
1:32.0	is the dull thud the person falling after you shot them.
1:36.5	I remember the screams of the children, the women ringing in my ears.
1:41.1	They're not going to be here. 12 years ago,
1:47.0	ago Janaro Panzoto took an extraordinary step for a man who helped run the Kamora clans, the unique mafia groups that prey on Naples.
	...

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