Fugitive
Licciardi was added on the "30 most wanted Italians" list and went into hiding. Thanks to a sophisticated network of protection set up by her clan, Licciardi was able to evade capture for two years and, despite having changed her refuge several times, never left the Masseria Cardone district. While on the lam, she continued as the undisputed boss of the Licciardi clan and ordered several murders of rival mobsters. She went to war with the Giuliano clan of Forcella, which was headed by another female Camorra boss Erminia Giuliano, who took control after the arrest of her brother, Luigi Giuliano.
When the senior prosecutor Luigi Bobbio began making successful prosecutions against her clan, Licciardi felt that he was getting closer to discovering her whereabouts. In January 2001, she bombed Bobbio's office building. The bombing was delivered as a warning to stop the investigation of her clan's activities and also to stop any further prosecution of her clan members. However, the bombing did not stop Bobbio from continuing his investigations. On the contrary, he was put under police protection and continued his prosecutions against the clan undeterred. Over 70 members of the Licciardi clan were arrested. Loyal to their boss, they refused to cooperate, preferring to serve their prison term instead.
The police made many fruitless efforts to catch Licciardi. In April 2000, the Carabinieri arrested 13 Camorra bosses who were holding a summit around a table in a rural farmhouse between the districts of Qualiano and Giugliano. The group was allegedly discussing how to invest its funds in a network of furniture and children's clothing stores. However, Licciardi was not among them.
On June 9, 2001, several hundred heavily armed officers, backed by helicopter spotters, launched an intensive search operation in and around Secondigliano. Acting on a tip-off, they stormed a dilapidated building that she had been known to use as a hide-out. Licciardi was nowhere to be found, but police discovered that inside an attic guarded by surveillance cameras she had installed marble floors, a grand piano and an outsize Jacuzzi. Her repeated successes in evading capture by the police inspired local journalists to dub her "The Scarlet Pimpernel of Italy".
Read more about this topic: Maria Licciardi
Famous quotes containing the word fugitive:
“It is by a mathematical point only that we are wise, as the sailor or the fugitive slave keeps the polestar in his eye; but that is sufficient guidance for all our life. We may not arrive at our port within a calculable period, but we would preserve the true course.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Is this what all these soldiers, all this training, have been for these seventy-nine years past? Have they been trained merely to rob Mexico and carry back fugitive slaves to their masters?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)