Decline
Cutolo overplayed his hand in the Cirillo affair. His former political protectors turned and provided their support to his main rival Carmine Alfieri. 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. His power declined considerably. Not only Cutolo but many other Camorra gangs understood the shift in the balance of power caused by the death of Casillo. They abandoned the NCO and allied themselves with Alfieri. His sister who ran the business was arrested in 1993. He was moved to a prison on the island Asinara, far away from Naples and his ability to communicate with the outside was severely restricted when the harsh 41-bis prison regime was imposed upon him.
In 2005, he asked for clemency in a letter to the Italian President. “I am tired and ill. I want to spend my last years at home.” More than two decades after being jailed for life without the right to conjugal visits, Cutolo fathered a daughter. He married his wife, Immacolata, in jail in 1983. The couple never consummated their marriage. A six-year legal battle allowed Cutolo the right to father a child, Denise, through artificial insemination.
Cutolo had previously had a son, Roberto, from a previous marriage who was shot dead in Tradate on December 24, 1990, aged 28, in gang violence. His killers were later found dead themselves, their faces riddled with bullets. The murder had been ordered by Mario Fabbrocino, the boss of the Fabbrocino clan, as revenge for Cutolo ordering the death of his brother, Francesco, in the 1980s. Fabbrocino was eventually convicted of Roberto's murder and sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005.
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