Assunta Maresca has passed away at the age of 86.
A former beauty queen teen who murdered her husband before becoming the head of Camorra’s mafia clan, has now died at the age of 86.
Assunta maresca (known as Pupetta) was 18 and pregnant at the time she shot down Antonio Esposito.
Esposito was a former crime partner of her husband, Pasquale Simonetti and was even a witness at his wedding to Maresca in April 1955.
But just two months later, he turned against him and hired Carlo Gaetano Orlando, a small-time member of his entourage, to kill the newlywed in the busy Piazza Mercato in Naples.
Maresca is the daughter of Vincenzo Maresca who was a notorious Camorra member. She decided to exact revenge against the criminal boss, believing that the police would ignore her.
She tracked down Esposito in broad daylight and shot him dead with a Smith & Wesson .38.
Maresca was sentenced in 2009 to 18 years imprisonment after she said, in defiance during her murder trial of 1959: ‘I would repeat it!The crowd erupted in cheers as Maresca received her sentence of 18 years imprisonment.
Later, the sentence was reduced to 13 and 4 months. She was then pardoned after ten.
She had been named Miss Rovegliano in Naples, the suburb where she was born, one year prior to her murder.
For their use of switchblades, Maresca’s family became known as “Lampetielli”, the lightning knives. Her father also made a fortune selling illegal cigarettes.
Later, she gave birth to Pasqualino in prison and was involved in criminal activity after her release.
Umberto Ammaturo became the lover of this female mobster, who was also a Camorra boss. The couple had twins as Umberto supported Umberto’s drugs and arms business.
Aged 18, she married Camorra boss Pasquale Simonetti in April 1955 but he was killed just two months later
She even starred in a film about her own life and opened two clothes shops but could not escape a life of crime.
Pasqualino was her oldest son and had Camorra ambitions. He disappeared at the age of 18 after meeting Ammaturo while working on a building site.
Maresca had an affair with Pasqualino, and Maresca believes that Pasqualino killed Pasqualino before setting him alight in cement.
She was convinced that her lover had murdered her son but she supported him to raise the twins.
Pasqualino was never killed by him.
Later, she was accused of having ordered the 1981 killing of Ciro Gali (a member of Nuova Camorra Organiszata).
Raffaele Cutolo, the clan boss was trying to revitalize Camorra with his new gang.
Maresca was a public defiant of Cutolo’s 1982 tax on imported cigarettes and supported her fellow gangsters in a press conference.
In the following year she was also arrested along with Ammaturo, for murdering Aldo Smerari (neo-fascist). Semerari’s decapitated body found in a stolen Fiat.
This scientist is believed to have been involved in the 1980 Bologna terror attack that resulted in the deaths of 80 people.
Maresca denied ever being involved, but she spent 4 years in prison prior to her release.
Ammaturo had fled Peru in order to be a cocaine baron. He was then extradited from Italy to confess to the crime after becoming a witness for the state, violating the mafia’s code of silence.
Maresca died aged 86 at her home in Castellammare di Stabia near Pompeii after an illness.
Although she is known as one of Camorra’s most formidable bosses, her last years were spent in her clothes stores.