by Bepi Castellaneta
In the early 1990s, the Bari clans felt the new companies emerging across the Adriatic. Streams of drugs and weapons are coming from Albania. The streets of old Bari are full of children armed with Kalashnikovs. It is the scenario in which Marshal Fenoglio moves, the protagonist of the series The Fenoglio Method – Cold Summer, which will be broadcast on Rai 1 from Monday November 27th
From a rugged archipelago of gangs in the service of the big mafia, able to provide refuge and logistical bases for refugees while remaining on the fringes of important business, to an autonomous and emerging organization.
A dizzying climb on a double track: On the one hand, at the international level, new alliances and a flow of money guaranteed by the Adriatic route of smuggling and drugs; on the other, a bloody military strategy punctuated by ambushes and attacks to settle old scores and strengthen the new balance resulting from the divisions.
here she is the rising parable of organized crime in Bari which took dangerous forms in the early 1990s, here is the crime novel that forms the background for the book Gianrico Carofiglio on which the fiction is based The Fenoglio Method – The Cold Summerto broadcast on Rai 1 from November 27th.
The Fenoglio Method on Rai 1: Plot and Cast
The criminal escalation that bled Bari in the 1990s comes to the screen with fiction The Fenoglio Method – The Cold Summer, Broadcast in prime time on Rai1 e divided into four episodes. It is a co-production between Rai Fiction and Clemart, based on the second novel in the trilogy “A Cold Summer” by Gianrico Carofiglio dedicated to Marshal Fenoglio.
The direction is through Alessandro Casale. The main character is Alessio Boni in the role of Pietro Fenoglio, Turin Carabinieri Marshal who finds himself in Bari during the clan war that broke out after the arson of the Petruzzelli Theater. In the same period as the attacks on the judges Giovanni Falcone and Paolo BorsellinoA somewhat parallel and much less told crime story takes place in Puglia. In addition to Boni, the cast also includes Giulia Vecchio and Paolo Sassanelliwho play prosecutor Gemma D’Angelo and police officer Antonio Pellecchia.
Magistrate of Carofiglio: the true story of A Cold Summer
Carofiglio’s novels are inspired by a reality that the author knows very well. The author was actually a deputy prosecutor of the Anti-Mafia District Directorate of Bari: Not only was he involved with the Bari gangs for a long time, but he also led them delicate investigations into those rooted in Foggia and Cerignola.
In the second novel of Marshal Fenoglio’s trilogy, “A Cold Summer”, hints emerge of the criminal reality that Carofiglio faces as an anti-mafia prosecutor: This is the case Flash seizuresvery common in Cerignola and Andria, and dei Contacts related to drug trafficking between Cerignola clans and members of the ‘Ndrangheta in Milan. The book and the series also feature the story of a penitent who reveals the true affiliation formulas of the Bari clans as documented in various investigations by the District Anti-Mafia Directorate of Bari.
The Petruzzelli Theater is in ruins
From fiction to reality. The criminal escalation that engulfed Bari began when the Petruzzelli Theater It has been in ruins for several months and is still an empty skeleton that dominates the central Corso Cavour: outside, the walls are painted a shimmering red; in the rubble, what remains afterwards the arson that destroyed it on the night of October 27, 1991. The theater, symbol of a city that dreamed and thought big, seems instead to be a metaphor for Bari of those years: a calming facade behind which something is hidden Half-truths (only the two perpetrators were convicted of the fire) e unexplained mysteries. The Petruzzelli’s flames are now extinguished, but the criminal fire that is shaking the city is about to flare up.
The division and clash between clans
It is the delicate phase in which the neighborhood bosses’ shaky balance sheets are swept away a brutal military offensive fueled by weapons of war Arrive without interruption thanks to the new opportunities opening up in the East. In old Bari the leadership of the historic clan led by Antonio Capriati is questioned by a group of emerging artists gathered around Raffaele Laraspata (later a member of the judiciary), who launched a massive recruitment campaign. You are connected young and very young, many are former predators who are ready to pick up a pistol or a machine gun for a place in the sun in the emerging hierarchies. The old village, whose narrow streets wind through clusters of white houses and squares overlooking the sea, becomes the epicenter of a criminal earthquake that spreads its tremors everywhere.
Albania and Montenegro: the leap in quality
In the 1980s Bari was marginal. The Apulian crime scene was dominated by Sacra Corona united in the society of Salento and Foggia; Other dangerous and aggressive gangs had their roots between Cerignola and Andria, the towns hit by lightning kidnappings, and in Trani, where Particularly noteworthy is the character of Salvatore Annacondia, the (remorseful) boss of Cosa Nostra who made the bodies of his slain rivals disappear by burning them between the tires of their cars. Suddenly the situation changes. The clans of Bari sense the leap in quality and form alliances with the aim of getting their hands on the new companies that are emerging on the horizon of the Adriatic and promise incredible profits. The flow of rubber boats from Albania provides money for the drug trade while nearby Montenegro, long a land of golden refugees, becomes a base for motorboats driving cigarette smuggling. They travel on the same route Weapons of war rounded up in the old, disused arsenals of the former Yugoslavia and Albania: Kalashnikov submachine guns, Scorpion machine guns, pistols, explosives, even bazookas, an impressive fire potential that allows the city’s clans to advance positions and distinguish themselves as valuable interlocutors for major national and international organizations.
Bari, the powder magazine city
The criminal risks are high. And Bari becomes a powder keg. The destroyed buildings, the niches of the historic buildings, the cellars, the abandoned farmhouses, the manholes, Every corner becomes a suitable place to store weapons; Even the seabed of the stretch of sea that surrounds the San Nicola pier, where the colorful fishing boats are moored and now immortalized by tourists, turns out to be a valuable underwater arsenal.
From the center to the suburbs
The escalation looms over the old heart of the city, but also extends to the suburbs. What if The Japigia district remains an inviolable fiefdom of the boss Savino Parisi, known as Savinuccio, promoter of the Pax mafia in the name of business as well as administrator of one of the largest drug trafficking centers in all of southern Italy, the clan map is radically changing in other areas. Start with Enziteto, not far from the coast of Santo Spiritothe north coast, hammered by smugglers’ motorboats before urban renewal, a large no-man’s land where The clan led by Carmine Piperis is emerging (in prison he later denied his criminal past), an ally of the Laraspata. Here, in a district now called San Pio, where everything is missing but the street names “via della happiness” and “via dell’amico” are, the hegemonic gang also controls the drug market the illegal occupation of social housingand makes the apartments available for new additions.
The recruitment of minors and innocent victims
Dozens of minors were recruited during the war in the early 1990s: First deployed as guards, then as “holster boys”. responsible for guarding and timely delivery of weapons to the fire groups. And finally used directly in ambushes. What repeats itself at an impressive rate: targeted but also symbolic actions to stir up social unrest, in keeping with the mafia strategy of those years. So much so that in old Bari many are forced to leave their homes and move elsewhere to escape the chain of transversal revenge that does not spare the innocent. This is what happened in June 1996, when A commando shoots wildly against the two-story building in which part of the Capriati family lives: the facade is littered with bullets, the police count over 30 cartridge cases, A 7-year-old boy is injured by shrapnel from a bullet. In November of the same year, a 12-year-old boy, still in the historic center, had to leave school: he belongs to a family on the fringes of the loser family and is at risk of suffering reprisals. Same offer for another 11 students, one year later A 9-year-old child is entrusted with the accompaniment: Every morning he shows up in class with two traffic police officers.
The massacre was prevented
Police and carabinieri are increasing controls and risk areas are being monitored. The shootings continue, but there are also many ambushes that are foiled The massacre in Piazza Chiurlia was averted, one of the entrances to the historic center. A stone’s throw from the salon, on Via Sparano, the air commando stops a white van and arrests the three members of a commando: when they block their way I’m still under the influence of cocaine, They take up weapons of war and are ready to shoot among people to avenge a murder.
The arrests and the new gang
The investigations are continuing quickly. In the next month Hundreds of people end up in cells: Prominent personalities and lieutenants, assassins and supporters, drug dealers and guards, teenagers learning to be bosses, and criminals, refugees and unsuspected intruders in the gray area that enriches the coffers of organizations. However, many clans and fire brigade groups are soon eliminated from the crime scene overlooked a new gang that quickly becomes hegemonic, that of the boss Domenico Strisciuglio. And etched in the pages of the investigation remains the story of a long period of terror, of the wild leap in quality that led the Bari clans into the big mafia. The same story told in fictional form by Gianrico Carofiglio in the novel A cold summeris this Monday, November 27th comes with the TV series in prime time on Rai 1 The Fenoglio method.
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November 27, 2023 (modified November 28, 2023 | 09:46)
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