Raffaele "'O Professore" Cutolo (4 November 1941–17 February 2021) was the boss of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata in Naples. He was the founder of his Camorra organization which he established inside the Italian prison system during the 1970s, and spent the entirety of its runtime as boss behind bars serving multiple life sentences for murder. A thinker and self-described predestined man, Cutolo believed a new structure was in order for criminal organizations and helped along fellow inmates, teaching them to read, treating them for physical or sexual assaults they received and providing them with advice, and many of them would become future members of his organization.
Biography[]
Cutolo was born on 4 November 1941 to an Italian family in Ottaviano, Naples. As a young man, Cutolo became a street thug, and in 1963, was sentenced to life imprisonment after shooting a man to death during an altercation involving the man's girlfriend. Incarcerated at the Poggioreale prison in Naples, he soon built up a reputation as a tough guy and feuded with imprisoned Camorra boss Antonio Spavone, ordering a hit on him once he was released; though Spavone survived, the attempt convinced him to retire from his position. Around this time, Cutolo built up a substantial network of associates who later became the leaders of his organization, seducing them with his charismatic and empathetic personality, helping them with mistreatments they received from fellow inmates. He built up such a following that on his patron saint's day, 24 October 1970, he founded the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (New Organized Camorra) with a formal structure, rank and reinstating its old traditions, including him at the top as vangelo (boss). He later wrote a book of poetry in 1980 and distributed it amongst his followers, for whom it became their new Bible. While he was in prison, Cutolo relayed all his orders through his sister and second-in-command Rosetta, who ran the organization from a 16th century palace with a tennis court and a swimming pool. However, Cutolo's group was confronted by the rival Camorra syndicate Nuova Famiglia and its various leaders including Michele Zaza, resulting in hundreds of murders between 1980 and 1983. He was contacted by Italian officials in 1981 to negotiate a deal with the Red Brigades to free conservative politician Ciro Cirillo, who was kidnapped by the terrorist group and ransomed for 1.45 billion lire. Cutolo's sister was arrested in 1993, and he was transferred to a prison in Asinara, a long distance away from Naples to limit his communication with the NCO, and the organization eventually dissolved. Until his last days, he upholded his pride as a camorrista, and he died in a prison in Parma on 17 February 2021, aged 79.