Crime family leaves coffin in front of activist’s home, Rome police say

By Barbie Latza Nadeau, CNN

Rome, Italy (CNN) — The Casamonica crime family, a mafia-style crime syndicate that operates in and around Rome, is accused of leaving a black coffin outside the home of an anti-mafia activist, police said.

The activist, Tiziana Ronzio, is the president of the anti-mafia group Toripiubella, named after the Tor Bella Monaca district, where the Casamonica family’s main villas stood until they were demolished by the city in 2018 and 2019.

Police found gaudy decorations, including life-size porcelain tigers used to hide money, diamond-encrusted swimming pools with gold horses and gilded mirrored ceilings in many of the rooms during the demolition. They also found several tons of drugs, police said, including heroin and cocaine. In 2022, two family members were convicted of attempting to smuggle seven tons of cocaine from Colombia.

The coffin was found on Sunday outside Ronzio’s home in Rome, in the Tor Bella Monaca district.

On Sunday afternoon, Ronzio said she saw the box and that people had sent her photos of it, but she didn’t immediately realize it was intended as a threat until her security team informed her.

While she called the threat “stupid” and said it wouldn’t stop her, she also said it “destabilized” her group, which regularly reports members of the group for crimes against local residents and often testifies on their behalf in court.

“I’m not afraid, I’m moving forward,” Ronzio told local media. “These are stupid gestures that make us even more angry and want to fight.”

Meanwhile, Rome police told CNN on Monday that the coffin was being examined for fingerprints. Toripiubella, Ronzio’s group, told CNN that they would not be making a public statement as the investigation was ongoing.

Ronzio has previously convicted several clan members.

“There are many things that you always let go,” she told Italian news Sky24 on Sunday night, noting that she had previously faced harassment, including written threats and feces left on her doorstep by her own neighbors.

“I try to live with distance, but it’s not easy. I live these things as if they don’t concern me, to move forward,” she said, adding: “It’s hard to live in the same place as the people you report to the police,” she said.

Although Ronzio’s home and office have been broken into several times, she told the newspaper La Repubblica that “it’s not every day that you find a coffin under your house.”

“It can happen that an uncivilized person leaves behind a piece of furniture, a sofa, but not a coffin,” she said in the article, published Monday.

Several political groups have condemned the intimidation.

Rome Mayor Roberto Gualtieri wrote on X Sunday: “Solidarity and closeness to Tiziana Ronzio for the terrible threat received today. The precious work she has been carrying out for years together with many other honest citizens in Tor Bella Monaca will certainly not stop for intimidation. The city and its administration will continue to stand by Tiziana’s side in support of her daily commitment in the territory for legality and justice.”

Tobia Zevi, Rome’s councillor for heritage and housing policies, also expressed his support for Ronzio, saying that “the denunciation of organised crime (and) the courage and perseverance that have characterised her work in difficult years will not be tarnished by the fear of another ignoble gesture against her.”

Scenes from ‘The Godfather’

The Casamonica clan was first identified as a mafia-style group by Italy’s Anti-Mafia Investigation Directorate, or DIA, in the 1970s. The main families emerged as nomadic Sinti groups who moved to the capital from rural Italian provinces after the end of World War II and are estimated to be worth around 90 million euros ($101 million), according to the DIA. They are most commonly associated with extortion, racketeering and usury, but have also been involved in threats such as the one against Ronzio — and in murder cases. There are thought to be around 1,000 members. A dozen people with ties to the group are currently facing trial for stealing electricity from a housing project in Rome.

The group made headlines in 2015 when they were given permission by authorities in Rome to hold a lavish funeral for family patriarch Vittorio Casamonica, with the coffin transported in a horse-drawn carriage and a helicopter dropping rose petals over the Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood.

Since the Casamonica clan is considered a criminal organization by Italian authorities, it is unusual that they were allowed to hold a public funeral. Other mafia groups have been banned from holding public funerals for bosses.

However, the procession was guarded by police and outside the church a brass band played the theme music from the Godfather trilogy.

In 2019, an informant testified at a trial of 40 of Casamonica’s relatives, accused of mafia involvement, drug trafficking, extortion, loan sharking and illegal weapons possession, that a matriarch had tried to kill him.

The informant, Massimiliano Fazzari, spoke in court about the use of acid, which he said was kept in a barrel in one of the cellars of the family’s villa in Rome.

“They threatened to dissolve me in acid,” Fazzari said of Liliana Casamonica, the female head of one of the families.

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