The brave women who destroyed Italy’s Mafia

Alessandra Cerreti was born on April 29, 1968, in the eastern Sicilian port of Messina, Italy. The decade and a half that followed, spanning most of her adolescence, was known as la mattanza (the slaughter).

More than 1,700 Sicilians were killed by the tyrannical Mafia, including hundreds of women and children in Palermo, prompting Alessandra to prosecute Mafioso affiliates.

She graduated from Milan University in 1990, qualified as a magistrate in Rome in 1997 and was definitively instituted as a specialist in organised crime.

Over the next 12 years, she investigated and corroborated the eccentric components and elements of the Mafia's expansion from Italy’s impoverished south to the wealthy north.

The disingenuous threat to her life required Alessandra's isolation – behind her windowless office, the Palace of Justice steel door in Reggio Calabria and her armour-plated car.

She was escorted by four bodyguards round the clock and opted not to have children because of consistent trepidation. In January 2010, with the approval of Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, she was appointed lead anti-Mafia prosecutor.

The Mafia, an antagonistic, organised crime syndicate, had three dominant Italian organisations in southern Italy – Cosa Nostra, from the Italian island of Sicily, Camorra based in Naples, and 'Ndrangheta from the poorest province in Italy, Calabria.

All their felonious and espionage activities were carried out audaciously while using unbridled violence that passed as effective leadership.

The chain of command structure in each Mafia organisation consisted of an imperious Mob boss (Don), deputised by an underboss (capo). Under him are a group of about 10 subservient soldiers led by a capodecina. At the bottom of the pyramid are the outlandish associates, who took an oath of death before induction, to maintain omerta (code of silence).

The 'Ndrangheta, 21st century’s most formidable Mafia, was an efficient organised crime syndicate. It had expanded its cavalry to northern Italian cities of Pagliarelle Bergamo and Milan. In the 80s and 90s, they smuggled 80 per cent of the cocaine and heroin in Europe, totalling 124 tonnes annually by 2010.

Every year, the organisation amassed revenues of up to $100 billion, an equivalent of 4.5 per cent of Italian GDP, and twice the annual revenues of Fiat, Alfa Romeo, Lancia, Ferrari and Maserati combined. It was a state within a state.

The organisation was so secretive most Italians knew nothing about it. They had their own linguistic lingo, Baccagghju, a code of metaphors, riddles and euphemisms used to disguise their schemes from decryption by informers.

A teenage Italian, Denise Cosco, was 17 in 2009. Her mother, Lea Garofalo, was a petite, assertive, knowledgeable and articulate 35-year-old mafioso’s daughter. Denise's father was Carlo Cosco, a 39-year-old 'Ndrangheta mobster and cocaine smuggler.

Lea had married Carlo at 16, had Denise at 17, witnessed Carlo and his brother Giuseppe kill a man in Milan at 21 (in May 1995) and broke the Omerta by testifying against Carlo at 22 as a pentiti (remorseful mafioso) in July 2002. The move sent him to San Vittore, Italy’s most notorious prison.

Carlo issued an indirect command for Lea's murder. The Mafia never made direct orders. Instead, they sent subtle messages with dual meaning. In the Mafia, the oath taken during induction determined that the only way to exit membership from the Mob was by death.

When a mafioso was commanded to kill, disobedience wasn't an option. If the order wasn't executed, the disloyal associate would be murdered, before another loyalist was contracted for the initially planned killing.

One night on November 23, 2009, Lea never returned home. The Mafia's term for people who vanished without a trace was Lupara Bianca (white shotgun), a killing that left no corpse.

People avoided mentioning Lea’s name again. Within the 'Ndrangheta, misogyny was customary. Women who were unfaithful, even to the memory of a dead husband, were killed, a diabolical perversion of equality.

A mother, known in Italia as Madonna, was a holy figure, but the 'Ndrangheta had corrupted her and bent her to its criminal will, as emphasised in Good Mothers: The True Story of the Women who took on the World's Most Powerful Mafia, by Alex Perry.

Women inside the organisation who despised the way they had been treated were persuaded by Alessandra to break the chain of oppression and testify against their criminal families.

One of them was Giuseppina Pesce, whose father, Salvatore, cousin Ciccio and husband Rocco moved cocaine through Gioia Tauro port. Giuseppina’s grandfather, Angelo Ferraro, was buried under the family’s chapel floor, killed by his family for having an affair.

Buried alongside him was Annunziata Pesce, Giuseppina’s cousin, who had betrayed her husband and the entire ‘Ndrangheta by fleeing with a policeman.

After Alessandra's nationwide raid that arrested 300 mafiosos on July 13, 2010, Giuseppina testified against many 'Ndrangheta members. Denise also testified against her father and mother's killer, Carlo Cosco, who had also ordered for her killing, leading to his indictment on May 27, 2010.

The reviewer is a novelist, a Big Brother Africa 2 Kenyan representative and founder of Jeff's Fitness Centre (@jeffbigbrother).