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

Rome, Italy
CNN
 — 

The Casamonica crime family, a mafia-style organized crime syndicate that operates in and around Rome, has been blamed for a black coffin that was left in front of an anti-mafia activist’s home Sunday, police said.

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

Police found garish decorations, including life-sized porcelain tigers used to hide cash, diamond encrusted swimming pools lined with golden 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 members of the family were convicted of attempting to traffic seven tons of cocaine from Colombia.

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

Ronzio said Sunday afternoon that she had seen the coffin and that people had sent her photos of it, but that she did not immediately realize that it was meant as a threat to her until her security detail informed her.

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

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

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

Ronzio has denounced several clan members in the past.

“There have been many things that one always lets slide,” she told Italy’s Sky24 news on Sunday evening, noting that she has experienced previous acts of intimidation, including written threats and feces left by her door by her own neighbors.

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

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

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

Several political groups have condemned the act of intimidation.

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

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

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 originated as nomadic Sinti groups that arrived in the capital from rural Italian provinces after the end of World War II and are estimated to be worth around 90 million euro ($101 million), according to the DIA. They are most often associated with extortion, racketeering and usury, but have also been involved in threats like the one against Ronzio – and in murder cases. There are thought to be around 1,000 members. A dozen people tied to the group are currently facing a trial for stealing electricity from a housing project in Rome.

The group made headlines in 2015 when they were somehow allowed by Rome authorities to hold a lavish funeral for the family patriarch, Vittorio Casamonica, that included a horse drawn carriage for his coffin and a helicopter that dropped rose petals over the Tor Bella Monaca neighborhood.

Given that the Casamonica clan are identified by Italian authorities as a criminal organization, it is unusual that they were given the go ahead to hold a public funeral, as other mafia groups have been prohibited from public funerals for bosses.

Still, that procession was given police protection and a brass band outside the church that blared theme music from the Godfather trilogy.

In 2019, during a trial against 40 Casamonica family members accused of mafia association, drug trafficking and dealing, extortion, usury and illegal possession of weapons, an informant testified that a matriarch tried to kill him.

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

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