Raffaele Cutolo (1941–2021) was an Italian crime boss who led the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), an organisation he built to renew the Camorra, the Neapolitan mafia. Known by nicknames such as 'o Professore and 'o Monaco, he spent almost his entire adult life in maximum-security or psychiatric prisons after 1963, apart from eighteen months on the run. At the time of his death he was serving multiple life sentences for murder.
Early years
Cutolo was born in Ottaviano, a town in the hinterland of Naples, into a devout Catholic peasant family with no earlier links to the Camorra. After his father died in 1953, when Cutolo was twelve, he was raised by his elder sister. He was a poor student and a violent, troublesome youth who led a gang of teenagers, committing thefts and extorting shopkeepers. In 1963, aged 21, he killed a firefighter during a confrontation and was sent to Poggioreale prison in Naples, where he began to build his influence.
Founding the NCO
From inside Poggioreale prison, Cutolo built a network by befriending young inmates, helping poorer prisoners and making payments to the families of imprisoned members. By the early 1970s he had considerable control over several prisons. He founded the Nuova Camorra Organizzata in his home town of Ottaviano in 1970, modelling it on the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta. Unlike earlier Camorra groups, the NCO was highly centralised and had a rudimentary ideology, which helped attract young followers.
Legacy of his organisation
Cutolo promoted a sense of Campanian identity and a cult of violence among his members, partly through a book of thoughts and poems, Poesie e pensieri, published in 1980. His organisation was strongest in the towns east of Naples. Cutolo remains a notable figure in the history of organised crime in Campania, known for transforming the Camorra into a more hierarchical and ideologically driven structure.