Giovanni Pandico

Giovanni Pandico (born June 24, 1944) is a former Italian Camorrista who was a member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples.

Pandico rose to become one of Camorra boss, Raffaele Cutolo's underwriters within the organization.

It was during his stay with Della Pietra that Pandico came to the conclusion that it was his own father and mother, together with the mayor of Liveri, Nicola Nappi and his brother Salvatore, who had conspired to have Della Pietra convicted of the murder of another brother of the mayor, Michele Nappi, on April 3, 1956.

Pandico was inclined by this piece of information to seek revenge on the people responsible for his friend's incarceration.

According to his later testimony in the courtroom, Pandico was initiated into the Camorra by Cutolo on December 8, 1963, by the classical ritual of blood baptism: a small cut on the base of the index finger of the right hand.

Later, in a letter to Cutolo, he would recall the event as "our first camorristic dawn with all our splendor".

Pandico was eventually acquitted of the bombing charges and released from prison.

While living in freedom, he survived on odd, low paying jobs and was occasionally sent back to the Poggioreale prison for minor offenses.

During one of his prison terms, he was reunited with Giorgio Della Pietra, another native of Liveri, who was serving a 24-year prison term for murder.

On June 18, 1970, two days after his release from prison, he went to city hall with the intention to kill the mayor, Nicola Nappi.

In his rampage through the corridors of the city hall, he first killed Giuseppe Gaetano, a city supervisor who tried to block him.

He then proceeded to shoot and kill Guido Adrianopoli, a clerk who had appeared in the corridor to see what was going on.

Finally, he shot and wounded the mayor and employee, Pasquale Scola, who were both trying to find some protection in the mayor's desk.

Pandico was arrested the following day and immediately confessed to the crime.

He stated that he wanted to get even with the mayor, the mayor's brother Salvatore, and his own mother and father who had testified in the criminal trial against his friend, Giorgio Della Pietra.

But he later changed his mind and declared that Mayor Nappi had put a contract on Giuseppe Gaetano.

He claimed that Gaetano was blackmailing the mayor and that Nappi arranged to be wounded in order to confuse the reconstruction of the crime and so distance himself from the murder.

After a brief psychiatric examination which had cleared Pandico to stand trial, he was defined as a "pure paranoid individual, able however to understand very well his own situation".

As a result, he was convicted of multiple murder, multiple attempted murder and lying with malice by the judges of the Corte d'Assise in Naples, and sentenced to 30 years of imprisonment, in total.

He had been sentenced to three years of imprisonment for a slander charge in 1973.

In prison, Pandico increased his knowledge by voraciously reading written documents, particularly legal papers, and soon began helping other inmates in their dealing with the law.

Thus, he soon developed a prodigious career in the mostly illiterate Neapolitan prison system.

He was soon transferred to the prison of Porto Azzurro, where he was hired by the prison administration to help other inmates write personal letters, appeals to judges and other bureaucratic letters.

Later, he was again transferred to the prison of Ascoli Piceno, which was a traditional stronghold of Raffaele Cutolo's NCO.

He was moved to a cell next to Cutolo and assisted the crime boss in his daily routine, which included making coffee for him, serving food, but above all, he wrote letters on Cutolo's behalf, using a stamp with Cutolo's signature.

Pandico's new status of scrivano ("writer") coupled with his close contact and relationship with the boss greatly boosted his prestige and standing within the organization.

He had now gained a reputation as a "man of honor". However, Pandico was increasingly at odds with the younger, more determined members of the NCO who despised him due to his arrogance and his desire to always know everything.

It was only Cutolo's vested interest in Pandico that prevented any violence against him.

However, things would later change dramatically for Giovanni Pandico when, following the scandal of the Cirillo affair, President Sandro Pertini personally intervened to have Cutolo transferred to the high security prison on the island of Asinara, Sardinia.

Pandico realized that the younger leaders of the organization would never give him the respect that he wanted.

After attempting unsuccessfully to improve his position by meeting with the NCO leadership, he asked the prison administration to put him in isolation.

After twelve years of imprisonment, he decided to collaborate with Italian justice and subsequently became a pentito in 1983.

Pandico's revelations brought a massive crackdown on the NCO and led to the arrests of over 856 NCO members and affiliates on June 17, 1983, a day labeled by the Neapolitan press as the black day of the NCO.

Giovanni Pandico was born in Liveri (Naples), where his father was a lieutenant in the Italian army.

Leaving Sassari shortly after the Second World War, his mother brought him to Liveri, a small town on the outskirts of Naples where his Greek grandfather had first taken up residence.

During one of his first days on the witness stand, Pandico commented on his Greek roots: "My family has Greek origins and in Greek, Pandicos means the just man." By the age of 15, Pandico was already familiar with juvenile hall, having spent some years inside the Filangieri, the Neapolitan juvenile detention centre.

At the age of 19, he was arrested for attempting to bomb the barracks of the Carabinieri and thus incarcerated in the infamous Poggioreale prison of Naples.

It was during this period that he met prominent Camorrista and head of the NCO, Raffaele Cutolo.

Two days later, on March 21, 1983, Pandico summoned the warden and announced his desire to defect from the NCO and cooperate with the authorities.

Pandico also claimed to be a godfather and senior figure in the NCO.