Maurizio Abbatino

Maurizio Abbatino (born 19 July 1954) is a former Italian criminal, one of the original bosses of the Banda della Magliana, an Italian criminal organization based in the city of Rome, particularly active throughout the late 1970s until the early 1990s.

Abbatino began committing crimes in the early 1970s, and in 1972 he was arrested for the first time for robbery, resistance to arrest and possession of burglar's tools.

Two years later came his second arrest, this time for double murder.

In the trial that followed however he was acquitted for lack of evidence and immediately released.

In those years, the underworld of Rome was disorganized, with many small groups called batterie, each independent and containing usually 3-4 people, dealing mostly in gambling and some robberies.

Abbatino's nickname in the underworld has been Crispino, because of his curly, black hair.

He had a strong passion for fast cars, and since the beginning proved himself to be a highly capable driver, so much that several batterie regularly employed him as a getaway driver in their robberies for his skills in evading the police.

Skilled, but also cold and calculating, Abbatino therefore came to lead — when he was only 21 years old — his own batteria, which consisted of several people that he would later involve in the future project for the Banda della Magliana.

The Banda della Magliana was formed after a casual encounter between Crispino and another exponent of the Roman underworld, Franco Giuseppucci, known as Er Negro.

Giuseppucci at the time was well known for having a mobile home in which several criminals stored their weapons.

Though he stopped using the mobile home due to police investigations, he maintained this role of weapons keeper.

One day, he was given a bag containing weapons belonging to his friend Enrico De Pedis, another respected criminal of the period.

The car was stolen by another street criminal, unaware of who the owner was or what the car contained, but once he found the weapons he sold them immediately.

While moving the weapons in his car, he stopped at a cafe to buy a snack.

Giovanni Tigani — better known as 'Paperino' — stole the car, with the keys still inside, unaware of who the owner was or what the car contained.

"Er Negro" immediately began searching for the car and weapons and he discovered they were given to Emilio Castelletti, one of the criminals working for Abbatino.

"Franco Giuseppucci wasted no time and immediately went looking for the car with the guns inside and on the same day, likely informed by Tigani himself, came to reclaim the weapons. This was the occasion in which we met Franco Giuseppucci who proposed to join forces, since we already knew Enrico De Pedis who was working alongside Giuseppucci, and who soon joined up with Giuseppucci. This new batteria was thus formed when Giuseppucci's group and our own decided to join forces. This was when we agreed on the obligations of solidarity and exclusive cooperation."

The encounter between Giuseppucci, Abbatino and De Pedis thus set the stage for the formation of a new, larger batteria, much larger than most conventional groups at the time and which allowed them to no longer be confined to marginal roles in the criminal underworld.

Each of them brought in the members of their own groups and slowly recruited and gathered more from others, becoming steadily larger.

For example, Giuseppucci was involved with money laundering and bookmaking, while Abbatino's crew was more practical of robberies and was intent on getting into drug trafficking.

Giuseppucci virtually became the leader of the gang as he was the one to propose further operations and expansions, with Crispino being the effective second in command.

The Banda della Magliana was eager to get their hands on new and profitable illicit businesses, beginning with drug trafficking, but they lacked the effective funds to be able to launch this initiative.

It was Giuseppucci who proposed to the two groups a way in which they could gain enough money to finance their future operations: the kidnapping of duke Massimiliano Grazioli Lante della Rovere, against a ransom.

Giuseppucci, who had previous experience with a kidnapping, deemed him an easy target as he was wealthy but without an escort.

And so, on the night of 7 November 1977, Giuseppucci and Abbatino's men moved on and ambushed the duke as he was on his way back from the countryside.

Crispino personally led the operation and the duke was captured and temporarily taken to an apartment in Rome, but due to the inexperience in the kidnapping for most of the members and the difficulty in finding a safe location to keep the hostage, they asked for the help of a small gang from the Montespaccato area, who then hid the duke in the campanian countryside.

The Banda della Magliana first requested 10 billion in cash to release the hostage, but over time and through negotiations the request was lowered to about 1.5 billion.

On 14 February 1978 the duke's son, after following a complicated set of instructions, delivered the money to Abbatino's henchmen, but the duke was nowhere to be found.

There had been in fact a setback: one of the members of the Montespaccato group had been seen unmasked by the duke, which meant the duke had to be killed to prevent them from being identified: Crispino traveled to the countryside house where the duke was being kept so he could take a picture of the prisoner to prove to the family that he was still alive, and when he was on his way back the duke was murdered by the Montespaccato members and buried somewhere in Campania.

His body has never been found.

With the ransom obtained, instead of spending everything the group decided to keep the savings and instead invest in the drug trade.

It is at around this time that Nicolino Selis, known as Er Sardo (because he was born in Nuoro), a close associate and godson of Raffaele Cutolo, entered the alliance of batterie — he had been trying to apply the same idea that Cutolo was applying with his NCO in Naples, but in Roman territory.

Selis and his lieutenants became the main link between the Banda della Magliana and the NCO, which was the first supplier of drugs for the organization, and there was a meeting between Cutolo, Giuseppucci and Abbatino when the former was on the run to secure the alliance: in order to prove their worth, Cutolo asked them to dispose of a car in which there were the bodies of two men he had personally killed.

The car, a rare model for the time, easily noticeable in the Neapolitan area, disappeared in a Roman scrapyard.

Abbatino's role in drug trafficking was overseeing distribution in the Magliana and Monteverde neighborhoods.

He also became one of the main killers for the gang, alongside Edoardo Toscano, Raffaele Pernasetti, Vittorio Carnovale and others.

Unlike Giuseppucci, who preferred to remain in the shadows to avoid attracting too much police attention, Crispino earned a reputation as a "man of action" and was regularly on the front lines, ever since the organization's first high-profile murder: that of Franco Nicolini, the undisputed king of the city's bookmaking.

Giuseppucci and Selis ordered his assassination because they wanted to obtain total control of Rome's betting shops.

He became a pentito, a collaborator with justice after his arrest in 1992.

Born and raised in a street in the Magliana neighborhood, Abbatino frequented school at Palestrina (in the province of Rome), staying at the house of his paternal grandmother.