Killed and dissolved in acid 10 years ago, three arrests in Naples

Killed and dissolved in acid because he had established a romantic relationship with the wife of a detained affiliate: this was the motive for the murder of Salvatore Esposito, who disappeared (the body has never been found) on September 27, 2013. To shed light on the cold case were the carabinieri of the Ros of Naples, together with the anti-mafia prosecutors Loreto, Serio and Carrano (coordinated by the acting prosecutor Rosa Volpe) who reconstructed the whole story.

The crime was committed to protect the honor of Giovanni Licciardi, son of the boss Gennaro, who was detained at that time. The man threatened the daughter-in-law of the clan leader Gennaro Licciardi, the latter nicknamed "the monkey", and for this he was killed and dissolved in acid. According to the reconstruction of the carabinieri, Esposito was the victim of a "punishment of honor": he was lured to the home of one of the three murderers arrested today by the carabinieri: he also realized that something terrible was about to happen to him, he also began to sweat profusely (and for this reason he was also teased by his tormentors) but he could not free himself from the plots they had woven to kill him. With the excuse of going to visit the husband of Maria Licciardi (sister of the boss Gennaro) who was spending the fugitive in Marano di Napoli, the murderous commando diverted the path to go to the area of the quarries of Chiaiano, an inaccessible and isolated area, where the murder with gunshots and the destruction of the corpse was consummated, dissolved in acid by some members of the Polverino-Simioli clan, rib of the Nuvoletta clan, who used 'white lupara' techniques learned from the Palermo mafia. A move designed not to make the victim suspicious since Chiaiano is on the road to Marana.

His death was decided by his own clan, in particular three people considered to be at the top of the Licciardi clan to whom the military of the Arma and the District Anti-Mafia Directorate now contest the crimes of mafia association, extortion, murder, possession and illegal carrying of firearms, aggravated as committed to facilitate the Licciardi clan and the Alliance of Secondigliano. Today's arrest concerns three members of the Licciardi clan - Paolo Abbatiello, Gianfranco Leva and Raffaele Prota - who are contested, together with Giuseppe Simioli, the role of instigators. To materially kill Esposito and to destroy his corpse, according to investigators, however, were Carlo Nappi, Crescenzo Polverino, Giuseppe Ruggiero and Alessandro De Luca. All are in prison but for another murder.

It is - it has been ascertained thanks to interceptions, stalking and repentance - the same practices of concealment of corpses for dissolution in acid used by Cosa Nostra in 1984 to make disappear on behalf of the boss Lorenzo Nuvoletta the corpses of Vittorio and Luigi Vastarella, Gennaro Salvi, Gaetano Di Costanzo and Antonio Mauriello.
For the murders of those five people, which took place in Marano di Napoli on September 19, 1984 as part of the Camorra war between the Gionta-Nuvoletta and Alfieri-Bardellino criminal families, the superboss Salvatore Riina was definitively condemned as the instigator.