they were starting to become an annoyance because they were demanding protection money from shops that the Cutolo clan already controls and because they were robbing other shops and so the police were starting to come around a little more often and cause trouble they were seen as young hotheads who were becoming a problem and what’s more when word began to spread that there were people in town who didn’t think twice about killing and didn’t worry about the police or the law or anything else then people started to be afraid of them they understood this on their own which is why from the very beginning they were ruthless merciless to the nth power and they decided to wage war rather than join forces with those who already held power because they knew that if they joined forces with the Cutolo clan whose local representatives were the Simeones they would never be anything more than small time hoods so they made a cold blooded decision to eliminate the obstacle blocking their way and Bardellino pronounced the now famous phrase Noie simme i ca e ca emma cumannà noie which means the whole town belongs to us we live here and here we have to give the orders no one should come from outside to tell us what we can and cannot do

the organization in my home town went through three main stages the first was up to the fifties when there was a diffuse state of violence not so much with a view to getting rich it was a kind of violence for its own sake in that period there were the so called uomini di rispetto men of respect who formed a sucietà the honored society an association of galantuomini or gentlemen who were not really in business to make money but rather to keep people in line who weren’t by nature likely to listen to reason they were basically imposing order on the territory and doing the work that public institutions and the police were unable to do either because they were ineffectual or entirely nonexistent back then the capo società was called Antonio Pagano also known as Tatonno he worked as a watchman in the countryside he was what we called a guappo signore a masto a man of respect for instance when there was a dispute between two families over a piece of land or something else and say there had even been a killing or two people turned to him as a peacemaker to put an end to the inevitable succession of vendettas he did this for prestige pure and simple it never brought him any money and in fact he died a penniless bum

and this was the first stage or at least that’s the legend that’s been handed down then there was a second phase which began after the war this was the birth of the organization proper which smuggled contraband cigarettes in Naples and then trafficked in narcotics while in our towns it was still guardiania or agricultural guarding it was still respect it was still the pizzo extorting protection payments from the wealthy shopkeepers in the bigger neighboring town then came the last phase the birth of the large scale organization that ran three thousand different operations making money by the bucketful in all sorts of businesses and that’s when Bardellino and his gang managed to establish themselves as a power and for all the evil that we can say of them and believe me there’s nothing good to be said about them you have to admit that people who are capable of constructing in less than ten years an immense incredible international business empire are not lightweights even if they were obviously evil men responsible for the endless succession of murders that marked their ascent and the first link in that chain of murders was the killing of Simeone