The Woman who Grassed Up ’Ndrangheta

Six Arrested for Acid-Bath Murder of Woman who Grassed Up ’Ndrangheta
Killing organised by woman’s former companion, Carlo Cosco, who enticed her to Milan

MILAN –Last night, six arrest warrants were issued for inquiries into the disappearance of the Calabrian police informer, Lea Garofalo, who was murdered and her body placed in an acid bath on land at San Fruttuoso, near Monza. In the warrant, the investigating magistrate maintains that the woman’s murder was actually an execution. The arrests were made in Lombardy, Calabria and Molise. Searches are now under way.

ARRESTS – Lea Garofalo, 35, who disappeared in the night of 24 November last year, was a former police informer and companion of one of the gangsters involved in the Milan turf war between Calabrians originally from Petilia Policastro, in the province of Crotone. She is believed to have been tortured by her killers before she died. Two arrest warrants were served in prison on Carlo Cosco, 40, who was involved in anti-Mafia investigations in Milan in the late 1990s, and Massimo Sabatini, 37, a drug dealer from Quarto Oggiaro. Cosco, who killed four people over drug-related squabbles at Rozzano, in the province of Milan, in August 2003, used to live with Ms Garofalo, with whom he had a daughter, now an adult. Both men were arrested in February for a previous attempted kidnapping in Campobasso in May 2009, when they intended to kill her for collaborating with investigators from 2002 and testifying against members of the Petilia Policastro ’Ndrangheta gangs. On 24 February this year, two people were arrested for providing the sheds in the Milan area where the woman is believed to have been taken after her abduction. The other four warrants were issued for brothers Giuseppe “Smith” Cosco and Vito “Sergio” Cosco and two others, one of whom is accused only of destroying the body.

INFORMER – In 2002, Ms Garofalo began to collaborate with anti-Mafia investigators on the turf war involving the Garofalos and their rivals the Mirabellis. In 2006, she left the witness protection programme and moved from the secret location where she had been living. Ms Garofalo’s testimony regarded the Mafia killings that took place in Milan in the 1990s, including the 1995 murder of Antonio Combierati, in which the brother was also involved.

TRAP – Investigators allege that Carlo Cosco organised a trap for Lea Garofalo while she was in Milan with their daughter. On the pretext of keeping up relations with the younger woman, who was very attached to her mother, Cosco lured his former partner to the building in Viale Montello 6, Milan, where many relatives of victims of Mafia violence reside. On 24 November 2009, Ms Garofalo took part in a family meeting to decide where the daughter should study after leaving secondary school. Her traces disappeared that afternoon when CCTV cameras filmed her near the building and on the avenue that runs along the monumental cemetery. Her daughter and former partner were waiting for her at the main railway station where she should have caught a train back to the south. At least four days before the abduction, Cosco prepared a plan. He contacted his accomplices, arranged for the van that Ms Garofalo was bundled into, procured a gun to kill her “with a single shot“, secured a warehouse for the interrogation and also the site where investigators believe the body was dissolved in acid. The purpose of destroying the body was to put the killers in the clear by making it appear that Ms Garofalo had disappeared of her own will.