Decades of Silence: The Unveiling of a Mafia Double Murder

Until a few years ago, it was not known where they had ended up, whether they were still alive or dead. These were two cases of 'white lupara'. Only recently, thanks to the confessions of an excellent informer, did the families discover that, instead, their relatives had been brutally murdered by gunshot and then made to disappear. The conviction of the perpetrators of the double murder of Aurelio Nogarotto and Guerino Grieco, killed by the Casalesi clan in 1996, in a farmhouse in Santa Maria la Fossa, in the Caserta area, because they were deemed guilty of several thefts against local farmers and livestock breeders, comes 28 years after the events. For those tragic events that only recently came to light, the investigating judge of Naples, Giovanna Cervo, has sentenced to 20 years in prison Domenico Bidognetti, 57 years old, justice collaborator and cousin of the Casalesi boss, Francesco Bidognetti; Luigi De Vito, 55 years old from Casal di Principe and Giuseppe Dell'Aversano, 59 years old, from Casal di Principe. Last December, the DDA of Naples asked for 12 years in prison for Bidognetti and De Vito, and 19 years for Dell'Aversano. 'After all these years only a few months ago we learned the truth about my father,' says Maria, daughter of Nogarotto, defended by lawyer Sergio Pisani, 'years lived in anguish and also in the hope that he was still alive. A hope that was extinguished when we received the news of the start of the trial on their murderers. Although they have revealed where they had buried them, we, at the moment, do not have any remains to cry over.' The two victims, according to what emerged from the investigations, were taken by Dell'Aversano and De Vito and led to Bidognetti who, after killing them, ordered his two men to bury the bodies in a field a short distance from the farmhouse.