An image from the movie Romanzo Criminale

Today Rome is one of the safest big capitals in the world. But it has not always been like this. There was a time, back in the 70ies till the end of the 80ies last century, when Rome was a kind of Al Capone’s Chicago and, for some aspects, even more threatening. We had two kind of public enemies: Communist and Fascist terrorists, with organized groups like the Brigate Rosse and Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari, and the Mob. Often the two public enemies were collaborating and exchanging criminal favors and there are still lots of unsolved mysterious crimes where it’s not clear who did it, who organized it and what was the real reason. But here we want to speak about the most famous criminal gang of the period, the only one, in the recent history of Rome, that really had its hands over the city. “La Banda della Magliana”. (The gang of the Magliana,  “Magliana” is a southern neighborhood of the Italian capital).

The 2 bosses of the gang in its early stage were Franco Giuseppucci, called “er Negro” in the Roman dialect, a charismatic and ferocious criminal and Maurizio Abbatino, a cold blooded criminal (click here to see the scaring face of “er negro” in an exclusive video of the first time he was arrested). Their two different personalities were the perfect complement to each other. Later on a 3^rd boss, Renato de Pedis, called “Renatino”, the “white collar” of the band, took over. The gang started its ascent by kidnapping, in 1976,  Massimilano Grazioli della Rovere, a noble who belonged to one of the most ancient noble families of Rome. To diminish the risks  of being discovered the Gang of the Magliana charged a small, “non-professional”, criminal gang to look after the prisoner whilst they were in talks with his family for the ransom. But something went wrong: