Milan, yesterday, remembered Lea Garofalo, fifteen years after her death, the justice witness from Pagliarelle killed in Milan on 24 November 2009. The Libera association organized a torchlight procession yesterday in Milan with the following programme: 5pm : meeting at Piazzale Cimitero Monumentale (Milan); 5.15pm: start of commemoration at the upper eastern newsstand F (in front of the tomb of Lea Garofalo); 6.00 pm: meeting at Piazzale Cimitero Monumentale; 6.15pm: torchlight procession begins; 6.45 pm: moment of remembrance at the “Lea Garofalo Garden” (viale Montello 3). The woman had denounced the crimes and offenses of her family and those of the rival family of her ex-partner Carlo Cosco, in particular the drug dealing activity and the killing of her brother.
After managing to escape from an attempted kidnapping, lured to Milan by deception by her ex-boyfriend, she was murdered on 24 November. The trial for his disappearance saw as defendants Carlo Cosco (54 years old), Vito Cosco (55 years old), Massimo Sabatino (51 years old), Carmine Venturino (46 years old) e Rosario Curcio (committed suicide in June 2023 in Opera prison, in Milan), which, thanks to the testimony of the victim’s daughter Denise, definitively ended in December 2014 with life imprisonment for Carlo and Vito Cosco, Rosario Curcio and Massimo Sabatino, 25 years of imprisonment for Carmine Venturino, known as Pillera.
Collaborator Carmine Venturino recalled some of Lea Garofalo’s last moments. On November 24, 2009, Venturino stands guard in Piazza Prealpi. Carlo Cosco and Lea arrive in the green Chrysler. They get out of the car and enter the building at number 2. Lea will never leave alive. “After 10-15 minutes,” Venturino told the judges, “Cosco Carlo and Cosco Vito get out. Carlo leaves with the Chrysler without saying a word to me. Vito gets into the car and tells me “l’amu fattu”, in Italian it would mean “we killed her”. He gives me a cell phone and tells me it’s Lea Garofalo’s and tells me to make it disappear immediately. We went up to that apartment. We turned on the light. The body was lying on the floor in the living room. He was face down in a pool of blood. His face had large bruises. She had been strangled, she had a green rope around her neck, which I recognized as the one that was in my house and which was used to close the curtains.”
The body was first taken to a garage and the following morning to a plot of land in San Fruttuoso, Monza, where the destruction of the body began, which was charred with petrol. He was 36 years old. After 15 years, all that remains of Lea are those 2,812 bone fragments and jewelery found in 2013 inside a manhole. Lea Garofalo’s is a story of courage and rebellion. Of a woman and a mother who, for the love of freedom and her daughter Denise, challenged the ‘Ndrangheta and the rules of silence that regulate that culture. Fifteen years later, her legacy continues to be a warning for the institutions and an example for many women who find the strength to rebel and free themselves from mafia oppression.