Felice Maniero changes everything, and in the space of just one decade or a little more, what used to be a gang of desperate men/bandits becomes a real mafia organization, which alongside the traditional “jobs”, now carried out against far more lucrative targets (mainly jewelers) gains the monopoly in the north-east of the rampant drug trade, especially Heroin … but above all … it is REAL MAFIA an organization “recognized” by the other national mafias, that can boast DIRECT international contacts for drug and arms trafficking, that fears nothing and no one in terms of military force, that can afford the costs of corruption … practically anyone who can be corrupted.
The rise is spectacular: when Maniero is a teenager we are at the end of the ‘70s; when he suffers his first arrest in 1980, he is already a legend, the thefts of grana cheese are already criminal archaeology … AND … his is the change of the criminal structure in the whole region! … BETTER: HE IS THE CRIMINAL CHANGE IN VENETO!
No criminal, NO ONE can afford to do anything illegal in Veneto in those years without his approval, Maniero controls EVERYTHING, and to some people he delegates whole chunks of territory; for the province of Treviso, where I currently live, the “delegate” is called Silvano Maritan,
Some personal memories:
1) For several years Silvano Maritan keeps as a “housekeeper” someone very special to me, whom I described in a separate book titled “Miriam wakes up at noon”; in those years Miriam works for the gang (she boasts of having been its youngest member), they even send her to Sicily for a while, and thanks to those years she still has contacts with the other mafias.
I consider Miriam a victim of drugs, who managed to free herself on her own from Heroin, only to fall back into addiction, this time to Crack; she too is for me a victim, at least indirectly, of Maniero.
2) In ’90, shortly before I graduated in Padua, the attempt at a “job” by the Maniero gang against an armored van along the railway line that connects Venice and Padua, causes the death of a young student, Cristina Pavesi. I too was a commuting student … I took trains almost daily on that stretch … I could very well have been there that day, and I remember well the collective psychological effect … suddenly no one felt safe anymore!
3) In ’94, shortly after Graduation and Military Service, I meet an old friend … who after a few months will die of an overdose like so many other victims of those years, attributable to Maniero and his gang/mafia; to him I dedicated a letter that I placed in the appendix of this book.