How I Came to Meet Cosa Nostra's Gaspare Mutolo.

Curiosity opens the door, courage walks you through it.

It was, without a doubt, the most stressful interview of my life - as a woman, a young mother, and a foreign journalist moving through a world that wasn’t mine.
And yet, my Sicilian producer, my sole contact for this assignment, was unusually rattled. And so was my cameraman, who, in panic, ruined the audio tape.
“The less time we spend there, the better”, my contact noted.

We ended up spending around six hours. The Mutolo family insisted we stay for lunch.

The first rule was simple: we didn’t need to know the exact address.
The second: the precise time would be confirmed the night before the interview.

How, Why, and What’s Next

Many of you may be wondering how a twenty‑six‑year‑old, independent journalist, and a young mother, found herself in a place like that. But if you knew me better, you would not be so surprised. However, the “why” seems almost self‑evident: the mafia remains one of those subjects that refuses to age, an ever-replenishing vein of relevance in a country where history and the present often sit at the same table - the Big Money Tables, like I call them.

Organized crime in Italy isn’t Gaspare Mutolo and Totò Riina anymore; it’s a booming, deeply embedded economic power. Recent research estimates that mafia groups generate around €40 billion annually, roughly 2 percent of Italy’s GDP.

Perhaps more surprisingly, legally “clean” sectors aren’t immune: the mafia pulls in about €3.3 billion a year from Italy’s tourism industry alone. About 7,000 hospitality businesses are considered vulnerable to mafia infiltration, with the Calabrian ‘Ndrangheta, Camorra, and Cosa Nostra all heavily invested.

In short: when I talk about the mafia as “big money,” I mean it. It still sits at some of the highest tables in Italy’s economy.

PS: And if the scale of the mafia’s influence still feels abstract, this photo archive offers a sobering visual record of what its presence has meant on the ground in Sicily: gettyimages.com/photos/sicilian-mafia.

If slow journalism had a patron saint, she’d be named Victoria Voigt

It rewards wandering more than planning. That's what gives me satisfaction. I did news reporting for one of Europe's biggest press agencies. I am familiar with the pressure, but I particularly love to argue with my news reporter friends that they have too little time to deeply reflect on the story they publish in real time; therefore, we see lots of errors, and those errors harm society. But you gotta do what you gotta do. Somebody’s gotta do it.

When a story stirs something in me, I don’t conduct a risk assessment or wait for a commission.
I simply follow it, or simply do nothing. Most of my reportages have been filmed with a kind of affectionate amateurism, and yet they have each carried a personal gravity. If a topic doesn’t move me, and, truthfully, most don’t.

I prefer to drift, observe, and let the world pass by without forcing meaning onto it. This is less a professional philosophy than a temperament - the very essence of investigative journalism, which demands enormous patience and an unhurry.

The Gut Feeling

My curiosity about the mafia began long before the trip. During the five years I lived and studied in Italy as a teenager, I met people whose public lives - polished, prestigious, unblemished - felt slightly misaligned. If you take the time to get to know someone’s lifestyle and habits, you will know in approximately three months, I strongly believe.

In Italy, such contradictions aren’t anomalies; they are everyday lives silenced by discomfort or fear.

So the story began, as many do, with a gut feeling and admiration for … the old movies. We are speaking about The Godfather saga. I have always been enchanted by so many layers of cultural dissection. I found it very authentic and unhurried-paced. But also, way too romantic.

So I decided to visit all the iconic locations where The Godfather was famously shot in Sicily.
Below is the final result of my first part of the Sicilian Mafia series, where I talked to business owners and managers of some of the historical places from Coppola's masterpiece.

One Weekend in Sicily

On one beautiful weekend, I went to see my old, multi‑titled sportsman friend, who looks just like George Clooney and always has some interesting stories ready. We spent so much time talking with our phones turned off. Just us, soaked in our Italian conversations. (Those who have small kids know how valuable such time is.)

As we were hitting ups and downs of our intellectual stimuli, we accidentally went downhill into the dark story of the Sicilian Mafia.

I laughed it off at first, especially around the people who clearly knew more about the subject than they cared to admit. Their response was characteristically Italian in its simplicity and audacity:

“Why don’t you talk to some of them?”

It sparked something in me. Like the old, forgotten part of an adventurous Victoria came back to life. It felt more than a challenge, but a journey into something really beneath the safe zone I lived in.

I come back home, and only few weeks later, I wake up getting ready for the exclusive interview with my first, original Mafia sicario.

The Road to Mutolo

We landed in a part of Italy that brought me back to my beginnings in Italy. It was familiar enough to soften fear. It’s difficult to articulate the simultaneous rush of excitement, anxiety, and pure curiosity that pulsed through me. But that mix of emotions is why we have to do what we love in life. It's the secret spice of life.

The instructions came in fragments, always by phone, always with pauses heavy enough to make me question whether we should go at all. Follow the main road. Turn left where the fields open. Wait at the gate for a second call.

By the time we reached the hidden valley - sunlit, quiet, deceptively calm - I felt like I had stepped out of my world and into someone else’s secret that became Victoria's Secret.

And that was where I would meet Gaspare Mutolo: once a deeply embedded member of Cosa Nostra’s Palermo network, later one of Italy’s most important pentiti, whose testimonies helped unravel the power structures built under the Corleonesi and Totò Riina.

A Hidden Villa, a Disarming Hospitality

Mutolo is now 85 years old (born 5 February 1940). If I am petite, Gaspare in real life is petittissimo. He is also a pentito, one of the last living and most influential state witnesses in the dismantling of the most brutal Sicilian Mafia eras. He was once the personal driver for Totò Riina, deeply loyal, yet ultimately betrayed. He carried out dozens of killings and was a part of over a hundred executions, though he later expressed regret over the ultra-violent direction Cosa Nostra took under Riina's reign.

He walked from the hill just to guide us to his state-protected property. As we drove in, olive trees and a carpet of flowers flanked the path into a honey-colored villa, warmed by the morning sun. It was June, dusty and hot. Just like the heatwave inside my body when I first laid the look at him.

It did resemble the feeling of "love at first sight" that I experienced once in my life, with the father of my children. But it wasn't that, obviously.

When he greeted us, there was no menace. No stereotype. He had a gentle, grandfatherly air, nothing like the caricature of a mafia boss.

I told him that I don't see his past through his eyes, so are the eyes really a mirror of our soul?

Within minutes, we sat down for dopo‑caffè: espresso first, conversation later.

He led us around the house like a curator in his own personal museum. On the walls: more than 500 paintings, self-made memories rendered in oil, and so many joyful colors. He told me he learned to paint in prison, where he spent 35 years, from another inmate.

I bought one of his pieces, which spoke his story the loudest to me. I will soon share more about it.

“I don’t go a day without painting,” he said quietly.

To be continued.

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