The ObserverOrganised crime

Italian mobster condemned by daughter's evidence

Carlo Cosco among six Calabrian gang members jailed for torture and murder of his ex-partner, whose daughter bravely testified against them in court

Six Italian mobsters have been given life sentences for murdering and dissolving in acid a woman who courageously shared secrets of clan life with the police.

Lea Garofalo, 35, was lured to Milan in 2009 by members of the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta – among them her ex-partner and father of her daughter – before being tortured, shot dead and dumped in 50 litres of acid at a rural warehouse. The court heard that members of the gang watched the acid vat for three days to ensure Garofalo's corpse had totally dissolved.

Key to what was described as a "historic" ruling against the secretive and powerful Calabrian gangsters was evidence given by Garofalo's 20-year-old daughter Denise against her father, Carlo Cosco. "This sentence will go down in history in this country," said Father Luigi Ciotti, an anti-mafia campaigner. "We need to bow down before this young girl who has broken the mafia's omerta."

Lea Garofalo first broke ranks in 2002 with the 'Ndrangheta, which has grown into a global drug and arms trading organisation worth around £36bn, or 3.5% of Italy's GDP.

After giving investigators details of a bloody civil war between two 'Ndrangheta families that left 40 dead, Garofalo left a witness protection programme in 2006 and moved with her daughter Denise out of Calabria to a house found for her by Cosco. He then tried to kill Lea, dispatching a killer to the house masquerading as a workman. In court, Denise said the man fled after her mother was able to fight him off with a knife.

Six months later, Cosco lured mother and daughter to Milan, with the promise they would discuss Denise's university studies. While Denise visited family members in the city, Lea accepted a dinner invitation from Cosco, only to be bundled into a van and delivered to an isolated warehouse near Monza, where two of his brothers, Vito and Giuseppe Cosco, tortured and killed her.

Carlo later joined his daughter to wait in vain at the station for Lea, before reporting her disappearance to the police.Describing the gang's plan, magistrate Marcello Tatangelo accused the six of a "cowardly" killing.

Now living under police protection, Denise listened to the verdict in a room adjacent to the main court, where her father and uncles sat in the dock. Cosco, who was given two years isolation on top of his life sentence, denied the charges and claimed Lea had fled to start a new life in Australia.

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