Meanwhile Enrico Alfano having been released from custody had for a while lived in Naples in his usual haunts, but, on learning that the Carabinieri had been ordered to take a hand in investigating the situation, he had gone first into hiding at Afragola, a village near Naples, and had afterward fled to New York, where he had been arrested later in the year by Detective Petrosino and sent back to Havre, while Italian police officers were on their way to America to take him back to Naples. Luckily, the French government was notified in time, so that he was turned over to the Italian government instead of being set at liberty, and was delivered to the Carabinieri in June, 1907, at Bardonacchia, on the frontier, together with fourteen other criminals who were being expelled from French territory. Then Capezzuti, armed with the confession of Abattemaggio, made a clean sweep of all the Camorrists against whom any evidence could be obtained and conducted wholesale raids upon their homes and hiding places, with the result that Rapi and the others were all arrested over again.
During the next four years the Carabinieri found themselves blocked at every turn owing to the machinations of the Camorra. Abattemaggio made several independent confessions, and many false and fruitless leads had to be run down. The police (“Public Safety”) were secretly hostile to the Carabinieri and hindered instead of helped them. Indeed, they assisted actively in the defence of the Camorra. Important documents were purloined. Evidence disappeared. Divers magistrates carried on separate investigations, kept the evidence to themselves, and connived at the misconduct of the police. The Delegato Ippolito and his officers were tried upon the denunciation of Captain Fabbroni, and _were all acquitted_, for the Carabinieri were not called as witnesses, and the public prosecutor who had asked for a three-year jail sentence did not even appeal the case! Each side charged the other with incompetence and corruption and—nothing happened.
The defendants, numbering thirty-six in all, were finally brought to trial at the Assize Court at Viterbo, forty miles from Rome, in the spring of 1911, and at the present time[16] the proceedings are still going on. The case is, in fact, one of the most sensational on record and the newspapers of the civilized world have vied with one another in keeping it in the public eye during the year or more that has elapsed since the jury were empanelled, but there is no direct evidence as to the perpetrators of the homicides, and, unfortunately, unless the jury find that some of the Camorristi in the cage actually planned and executed the murder of the Cuocolos, the consequences to the defendants will not be serious, as mere “association for delinquency” with which most of them are charged is punishable with a shorter term of imprisonment than that which will have been suffered by the accused before the conclusion of their trial. Under Article 40 of the Italian Penal Code, the defendants get credit for this period, so that in most instances a verdict of guilty at Viterbo would be followed by the immediate discharge of the prisoners.[17] This is the case with Rapi—although the evidence has brought out a new offence for which he may still be prosecuted. And, as blackmail, for which that astounding rascal, Don Ciro Vittozzi, is being tried, is punishable with but three to five years imprisonment, “that Holy Man,” as he is termed by Alfano, will probably never be compelled to retire to a governmental cloister.