Mafia don who laid low in caravan park

Naples crime family boss holed up in Preston after bloody mob war

- DAMON WILKINSON

IT was such an unlikely hiding place Vittorio Pisano, chief of the Naples Flying Squad, had to look it up on a map. "Mostly criminals prefer the south of France or Spain - I have never heard of a mafia man being held in Preston before.

"I had to look it up in an atlas as I had never heard of the place," he said.

Gennaro Panzuto, head of one of the most feared crime families in Naples, had fled a bloody mob war which ripped through the city. And the Six Arches caravan park, on the banks of the River Wyre at the edge of the Forest of Bowland, was the perfect place to lie low until his bloody past caught up with him.

Panzuto was born in the poor, workingclass district of La Torretta in 1974. Looking for a way out of poverty, he made a name for himself as a teenage thief and pickpocket.

Soon he came to the attention of the Camorra - Naples' mafia clans. He was ordered to kill a rival mobster, but the target was arrested before the Panzuto could get to him.

It proved to be a short stay of execution. A second hit was ordered and Panzuto ambushed and shot dead another camorrista.

From there his rapid rise through the ranks of the Neapolitan mafia began. In the winter of 2005-06, an inter-clan war erupted and Panzuto's allies asked for his help.

A spate of shootings and murders ensued. Eventually one of the killings of a gangster named Graziano Borelli could be linked directly to Panzuto.