Angela Casella is known to most of Italy as Mamma Coraggio, 'Mother Courage'. On the evening of the 18th of January 1988, her 18-year-old son, Cesare Casella, was kidnapped by the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrese Mafia from Southern Italy, who, in the 1970's and 80's, had formed a 'professional' kidnapping industry that came to be known as Anonima Sequestri (Kidnapping Anonymous). Cesare was abducted from his hometown, Pavia, in Northern Italy, just outside his father's Citroen dealership. Cesare was hidden in a garage near Pavia for ten days, before being transferred to Aspromonte, moving to three different locations during his captivity. In a book he published after his release, he described his prisons as being 'holes', dug in the ground; 2m long, 1m wide, and 1.5m high. At the foot of a tree, he was chained by the ankle and by the neck. The walls were lined with stones and a sheet of metal, covered in leaves, was the roof.
Cesare's kidnappers initially demanded eight billion Lira as ransom. After much negotiation, the sum was reduced to one billion Lira; which the Casella family paid in August 1988, but Cesare was not released. After more time, the kidnappers asked for another five billion Lira, which the family just could not afford. Cesare's father Luigi was a car dealer, and his mother Angela was a secretary for the family business. The Italian State would not allow the Casellas to raise the money, freezing their bank account and assets, as they feared paying the ransom would only encourage further abductions for money.
In June 1989, Angela Casella had had more than enough, extremely worried in the seventeen months since her son had been kidnapped, and with only infrequent contact with the kidnappers, she made up her mind to go down to Calabria herself to plead for and win the solidarity of the Calabrese women. She went through the towns and villages of Aspromonte, Calabria; chaining herself in the piazze and sleeping in a tent, trying to communicate to the locals the horrific conditions her son was being kept in. The media publicised her plight and Angela was dubbed Mamma Coraggio, for her braveness and courage to stand up to those who had taken her son.
Finally, in December of 1989, the police caught and arrested one of the kidnappers as he went to collect half a billion Lira in ransom money. The other kidnappers now felt threatened by the police and with all the publicity, could not hide the boy any longer. On the 30th of January 1990, after a terrifying 743 days in captivity, Cesare Casella was released. The man they caught during the ransom collection would be the only kidnapper the police would ever find. Cesare would go on to write a book about his ordeal and Mamma Coraggio had a brief stint in politics before the family settled down to a quiet, normal life.
Angela Casella passed away in December 2011. What an amazing mother. What an amazing woman.
