Catching the Kidnapers

In the darkness just before dawn, police silently began closing in on the sleeping village of Cicala (pop. 1,913), perched in the desolate mountains of Calabria at the southern tip of Italy. As the armed men crept into position behind walls and over tile rooftops, the villagers were suddenly awakened by barking dogs. Even before the police knocked on his door, Antonio Mancuso, 35, a local carpenter, knew it was over. "No," he shouted, "I won't open." An instant later he changed his mind and surrendered docilely.

Mancuso was one of eight members of a Mafia-style gang arrested last week in coordinated raids in both Calabria and Rome on charges relating to the kidnaping of Eugene Paul Getty II, 17, grandson of the American oil billionaire. After almost six months of captivity, young Getty--minus his right ear--was released last month when his grandfather paid $2,890,000 in ransom. The kidnapers, following an old custom of Calabrian bandits, had cut off his ear. They then sent it to a Rome newspaper to convince his grandfather that they meant business.

In addition to Mancuso, police arrested Domenico Barbino, 26, a dapper, handsome hospital orderly at Rome's Policlinico Gemelli, who had moved to the capital from Calabria ten years ago. Police suspect that Barbino dealt in drugs, a sideline that brought him into contact with young Getty and his circle of hippie friends who clustered around Rome's swinging Piazza Navona.

Another arrested suspect was Vincenzo Mammoliti, 43, an olive-oil dealer from the Calabrian coastal town of Gioia Tauro, who reportedly spent 22 years in the U.S. and is said to be a member of a Mafia-like family of Calabrian criminals. His brother, Saverio Mammoliti, an escaped convict with a criminal record that includes armed robbery, vanished before the police sprang their trap. Of the eight men arrested, at least three were found with some of the marked ransom money. But police so far have refused to divulge how much of the ransom has been recovered.

The raids climaxed a long game of cat-and-mouse played between police, the kidnapers, and young Getty's mother, former Actress Gail Harris. Mrs. Harris was at first wary of cooperating with the police out of fear of jeopardizing her son's life. When the police secretly tapped her telephone, they heard a man with a Calabrian-Sicilian accent calling to negotiate the ransom for her son. The gang demanded $ 17 million but finally settled for $2,890,000. To deliver the money, Billionaire Getty, who lives in England, sent to Rome a tall, craggy-faced American, identified by Italian newspapers as Fletcher Chase, 54, of San Diego. Chase packed 52,000 banknotes in lire into three sacks, but not before police had microfilmed each one.

Sacks of Lire. Then, carefully following the kidnapers' instructions, Chase, in a rented car, headed south on the autostrada toward Naples. Just after passing Lagonegro, south of Naples, members of the gang pulled up alongside in a Citroen and pelted Chase's car with pebbles while the men inside rubbed their fingers together as a signal for money. Chase got the message and pulled over to the side. While he was handing over the sacks of lire, a car driven by a Rome detective with a pretty blonde policewoman at his side halted near by. Pretending to be tourists taking pictures, they managed to get a close look at the suspected kidnapers. Once back in Rome, the police identified the Calabrians and then shadowed them for a month before making the arrests. Young Getty, on an Austrian ski vacation with his mother, volunteered to fly to Rome to identify the suspects. Police are still seeking Saverio Mammoliti, who they think is "very close to the brain, or rather brains, behind the plot."

Getty's was the most spectacular kidnaping involving the rich or their offspring in Italy last year--but hardly the only one. In 1973 there were 16 major kidnapings for ransom in Italy. Late last week Student Pier Giorgio Bolis, 17, of Bergamo was abducted; his wealthy industrialist father has duly received a telephone call to negotiate a ransom.

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