Pasquale Barra (; 18 January 1942 – 27 February 2015) was an Italian Camorrista who was a senior member and hitman for the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples. Barra has the distinction of being the first NCO member to become a pentito, when he decided to collaborate with Italian Justice in 1982.
Barra sported numerous nicknames, both self-appointed and those given to him. The first one was ("the Student"), which was given to him by Cutolo during his years as a student in Ottaviano. Then there was his public nickname, ("the Animal"), which was allegedly given to him by the Italian media. The third one was Alias, a self-appointed war name.
Biography
Association with the NCO
A native of Ottaviano, the same town near Naples where Neapolitan crime boss Raffaele Cutolo was born, Barra was the first and most devoted member of Cutolo's gang ever since they were both teenagers. At 6' 3" tall, he was physically impressive with a lean and athletic build. When Cutolo set up the NCO at their hometown on October 24, 1970, Barra became his second in command and immediately took charge of reinforcing all intimidation, extortion and racketeering activities within their territory. He became a full-time killer for the organization, favoring the use of knives and butchery tools over guns and automatic weapons to carry out his hits.
Relationship with Raffaele Cutolo
The relationship between Barra and Cutolo had always been a close one. From the very beginning, Barra had been a faithful follower of Cutolo whom he practically revered. Moreover, being a more practical and ordinary man, he was able to muffle some of the more extreme features of Cutolo's behavior and reveal them to the other people who would have otherwise been simply too scared to approach Cutolo. Barra was in fact the de facto link between Cutolo and other NCO members, bridging Cutolo's charisma with a more practical vision of life. As such, Cutolo greatly appreciated Barra's role within the organization.
For instance, when Cutolo purchased a 16th-century castle in Ottaviano which had previously belonged to the Medici dynasty, he had a special postcard of the castle printed with the caption "Castello Mediceo, private property of R. Cutolo and P. Barra.". His great admiration for Barra was expressed in a poem entitled "N'omme 'e Camorra" (A man of the Camorra) which was written by him for Barra's birthday.
Chief of Ottaviano
During the period between 1976 and 1983, when the NCO had total control over Ottaviano and the Neapolitan hinterland, Barra ruled this town of 200,000 inhabitants as his own personal fiefdom, ruling on every aspect of the town's activities, from illegal businesses such as prostitution, gambling and extortion to more respectable businesses. The NCO even had their own men inside the city council. When Barra's younger brother was shot in the knee-caps by a rival gang, they were able to find him a job inside City Hall, after having provided him with a governmental pension for an alleged permanent infirmity.
War with the Nuova Famiglia
Barra's arrest in 1979 did not diminish his influence inside and outside of prison. On the contrary, he established himself as the second in command of the organizational executive board inside the cielo scoperto (i.e., the prison penitentiary system). When the NCO began its long standing war against the rival Camorra clans, particularly the newly formed Nuova Famiglia, he decided to primarily concentrate on the killing of rivals inside the prison system. It was during this time that the media started calling him "the killer of the prisons", and he acquired the nickname ("the Animal"), due to the utmost cruelty and pitiless way in which he killed his enemies. His many murder convictions earned him a life sentence from the Italian court.
He pursued his newly appointed mission with a fervent religious zeal and he became almost suicidal in his attempts to eliminate his adversaries. He never worried about getting caught. In fact, some of his letters sent to other members of the NCO attest to his thirst for blood. He once wrote to Marco Medda, an NCO board executive: "Brother, I beg you to give a kiss to our Prince (Cutolo). I am doing all I can to get transferred to Napoli to kill some of these scumbags, and I will perform one of my best dramas: they must pay, understand?".