The Carabinieri of the provincial command arrested him during an anti-drug operation coordinated by the Roman DDA magistrates together with 28 other people for Association to crime aimed at traffic Of narcotics but also attempted extortion and attempted robbery, as well as other crimes.
The investigating judge: «Criminal authority»
The investigating judge writes regarding the (stringent) need for precautionary measures regarding Colafigli and associates: «Thecriminal authority undisputed by Marcello Colafigli, the relevance And numerousness of supply and drug dealing crimes committed in a short period of time, i contacts directed with prominent criminal associations, i relationships with further criminal figures and the resolve delinquent demonstrated in planning And realization of drug dealing activities, offer multiple and converging elements that hinder the overcoming of the legal presumption of the relevance of precautionary needs”.
The interceptions
According to the investigating judge Marcello Colafigli he has a particular attitude to the crime: «The exceptional nature of Colafigli’s delinquent attitude – we read in the papers that led to his arrest – is made evident not only by his ease in entertaining ties with prominent criminal figures or from ease In the fulfillment Of crimes of various nature but even more from waterproofness to the thirty-year period of imprisonment not having changed nor thenature nor the knowledge of criminal dynamics in the Roman and national territory. Colafigli was admitted to work outside the prison as soon as he was admitted, taking advantage of the coverage offered to him by responsible from the cooperative (investigated in this proceeding), has organized a significant number of in a short time imports Of cocaine and hashish of large quantities and with very skilful methods…”.
The wiretaps allowed the Carabinieri of the investigative unit in Via in Selci to reconstruct the mechanisms: «Even if they chat and they mention my name – says Colafigli to a friend – without my knowledge I defend it but always because I tell them “These people have been going on with my name for 40 years, they’ve gotten rich, what the f… do you want?”»
Trafficker from semi-freedom
The 70-year-old Colafigli, known as Marcellone, the “Buffalo” of the Banda della Magliana in “Romanzo Criminale” was in semi-freedom but since June 2020 was driving a group of traffickers drug dealer based in Magliana who purchased narcotics in Colombia and made it arrive in Rome through Spain with the complicity of exponents of thendrangheta, the Camorra, the mafia foggiana and with Albanians included in a South American narcos cartel.
The criminal career of the «Buffalo»
Colafigli is an important name: he has been recognized – together with Giuseppucci, De Pedis, Abbatino and Selis – as one of the promoters of the Banda della Magliana, active in Rome between the end of the 70s and the beginning of the 90s. With multiple life sentences under his belt, Colafigli was convicted, among other things, for the kidnapping and murder of Duke Massimo Grazioli Lante della Rovere in 1977, considered to be the action with which the Gang started its own activity criminal, and murder, as principalOf Enrico De Pedis called «Renatino».
The gang boss was lured into an ambush with the complicity of Angelo Angelotti – «il Giuda» -, in an antiques shop in Via del Pellegrino, on 2 February 1990. He had also been locked up in a mental hospital Of Aversawhere he was from escapedafter he had justified his participation in an ambush in Rome in 1981 to avenge the killing of Franco Giuseppucci«Er Fornaretto», claiming that the same boss had appeared to him in a dream to ask him to kill the Proietti brothersheld responsible for his killing.
