Pupetta Maresca, The Beauty Queen Turned Mob Boss
Public DomainPupetta Maresca was a beauty queen who killed the man who ordered her husband’s death.
Pupetta Maresca wasn’t an American mob wife, but she did make a name for herself when she married Pasquale Simonetti, a member of the Italian crime organization known as the Camorra.
Assunta Maresca, dubbed “Pupetta,” or “little doll,” for her good looks, grew up as the niece of local crime boss Vincenzo Maresca, and her family’s crimes were never hidden from her. Each year, her family celebrated the day her father escaped from prison, and they were nicknamed the “Lampetielli” or the “Lightning Knives” because of their impressive knife skills.
But Pupetta didn’t immediately decide to follow in her family’s footsteps. In fact, she went in a very different direction: pageantry. She won a local pageant at the age of 19 and just so happened to capture the attention of Simonetti.
While Simonetti wasn’t in the same league as Maresca’s uncle, their wedding was a lavish affair. It seemed as if the two were set to have a happy life. Unfortunately, that dream was quickly snuffed out.
Simonetti had angered a former partner by the name of Antonio Esposito. And Esposito’s response to whatever slight Simonetti committed against him was to hire a hitman and have Simonetti killed just three months after his wedding to Maresca.
Pupetta Maresca was now a widow, and she was six months pregnant with her dead husband’s child. Naturally, she was stricken with grief. But her grief quickly turned to anger, and when Esposito began to make threats against Maresca, she decided to take things into her own hands. Enlisting the help of her younger brother, Ciro, she tracked Esposito down and shot him 29 times in broad daylight.
Maresca’s trial was a public spectacle, with many struggling to come to terms with how such a young, beautiful woman could commit such an extreme act of violence. Many even dubbed her the “diva of crime.”
She solidified herself as a sort of celebrity, though, when she proclaimed in court: “I would do it again in a heartbeat!”
Despite the sympathy, though, the new mother was sentenced to 18 years in prison for the murder. She only served a few of those years before she was pardoned in 1965. Once she got out of jail, however, she became involved with the Camorra herself.
