Written by By CHARLES LAMBROSCHINI
Published: May 18, 2012
AJACCIO, CORSICA — Marie-Jeanne Bozzi’s killers didn’t just murder her, they butchered her.
One or two 9-millimeter bullets would have been more than enough to bring her down. But on April 22, 2011, in Porticcio, a picturesque Corsican resort town, they fired eight times into her back.
The two hoodlums, who fled on a scooter, had a message to deliver. In Corsica, where men are macho and women are fragile, the massacre of a 55-year-old woman in full view of a shopping center could only promise an implacable vendetta.
Bozzi, dark-haired and plump, didn’t look like a woman living a double life. The afternoon of her death, she bought cigarettes at a local shop and walked leisurely to her Mercedes, where the gunmen were waiting. As a former mayor of Porticcio, she never rushed: She had too many people to say hello to.
But the woman had a past. First elected in 2001, Bozzi was forced to resign in 2002 after she was convicted of running a prostitution ring. She moonlighted as the madam of the Pussy Cat, a bar belonging to one of her brothers, Jean-Toussaint Michelosi, and of César Palace, a nightclub owned by her husband, Antoine Bozzi. When they searched her handbag for evidence of her side business, the police found receipts for the activities of eight call girls scribbled on the back of grocery lists.
Using the deputy mayor as her strawman, Bozzi proved so efficient at pulling strings that she was re-elected in 2005 with 75 percent of the vote. Convicted two years later for fraud (she couldn’t resist cheating on her taxes), Bozzi convinced her constituency next to elect her daughter, Valérie, as mayor in her place.
The sins for which Bozzi was upbraided in court hardly justified an assassination, however. Her death was a vengeful response to her suspected involvement in a gang war that has rocked Corsica since 2006. It started with the death of Jean-Baptiste Jérôme Colonna (known as Jean Jé), the godfather of southern Corsica, who, strangely enough, died of natural causes: a heart attack while driving. Since then, all the mob’s upstarts have fought for control of Jean Jé’s hidden treasures.
Bozzi’s murder was the seventh of the 22 that disgraced Corsica in 2011 — a slow year compared to 2010 (40) and 2009 (44). In 2012, violence is already picking up. As of May, there have been nine killings.
Killings come in all shapes: honor killings by cuckolded husbands; business competition effected by bullets instead of discounts; fights for parking spaces gone wrong. In 2009, the body count included at least 17 mafia “terminations.” According to the French weekly L’Express, this made Corsica, with a population of just over 300,000, the “bloodiest” region in Western Europe. (Sicily, with more than five million inhabitants, saw only 19 mafia killings that year).
Corsica is thought by many to be the most beautiful island in the Mediterranean. Called the “mountain in the sea,” it is famous for its 2,700-meter summits, pine forests and ski trails. In the summer, its sandy coves attract more than two million tourists. But Corsica is just as famous for its bloody anarchy.
The roots of violence are deep and varied. Historically, Corsica — which didn’t become French until 1768 (one year before the birth of Napoleon, its most famous son) — has a long tradition of savage resistance to invasions stretching from the Roman empire through World War II. Politically, the scenes turned ugly in the 1970s, when nationalists seeking independence drifted into terrorism. In 1998, they killed Prefect Claude Erignac, the French government’s highest representative on the island.
Acquiring beach-front real estate is the fastest way to make millions, so there is great temptation to accelerate the signing of leases with strong-arm tactics. Culturally, there is no loyalty to the state, only to one’s clan. Yvan Colonna, Prefect Erignac’s alleged killer, managed to hide out for four years without anyone betraying him to the police. And because omertà has precedence over the law, few mafia murders are solved.
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