The Courthouse Robber

In Naples in 2016, on a side street near the city centre, a man stood across the road from a small commercial-looking building. Stone façade. Old wooden door. A small brass plaque. He had been there the previous morning, observing. He had seen people walking in. He had seen people walking out. He had observed, through the windows, a counter with people behind it processing documents and handling small amounts of cash.

The configuration was, in his assessment, consistent with a small private bank or a foreign-exchange bureau. He decided to rob it.

The plaque

He had not entered the building. He had not, in his preparation, walked through the front door as a customer. He had not read the brass plaque on the wall by the door. The plaque, in capital letters, in plain Italian, read: Tribunale di Napoli, Annesso. The annexed offices of the Naples Tribunal. Auxiliary chambers.

The counter he had observed was the public-facing intake desk for the courthouse annex. The people processing documents were court clerks. The cash being handled was, on most days, the deposit for fines being paid by visitors to the building — a small, regulated, low-volume operation that exists in many Italian municipal court annexes. The people walking in and out were lawyers, defendants, court witnesses, and, several times a day, the judges themselves.

Wednesday morning

He chose a Wednesday at approximately ten thirty AM. This was, in retrospect, his most consequential decision. Because Wednesday morning, in the Naples Tribunal annex, was the standard slot for preliminary criminal hearings. The Naples Tribunal, in 2016, was processing a substantial volume of organised-crime cases. Wednesday morning was, in functional terms, the busiest law-enforcement window of the building's week.

The building was, on this particular Wednesday, occupied by several lawyers, several defendants and witnesses, two judges, a number of court clerks, and a security detail of twelve Carabinieri. The Carabinieri were a fixture of the annex and had been for over a decade. They were, by Italian press reporting on the eventual case, described as relaxed but visible. They were, on the day, in the corridors. He had not noticed them.

The entry

He arrived at approximately ten thirty-one AM. He paused on the front steps. He pulled the balaclava down over his face. He drew his handgun from inside his jacket. He pushed open the wooden door. He walked inside. He found himself in a long entry corridor with marble floors and, on the wall ahead, a large official-looking poster of the Italian Republic crest. On the bench to his left sat four men in suits with briefcases. By the doorway he had just walked through, two Carabinieri.

The two Carabinieri at the doorway looked at him. He looked at them. The four men on the bench looked at him. He looked at the four men. There was, by the press's later reconstruction, a moment of approximately three seconds in which everyone in the corridor was assessing the situation.

He turned around.

The chase

He pushed the door open. He stepped back outside. He began to run. The two Carabinieri at the doorway, who had been moving slowly, accelerated. Within thirty seconds, an additional eight Carabinieri from elsewhere in the building had joined them. He made it approximately two hundred metres down the side street before being stopped. He was tackled. He was disarmed. He was, by Italian press accounts, deeply embarrassed. He was returned to the building he had just attempted to rob. He was processed at the same intake desk he had identified, the previous day, as a cashier. He was held in the same building's holding cells while charges were filed.

The case was prosecuted at the Tribunale di Napoli, in the same building. He was charged with attempted armed robbery under article 628 of the Italian penal code, plus a series of additional offences relating to the firearm. He pleaded guilty. The trial was held, with some grim irony, in a courtroom approximately fifteen metres from the corridor where he had drawn his weapon. The judge, in passing sentence, noted that the defendant had brought a handgun to a building containing a substantial quantity of police, lawyers, and a representative of the Italian state, and had then been surprised to find them. The custodial sentence was within the upper end of the standard range.

The brass plaque on the door of the annex has, since the case, become a small landmark of Italian local interest. It is, by every measure of municipal signage, clear. It is, by regulation, in Italian. The word Tribunale is, in Italian, very recognisably not the word for bank.

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Listen to the full story on Dumb Crimes Europe, Episode 16. Stream the episode here.