She was, quite literally, married to the mob. But despite being convicted of Mafia association earlier this month, Ann Hathaway, a former dancer from Rochdale who spent 20 years wed to one of Sicily’s most notorious Mafia bosses, claims on Monday night she knew nothing of her husband’s criminal activities.
The former gangster’s moll denies any wrongdoing in her first public statements since her lavish lifestyle — filled with designer clothes, jewellery and mansion in Rome — came to an abrupt end in January when she was arrested in Britain on a warrant issued by Sicilian prosecutors.
“You can’t just arrest somebody just because you’re married to someone that’s got problems. What’s that got to do with me?” she says.
The mother of two claims in a Panorama interview, to be screened on BBC1 on Monday night, that she knew nothing of her husband Antonio Rinzivillo’s criminal activities. She insists she “loves him to death” and has no regrets, regardless of the type of man he is.
But the programme also claims to have secret tapes which it says tell a very different story. It claims to show how Hathaway (44) became involved in the running of her husband’s empire while he was in jail.
She was a go-between for the Rinzivillos and their criminal network, according to Sicilian police quoted in the programme. She would pass on messages and sometimes use a secret code, they claimed.
Until their arrest five years ago, Rinzivillo and his brother were among the leading members of a Mafia clan specialising in drug dealing, extortion, and arms trafficking. The clan’s godfather, Giuseppe “Piddu” Madonia, has been in prison since 1992 and is considered to be one of the most loyal lieutenants of Bernardo Provenzano, the ultimate head of the Cosa Nostra, who was finally captured last April after more than 40 years on the run.
Major Bartolomeo di Niso of the Sicilian carabinieri said: “She was a significant focal point through which passed all the orders and messages for other members of the organisation … She was a point of contact which would keep the whole machine running, a monstrous machine geared for making money and committing crime.”
Earlier this year, the Guardian revealed Italian investigators had uncovered evidence that Hathaway, who had by then returned to Rochdale with her daughters, had helped her husband also known as “Uncle Tony” run his business.
In stark contrast to the profile she had posted in Friends Reunited website, where she claimed to have returned to “give old England a go,” prosecutors claimed allegations against her ranged from acting as a messenger to investing cash. “She was tough, not your usual housewife,” one said.
During the extradition hearing in London in March, she protested her innocence. In a plea bargain , she accepted Mafia association and was given a two-year suspended sentence.
On Monday, in footage which Panorama claims formed part of the Italian authorities’ case against her, she is heard demanding £80 :000 from Rinzivillo’s money launderer, Angelo Bernascone, for her brother-in-law, Gino. In another tape, recorded a few weeks later in August 2005, when Bernascone fails to pay, she warns him of Gino’s anger, telling him “My brother-in-law was fucking furious”. On October 1 that year, her brother-in-law is heard on tape issuing a warning to Bernascone through Hathaway.
He is heard telling her: “You tell him ‘My brother-in-law has lost many friends and it’s your fault … clearly people were right about you …Tell him ‘You and I are through. Full stop'”. Bernascone turned himself in to police in September 2006, saying he feared he was going to be killed. He is now cooperating with the Italian authorities.
Hathaway’s husband was in jail for all but four of the 20 years they have been married. He is convicted of murder, drugs trafficking and extortion and faces three further murder charges. His two brothers have also been in and out of prison.
“Well I know now, but … yeah, I knew before that, yeah … because they’re in an out like yoyos, aren’t they, so you know something’s wrong.” She said she has no regrets.
“I think the less you know the better I think … What’s the point of asking him what he’s done and what he hasn’t done when I’m already married to him, I love him to death and I’ve got two kids to him. What’s it going to change?”
She admits getting regular money from Bernascone, but claims he was an honest business partner of her husband and brother-in-law. “Sometimes he’d send me â,¬1 000, one time he’d send me â,¬1 500. If I had bills to pay I’d ring him up and say send me such and such a thing I’ve got some bills to pay.”
Hathaway, who met her husband when she was 17, said she enjoyed a “good lifestyle” in Italy, but spoke of the difficulties being married to the mob has brought her. “I’ve seen every prison in Italy, probably, with having my husband in prison and my two brother-in-laws as well. Because there were times when I used to visit them as well as my husband, so I had like three husbands in prison.”
Hathaway and Rinzivillo met in 1979 at a nightclub in Northern Italy where she was a professional dancer. They married in Rochdale in 1987 but they lived in Rome.
Soon afterwards, Rinzivillo was jailed for four and a half years, for a crime which Hathaway, by then adept at not asking questions, has said she cannot quite recall. “I think he battered someone. I think he’d argued with someone,” she said. She has now returned to her home in Manchester.
Provided she commits no offences over the next five years, her conviction for Mafia association will be wiped from her record. She hopes that her husband will be released and will eventually join her in the UK. The authorities, however, say he is unlikely to be released for many years.
Profile: Antonio Rinzivillo
In the criminal underworld, Antonio Rinzivillo was the sort of man who commanded respect: even men much older than him would call him Zio Antonio — Uncle Tony. Head of a Sicilian clan which specialised in drug dealing, extortion and arms trafficking, the Mafia chief and his family also had a stranglehold on the meat trade in Sicily. Rinzivillo is now in Tolmezzo prison, north of Venice, serving 30 years for murder and drug trafficking. His brother Gino is also in prison. More than 80 members of the gang were rounded up in a wave of arrests in Italy in December last year during Operation Choice Cuts. Rinzivillo’s wife, Ann Hathaway, was arrested as part of the operation.
Although most of the arrests were in Sicily, the family’s influence is said to spread as far as Lombardy. Drugs and firearms were seized, with property and business valued by police at £13,5-million. A Mafia supergrass, whose evidence helped convict Rinzivillo of murder, told Panorama: “Antonio Rinzivillo had charisma. He wouldn’t think twice before ordering a murder and everyone respected him.” – Guardian Unlimited Â