He seemed destined for a golden future: he was one of the best talents in the championship and at Bari, where his namesake, a certain Cassano, also played at the time. The road to success was already mapped out for Antonio La Fortezza. Until the Tribunal made a macabre discovery
The inscrutable threads of fate in this plot begin with a crime scene, a dangerous lie and an unspoken regret. On April 24, 2009, the boss Michelangelo Stramaglia was killed with a gunshot to the abdomen. The murder takes place in via Capurso, in Valenzano, Valzàne as they call it in Bari, an outpost of barracks and university buildings about ten kilometers from the city. It is 9.30pm in the evening when several witnesses – and there are many – hear the shot, see some men get out of a metallic gray Lancia K, load Stramaglia’s bleeding body into the car and set off at high speed towards the hospital “Of Venus”. The next scene takes us to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele: there is a corpse lying on a pavement, he has a large plaster on his arm, his black t-shirt is torn, the 118 rescuers are trying everything. But there’s nothing to be done. Michelangelo Stramaglia, a car wrecker by profession, but in reality the boss of the Valenzano clan, dies that same evening, at forty-nine years old. It’s a murder that makes noise. There is an ongoing feud between the Stramaglia and Di Cosola clans. The balance in the city is changing. According to investigators, Michelangelo Stramaglia is at the top of an organization that manages drug trafficking in Bari and its province.