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Panorama: Married To The Mob – exclusive interview with Ann Hathaway
Secret tapes of a British woman married to a Sicilian Mafia boss reveal
how she became a vital cog in the running of his criminal empire while he
was in prison.
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Ann Hathaway speaks exclusively to 91Èȱ¬ One's Panorama about her life
with the Mob and her recent conviction for Mafia association.
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Hathaway tells Panorama she enjoyed her life in Italy, saying she had: "A good lifestyle... A pretty big house in Rome... Restaurants...
jewellery, clothes."
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But she also tells the programme of the difficulties being married to the
mob has brought her.
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"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."
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Ann Hathaway's husband Antonio Rinzivillo – known as "Uncle Tony" – has
been in jail for all but four of the 20 years he and Ann have been
married.
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He is convicted of murder, drugs trafficking and extortion. He
faces three further murder charges.
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Hathaway tells Panorama: "I love him to death."
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Ann Hathaway met Antonio Rinzivillo in a nightclub in Italy when she was
17.
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She tells Panorama that Rinzivillo was jailed for four-and-a-half
years soon afterwards: "I think he'd battered someone I think. I think he'd argued with
someone."
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Panorama's John Ware then asked her when she understood what the Mafia was.
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Hathaway
replied: "Probably a year later. You hear things, and see things on the telly. I
didn't think anything because I was just young and foolish probably."
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Panorama reveals the evidence the Italian authorities relied on as proof
that Hathaway acted as a go-between, passing messages between her jailed
brother-in-law Gino Rinzivillo and other members of the Rinzivillo clan.
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In phonetaps aired in the programme, Hathaway is heard demanding around £80,000 from Rinzivillo's money launderer, Angelo Bernascone, on behalf
of her brother-in-law Gino for the deposit on a flat.
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In June 2005 Ann Hathaway said: "I told him, 'Let's see if by the end of
the month...' He said, 'No, you must tell Angelo he must do this for me,
he must not fail'."
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Angelo Bernascone: "Who said that?"
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Ann Hathaway: "My brother-in-law."
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And then in August 2005 when Bernascone fails to pay she warns him of her
brother-in-law's anger.
She said: "Leave me out of it. I have had orders not to call you..."
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Bernascone: "...Who says you shouldn't call me? Your brother-in-law?"
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Hathaway: "My brother-in-law was f***ing furious."
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Bernascone: "He's got all the right in the world, like you do but -"
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Hathaway: "- He was really f***ing mad!"
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Then on 1 October 2005 her brother-in-law Gino Rinzivillo was recorded
giving Ann Hathaway a chilling message during a prison visit to pass on
to Bernascone:
"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'."
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Hathaway's conversations with Angelo Bernascone, who is now co-operating
with the authorities and admits money laundering, were recorded over a
six month period in 2005.
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In September 2006 Bernascone – now under
pressure from the Rinzivillos on several fronts – turned himself into the
police saying he feared he was going to be killed.
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Major Bartolomeo Di Niso of the Sicilian Carabinieri tells Panorama Ann
Hathaway was a go-between for the Rinzivillos and their network, and that
she sometimes spoke in code: "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."
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Interviewed by Panorama's John Ware in Agrigento jail in Sicily, home to
around 100 Mafiosi prisoners, Ann Hathaway claimed she knew nothing about
her husband's criminal activities, but admitted she knew she was married
to the mob.
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She says: "To be honest when you're married to a Sicilian husband you're at home
cooking, cleaning, washing, looking after the kids. You don't get
involved in things, what he does and what he doesn't do. I've never asked
him. And even if I would have asked him he's not the sort of person that
would have turned round and told me." Ìý
The 44-year-old from Manchester insists she cannot understand why she has
been convicted of Mafia association:
"You can't arrest somebody just because you're married to someone that's
got problems. What's that got to do with me?"
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John Ware asked: "Do you acknowledge you were married to the mob?"
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Hathaway replied: "Well I know now but... yeah, I knew before that, yeah.
because they're in and out like yoyos aren't they, so you know
something's wrong."
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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
their home was Italy.
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Asked what she thought of her husband Rinzivillo
when she first met him, Hathaway said: "Handsome, because he's really good looking. Love at first sight."
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Panorama broadcasts an interview with a Mafia man turned supergrass,
whose evidence helped convict Antonio Rinzivillo of murder.
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He tells the programme: "Antonio Rinzivillo had charisma. He wouldn't think twice before ordering
a murder and everyone respected him.
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"In 1990 I was just a kid, Antonio
was in his thirties and even elderly men out of respect would call him 'Zio
Antonio' - Uncle Tony."
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The supergrass also claims Hathaway and her husband were present when
weapons were retrieved from a hide in 1990 when the Rinzivillos were
fighting a bloody war against a rival gang. She categorically denies
this.
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Hathaway admits receiving money in "the last few years" from Angelo
Bernascone, the Rinzvillo clan's money launderer:
"Sometimes he'd send me 1,000 euros, one time he'd send me 1,500 euros if
I had like any bills to pay I'd ring him up and say send me such and such
a thing, I've got some bills to pay."
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She says Bernascone was a business partner of her husband and brother-in
-aw and "worked honest".
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John Ware questioned Hathaway about this income: "You're not earning money, your husband is not earning money, and yet
you're getting a regular income. Did you never stop to think, look, where
is this money coming from?"
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Hathaway replied: "Well the last few years I've been getting it off
Angelo Bernascone."
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Hathaway tells Panorama she has no regrets and does not wish she had
asked her husband any questions:
"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
is it going to change?"
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John Ware asked: "But if he had done those things would you have still
loved him to death?"
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Hathaway said: "Well I must have done yeah, because I'm still here aren't
I? I've still got the ring on my finger."
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Hathaway's family also speaks for the first time about her case,
attacking the way the press have reported her arrest and conviction.
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Ann's younger brother Lee Hathaway says: "The stuff with the Mafia, it's like something you see on the films,
isn't it? It makes a good story, doesn't it? An English girl, going over
to Italy and marrying a Mafia boss.
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"I mean, there's nothing saying that
Tony's a Mafia boss. It's only the press saying he's a Mafia boss...
That's another story that's made up: that Tony's the number two in the Mafia in Sicily. I mean, who is saying that?"
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Antonio Rinzivillo is Godfather to Lee's son. Lee Hathaway says:
"I think he's a great fella, but obviously I only know him from when I've
met him, I don't know anything with what he's been arrested for. I don't
know that side of things...
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"Every time I've met him, in the time that
he's been out, he's been no trouble whatsoever."
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Ann Hathaway denies any wrongdoing. In a plea bargain she accepted the
facts put to her by the Italian authorities in return for a two year
suspended sentence.
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She is now back in Manchester. Provided she commits no offences over the
next five years the conviction will be wiped from her record.
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She clings
to the hope that the man known as Uncle Tony will be released and will
come to live in the UK.
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The authorities, however, say that he is unlikely
to be released for many years.
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Panorama: Married To The Mob, Monday 28 May 2007, 8.30pm, 91Èȱ¬ One
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NL
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