Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
THE REALITY
EXCLUSIVE IT’S a chilling Cosa Nostra family snap. A loving nan stretched out on a bed as her granddaughter stands beside her cuddling a doll – and wielding a gun.
BY GERALDINE McKELVIE
Welcome to the Mafia childhood of a 52-year-old mum now living quietly in a Lancashire town.
Marisa Merico’s story has been made into an explosive 10-part TV drama, with drug deals, shootouts and an astonishing twist.
Forget the The Godfather. Bang Bang Baby is about The Grandmother – the crime boss nan, Maria, in the picture who Marisa adored.
And young gun-toting Marisa herself is also portrayed in Bang Bang Baby in her former life as a Mafia princess – along with her dealer dad Emilio.
A rollercoaster life that would lead to her being banged up in prison – alongside Rose West and Myra Hindley.
INFAMOUS
Now reformed with a university degree in criminology, Marisa – who was raised in Blackpool – reflects on her childhood memories of summer visits to Nonna’s flat in Milan.
“She was an amazing, lovely, compassionate, beautiful woman – and yet she was a criminal,” says Marisa. “To see her on screen was emotional – in the kitchen, with her apron and the food. The nonna, stuffing your face with sweets. That made me cry.”
But behind the facade was a hardened crime boss nicknamed Granny Heroin – in charge of an infamous organised drugs gang known as ’Ndrangheta.
Marisa’s Blackpoolborn mum Pat had no idea about this when she met Maria’s son Emilio while working as an au pair in Milan as a teenager. Love blossomed and Marisa was born – but Pat became fearful of the family’s criminal lifestyle and took Marisa back to Blackpool when she was nine.
It was during summer visits to see her gran that Marisa watched vast swathes of drugs arrive at the family home.
Emilio and others would sort the packages of heroin and cocaine – then wait for orders from Maria, who had a razor-sharp mind even though she couldn’t read or write.
And on these visits as a teenager Marisa found herself drawn into the excitement of her gran’s life – a powerful woman in a man’s world.
“Bang Bang Baby shows what the women go through and the psyche of the women who get involved,” says Marisa.
“If you look at the Sopranos, Goodfellas and The Godfather, it’s all about the men. But when police raided homes, they never used to look at the women. Then they started to realise, women are the backbone.
“What my dad was doing would not have worked without my nan being involved with it. My nan was such a strong character.”
At 17 Marisa moved to Italy and became a courier for the gang, delivering packages worth £500,000. She married gang henchman Bruno Merico, with whom she had daughter Lara, now 30.
My nonna was a lovely amazing woman and yet she was a criminal ON MAFIA GRAN WHO RAN DRUGS GANG
At 23, she returned to England and bought a home kitted out in designer furniture funded by her ill-gotten gains worth almost £2 million.
But Marisa, now a gran herself, paid the price for being born into what she describes as “Mafia royalty” when the long arm of the law caught up with her.
Police swooped on her house in a dawn raid. Lara, then two, was taken from her and Marisa was convicted of money laundering in 1993, spending almost four years in HMP Durham’s notorious H wing, alongside killers Myra Hindley and Rose West.
Marisa, who also has a son
Frank, 21, said: “My whole world just stopped. It was heartbreaking for my daughter.
She had to go to my mum.
Lara was coming to see her