MOB WIVES: How moms tried to topple bloodthirsty Mafia family

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Lea Garofalo had flipped and she was singing to the cops.

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And now, her mobster husband was promising the mom the moon and stars for a reconciliation.

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Gangster Carlo Cosco promised a family holiday to Milan with their daughter Denise. Garofalo agreed — and it cost her her life.

She was one of the Italian women who decided to betray the secrets of the underworld and is featured in the new Disney+ crime drama The Good Mothers.

Based on the true stories of the fearless women who tried to topple Italy’s most dangerous Mafia clan, it was inspired by the book of the same name by British journalist Alex Perry.

“The ’Ndrangheta is like a cult,” Perry told the U.K. Sun. “If you’re going to turn against it you’re betraying everyone you’ve ever known and your closest family.

“The courage of these women is two-fold. For one, it’s what you’re risking. Women are executed for being unfaithful — and even the thought of being unfaithful. On top of that, your reward is very often a lonely life.”

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Perry added: “You live in witness protection, you’ve left everything you’ve ever known. So there’s a huge cost, even if you survive. It takes an enormous amount of courage.”

For Garofalo, it was worse.

Four days into the trip the 35-year-old was kidnapped, tortured and murdered by her husband’s henchmen. Her body was then dissolved in acid at a rural warehouse.

The ’Ndrangheta has a global presence — including the Toronto area — and is a $150-billion-a-year criminal corporation. It is believed to be responsible for around 70% of the European cocaine market.

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But the crime group has been a difficult nut to crack for cops on three continents due to the blood ties of most members.

That wall of silence was shattered in the early 2000s when four Mafia wives testified against the criminal organization in Italy.

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Garofalo’s tragic tale is typical. She was born into the ’Ndrangheta and her father was a member. When he was murdered, her brother took over.

It was natural for her to marry Cosco when she was just 16 years old. He too was a member. Cosco was also physically and emotionally abusive.

But when her daughter was 10 in 2002, she fled the old way of life and landed in the arms of the cops where she spilled the beans on a bloody gangland war that had littered southern Italy with more than 40 corpses.

“You don’t really live. You just survive in some way,” she told detectives at the time she flipped. “You dream about something, anything because nothing’s worse than that life.”

The courageous mom’s evidence was so in depth, investigators still use it today.

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For four years she lived in witness protection and then gangsters tracked her down. Cosco begged her forgiveness and set the table for heartache.

“There is no romance and nothing cool about these gangsters. They are horrendous human beings and violent, misogynist pigs,” Perry told the U.K. Sun.

For his part, Cosco claimed his wife had escaped to Australia to begin a new life. His daughter Denise told another story and her father was jailed for life in 2012.

While the women’s testimony did not mortally wound the ’Ndrangheta, the omnipresent criminal syndicate was proven to be vulnerable.

“The legacy, what lasts, is that the ’Ndrangheta’s invincibility was broken,” Perry said. “No one had challenged them so publicly from their own ranks.”

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@HunterTOSun

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