Sun, sea, nature & a mafia murder in Puglia
- Lloyd Miner
- May 11
- 2 min read
A woman who took on the mafia, paid with her life and won
This week I’m writing about a murder that happened in my southern Italian city — and the woman who died fighting the mafia to protect a park I walk through every week.
Walking along the cliffs of the Ionian coasts, past centuries-old watch towers, climbing over rocks wet from sea spray, stopping to swim in the clear, blue-green water, you’d probably miss a small red tribute bench on one of the trails. It’s there to commemorate Renata Fonte, a city councillor murdered by the mafia for trying to protect the nature reserve from development.
Renata Fonte was 33 when she died, a mother to two daughters and a school teacher. Fonte’s murder was the first assassination by the mafia in Salento, the southernmost region of Puglia, on the Ionian sea. The mafia wanted to turn the park into a tourist village.