The testimony of the 'orphan' sister: 'My brother was brutally killed, now I have become a voice for legality'

"I am Graziella, Renato's sister". She says it with pride. With honor. Even though the tears are always lurking. At the corner of her eyes. The pain is there. And it will never be erased. But those wounds have strengthened Graziella both as a woman and as a sister. She has discovered a strength that perhaps she didn't even know she possessed.

But to understand her story, it might be better to go back in time. To 2015. Renato Caponnetto was an entrepreneur from Paternò: one day he went out for an appointment and never returned. Carmelo Navarria and his team of hitmen brutally killed him and then made the body disappear. Burned. The methods were those of the 80s and 90s. Navarria, who later became a collaborator of justice, had been released after serving a sentence for several murders. They called him the garbage collector of Malpassotu.

Graziella never utters the name of Renato's murderer. The news of the loss arrived on April 8 eleven years ago. Graziella was torn apart during those days: "Exactly one month after the anniversary of March 8, 2015, I had a very strong feeling, a stab in my heart, surely something would happen soon, I felt overwhelmed by a shiver, I was scared, in fact around noon the Carabinieri knocked on my door, the news: your brother has been killed." Life changed forever. And then came the reports that killed Renato a second time. "A repentant described - Graziella recounts - the event in detail, detailing the facts and the methods." That deep feeling, that almost inexplicable intuition, left me with many doubts, many shadows, and many questions. An inexplicable cruelty that would have brought down any human being.

Graziella has tried to make sense of what happened. To give voice to Renato's sacrifice. "Time has not given me relief from that pain, rather a great rebellion was born in me. I still wonder how it is possible to accept that a person is killed just because they had the courage to rebel against extortion rackets, "I don't want to pay anymore" Renato used to say."

And then there is the turning point. Graziella became a member of the Antiracket Association Libera Impresa. And she fights to root the culture of legality especially among young people. "As a woman, I deeply believe that one should never give up, one must find the strength to move forward and never surrender."

Today is March 8. What message do you want to give to women? "In my small way, I always say that a woman must be strong, must continue to fight, and must never stop in the face of traps and injustices, even in the toughest moments, the strength to move forward exists, one just needs to find the courage to use it, the courage to impose oneself and oppose the horrors of the world. We are women".