KILLER INTELLECT: 'Brilliant' Mafia hit man earns college degree in prison

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There’s a lot of time to kill when one is serving a life sentence for murder.

Imprisoned Italian mobster Catello Romano showed off his smarts after writing a 170-page thesis based on his criminal past in which he confessed to three unsolved murders. As a result, Romano earned a sociology degree from Catanzaro University — all while serving a life sentence at a Calabrian prison, the New York Post reported.

In 2009, Romano was convicted for murdering Naples councillor Luigi Tommasino, along with other crimes, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported.

“I have committed horrendous crimes and have been convicted of several Camorra murders. What follows is my criminal history,” Romano, 33, wrote in his dissertation, noting he’s been in prison thus far for 14 years. 

In his thesis, the educated mobster confessed to murdering rival Carmine D’Antuono and Federico Donnarumma, who was killed because he was talking to D’Antuono at the time of the murder. Both killings — which took place in 2008 — were the “most violent, traumatic and irreparable event” in Romano’s life, which he said left a hole in his soul.

He also confessed to killing Mafia member Nunzio Mascolo, whose murder was previously unsolved. The killer said while he can’t prove it, Mascolo “did nothing wrong to deserve death.”

In the dissertation, Romano said he’s “intimately known misery,” which has been a negative influence on him since childhood. He said the Mafia life is an attractive “institution” for those who grew up as outcasts of society.

With that outlook, Romano wrote he built a new alternative identity as a tough guy to mask his teenage fragility and as a way of surviving in a violent world. For him, violence was a language and a way to claim “respect and social recognition,” something he’s not proud of, per El Pais.

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Romano hoped his thesis would help people understand the criminal world and hoped it leads to its “possible prevention.”

Because Romano admitted to three killings in his paper, prosecutors are deciding whether to reopen cases that led him to a life in prison.

Charlie Barnao, Romano’s professor at Catanzaro University, said his student was “brilliant” and has “gotten very good grades throughout his course of study.”

“He has put his life in order once and for all and organized the episodes of his life to analyze them through a sociological research method, which has also had a kind of therapeutic function,” said Barnao.