1978

June 21, Genoa
Antonio Esposito, 35 years old, Public Security Commissioner

On June 21, 1978, a group of fire from the Red Brigades, consisting of three men, killed, aboard a bus, Commissioner Antonio Esposito. He directs the Nervi police station but previously played a leading role in the fight against left-wing terrorism. The brigadists, hit the victim, have the bus stopped and flee in a waiting car. The murder is the first committed by the Red Brigades since the end of the Moro kidnapping. It makes a great impression in Genoa, a city that has been at the center of the organization’s bloody activity for years.

It was precisely in Genoa that the brigadists organized and carried out a deadly attack for the first time. On June 8, 1976, Chief Prosecutor Francesco Coco and the two men of his escort were killed. The Genoese column of the Red Brigades consists of local militants completely unknown to the police, and some external leaders transferred from Turin. It was characterized by considerable efficiency, rigid compartmentalization and attention to large factories.

Thanks to the rigid discipline, the strong determination and the radical motivation of the main militants, military activity increased in Genoa in 1977. The column affects industrial leaders, law enforcement and local politicians without suffering damage. 1978 begins with a general offensive of the Red Brigades. During the Moro seizure, all columns go into action. The targets are prison system personnel and leaders and police officers active in counterterrorism. On March 10, 1978 in Turin a nucleus of four people, killed PS Marshal Rosario Berardi.

Continuous struggle reconstructs Esposito’s career and poses some doubts about the execution. The attack is postponed a couple of times because his wife, a chosen shooter on duty at the Police Headquarters, accompanies him by car to Nervi. In the direction of the column, the possibility of killing her too is evaluated but then the choice of image to continue not to hit women prevails.

The dynamics of the amney

The ambush is thus reconstructed by one of the participants, then repentant, Adriano Duglio: it is Riccardo Dura who gets first on the bus taking himself initially to the front of the bus; his presence at that point is the agreed signal to confirm the presence of the victim on board and to start the action. So Duglio and Francesco Lo Bianco also get on the truck at the next stop; at this point, while Duglio takes close to the driver, Dura and Lo Bianco moved to the back of the bus to get closer to the commissioner.

It is Francesco Lo Bianco who shoots first against Commissioner Esposito with the Nagant pistol equipped with a silencer (a pistol supplied with the Turin column and borrowed from Micaletto), while Duglio immediately orders the driver to stop the bus and open the doors. While the action is practically completed and the brigadiers are about to get out of the bus, Riccardo Dura intervenes in turn by firing more shots at the victim with his personal Browning HP pistol, a 9 caliber. At the helm of the car for the escape is Luca Nicolotti. Duglio instead walks away with his bike and as he “cuts” by crossing ladders, it damages the fork.

The accusations of the repentant to Dura

Duglio is one of the repentant who helps to build the black legend of Riccardo Dura ruthless guardian of the discipline of organization. In fact, the repentant asserts that he was willing to leave the organization even before the Moro kidnapping but that he had participated in the Esposito crime under pressure from Dura, which would have imposed a sort of blood pact on him to bind him anyway to keep the secrets of the Br in exchange for permission to leave. In reality, the exit from the organization was planned and regulated. By dissent or moral failure, the militants had the right to go out carrying their personal weapon and a sum for their first personal needs. In fact, Morucci and Faranda are disputed for having taken back the weapons they had brought, still considering them personal assets.

There are cases of militants (the repentant Raimondo Etro) who escape the commitment to shoot in an amburch: they are replaced for the occasion and continue in the organizational commitment.

The denial of Fulvia Miglietta

To deny the merits of Duglio’s “disperia” comes the dissociated Fulvia Miglietta, companion of Riccardo Dura and manager of the column from the foundation to March 28, 1980: “I am not aware of threats from the organization to comrades who had expressed perplexity to carry out an action, even of a murderous nature, such as the one against Dr. Esposito. Dissent was tolerated and considered within the framework of the Br where the principle of democratic centralism was in force.” And in fact, she herself, shocked by the death of her partner, is allowed to move away from the organization. In prison he will rediscover the Catholic faith.