1980
December 31st, Rome
Enrico Riziero Galvaligi, 60 years old, Major General of the Carabinieri Corps
In 1949, he met Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa in Rome, with whom he became good friends. During the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, Galvaligi was stationed in various locations: from 1969 in Palermo with Dalla Chiesa, from 1973 in Turin’s legion also with Dalla Chiesa, then back to Rome, continually rising in rank: captain, major, lieutenant colonel, colonel, and finally in 1975, brigadier general.
Dalla Chiesa wanted him by his side, appointing him in 1977 as deputy commander of the Coordination of Security Services for Prevention and Penitentiary Institutions, a role he continued under General Renato Risi, who replaced Dalla Chiesa in 1978. His task was to coordinate the surveillance of maximum-security prisons where Italy’s most dangerous terrorists were held, including prisons in Trani, Fossombrone, Asinara, Nuoro, and Cuneo.
In December 1980, Galvaligi directed a delicate operation from Rome: following a riot by some members of the armed insurgency in Trani prison, he ordered the Carabinieri GIS to quell the uprising with a blitz, which ended without bloodshed.
The terrorists decided to avenge this defeat and attack the symbolic importance of Galvaligi’s position. A few days later, exactly on December 31st, 1980, Galvaligi was killed in the hallway of the building where he lived in Rome by two terrorists from the Red Brigades, Remo Pancelli and Pietro Vanzi, who posed as deliverymen for a courier service, arriving to deliver a New Year’s gift. A subsequent statement sent to the newspapers connected the assassination to the kidnapping of Judge D’Urso, who was even suspected of indicating Galvaligi’s name to the brigands as the mastermind behind the Trani blitz. The last two women members who executed the crime, Roberta Cappelli and Marina Petrella, were among those arrested in April 2021 in France, but they have not yet been extradited.