1981
April 7, Rome
Raffaele Cinotti, 28 years old, Deputy Brigadier of the Custody Corps
Raffaele Cinotti was born in San Prisco (CE) on May 23, 1953. On April 7, 1981, at 6:45 in the morning, he was attacked outside his home while he was leaving for work. The murder was carried out by three members of the Red Brigades right outside the door of his home at Via Acquaroni 123 in Rome (Tor Bella Monaca area near Via Casilina), where the 28-year-old officer lived with his wife and two children, aged two years and five months.
Cinotti, a head of post in the judicial isolation ward at Rome Rebibbia prison, fell victim to a terrorist ambush by three individuals who fired eight shots at him. The deadly ambush was claimed by the “Red Brigades” in a phone call to the switchboard of the newspaper “La Repubblica.” The murder, like others, was part of the extreme left-wing terrorism’s campaign of intimidation on the “prison front.”
The Ambush
The three terrorists waited a short distance from the entrance door and shot him with eight bullets from 6mm and 7.65mm pistols: sixteen shell casings were found at the scene. A worker on his way to work witnessed the murder but only saw the three terrorists fleeing in a white Fiat 128, possibly driven by a fourth accomplice. Initially, it was suggested that the brigatisti’s action might have been a “response” to the arrest of Mario Moretti in Milan on April 4, 1981. Indeed, in a phone call to “La Repubblica” less than an hour after the attack, a man’s voice claimed the assassination: “This is the Red Brigades. We have executed the torturer, exploiter Cinotti,” and warned, “Do not touch the comrades arrested in Milan.” However, investigators believed it was a coincidence. The brigatisti had been following Raffaele Cinotti for several days and chose Tuesday for the ambush, the day the only bar in the area, located right in front of Cinotti’s home, was closed. Another claim was sent to the editorial office of “Il Messaggero”: the message was found under a car parked on Via Rasella.
The BR Strategy
The murder of Raffaele Cinotti was part of a strategy by the Roman column of the BR and the entire organization to target the men and institutions of the penitentiary administration. The previous year, Judge Girolamo Minervini, newly appointed Director General of the Institutes of Prevention and Punishment (the current Head of DAP), was killed. Only a few weeks earlier, on January 15, Judge Giovanni D’Urso, who had been kidnapped on December 12, 1980, was released. During his captivity, the brigatisti had distributed a photo of him with a sign around his neck that read, “Organize the liberation of imprisoned proletarians, dismantle the differentiation circuit” (the rigorous prison system for terrorists). At that time, D’Urso was serving as the head of the III office of the Directorate General of Institutes of Prevention and Punishment. At the scene of Cinotti’s murder, the brigatisti left a packet titled “D’Urso Campaign,” containing 121 pages that included a “report” of the kidnapping: a communiqué from the “Kampo di Palmi Brigade,” texts of ten leaflets issued during the judge’s captivity, diaries kept by inmates in Trani during the previous December’s uprising, suppressed by a Carabinieri blitz, and some pages of the kidnapped magistrate’s interrogation, including the organizational chart of the penitentiary administration.
Raffaele Cinotti had repeatedly requested a transfer to Caserta to be near his parents from San Prisco, Caserta, but he never indicated to friends and relatives that he felt he was in direct danger.