1978

October 10, Naples
Alfredo Paolella, 49 years old, medical professor of criminal anthropology at the University of Naples – Director of the Poggioreale prison

On October 11, 1978 in Naples there is the first murder signed by Prima Linea. His militants had already killed, in retaliation, fascists and policemen, without claiming him as an organization. The provincial councillor in Milan, Enrico Pedenovi, “justified” on April 29, 1976, while comrade Gaetano Amoroso had not yet passed away, stabbed to death, in turn, as revenge for the anniversary of the murder of Sergio Ramelli. The brigadier Ciotta, political office of the Turin Police Headquarters, on March 12, 1977, to avenge Francesco Lorusso, killed in Bologna by the carabinieri the day before.

Of the members of the commando that kills Paolella, no one is Neapolitan. An obvious forcing, because the ‘historical’ militants had come out a year earlier after the gambling of an Alfasud executive. And the kids recruited by the few remaining cadres have no military consistency. A terrible mistake: because Prima Linea screws itself into a camouflage competition with the Red Brigades that liquidates the original aspects of the experience of the armed group trying to hold together mass and avant-garde violence

The reconstruction of the amushe

8.40 a.m. on October 11, 1978. Alfredo Paolella, a coroner in charge of Criminal Anthropology at the University of Naples, went to the Vomero garage where his car was kept. A group of three men and a woman confronted him, tugging him and throwing him at a pillar.

He was killed with nine shots. One last bullet was fired at the point of the right temple. The execution was helpless attended by the owners of the garage and the garage. An hour later the attack was claimed by Prima Linea with a phone call to the newspaper ‘Il Mattino’. The attack was linked to the ‘campaign’ against those who were dedicated to the implementation of a prison system in line with the fundamental principles of the democratic state.

Professor Paolella collaborated, in fact, with the Ministry of Justice and with the magistrate Girolamo Tartaglione, the director of the Department of Criminal Affairs killed just a day earlier by the Red Brigades in Rome. In fact, he was responsible for the Criminal Observation Center of Campania, Puglia and Basilicata, a structure of the ministry allocated to Poggioreale.

The material perpetrators of the murder were identified and sentenced to 17 years thanks to the benefits of dissociation. Susanna Ronconi, Nicola Solimano, Sonia Benedetti, Bruno La Ronga and Felice Maresca The Court of Assize in Naples instead acquitted the members of the National Executive, called to the question as ‘mandantes’: Marco Donat Cattin, Bruno Russo Palombi, Paolo Ceriani Sebregondi and Sergio Segio.

The Paolella murder is the first ‘organized’ murder by Prima Línea, more than two years after the group’s incorporation. His militants had made themselves responsible for the killing of a Missino executive in Milan, Enrico Pedenovi, in April 1976, and a policeman in Turin, Giuseppe Ciotta in March 1977. In both cases it had been retaliation for the killing of Communist militants of the Movement.