1980

March 12, Rome
Angelo Mancia, 27 years old, employee

Angelo Mancia was a militant of the Italian Social Movement who worked as a courier for the party’s newspaper, Secolo d’Italia. On March 12, 1980, at the age of 27, he was killed with seven gunshots in front of his house at 10 Via Federico Tozzi, in the Talenti neighborhood of Rome. The killers arrived on Via Tozzi at night, in a light blue Volkswagen van. There were two of them, armed with 7.65 caliber pistols, wearing white coats like those of nurses. They hid inside the van until morning, keeping a close watch on the entrance of number 10, particularly the fourth floor. The Mancia family lived in the monitored apartment: the father and mother, owners of a grocery store, and their three children. Angelo was the eldest, eight years older than his siblings. He preferred political activism over studies, in Almirante’s party, attending the Talenti section. Every day, on his Garelli moped, he delivered copies of Secolo d’Italia to the Court and the Prosecutor’s Office. On March 12, Angelo Mancia woke up at 7:30 AM. His parents were at work, his siblings at school. At 8:30, he opened the door and walked along the path toward his moped. The two men in white coats jumped out of the van and started shooting. Mancia was hit. He turned back, seeking refuge at the entrance of his house, moving with difficulty. One of the assassins caught up with him and shot him in the back of the head. Meanwhile, a red Mini Minor arrived, with a third accomplice driving, who picked up the two killers and drove away. A few hours after the ambush, at 11:05 AM, a claim of responsibility was received at the newspaper ‘La Repubblica’: “This is the organized comrades of Volante Rossa; we killed the executioner Mancia. We got out of a van parked there.” It was a claim that could suggest yet another clash between right- and left-wing militants of those leaden years. But the crime immediately appeared unusual, just like that of Valerio Verbano, killed a few days earlier. Not only because in both cases the dynamics suggested a military action, but especially because two of the killers looked alike. The identikits of one of the assassins of the two young political militants, drawn two weeks apart by different hands (one by the police, the other by the carabinieri) show a strong resemblance. Thirty years after Angelo Mancia’s murder, the investigations have been reopened. Since February 2010, the case has returned to the examination of the judiciary along with 18 other unsolved murders from the leaden years.