1979
July 13, Rome
Antonio Varisco, 52 years old, Lieutenant Colonel of the Carabinieri

Rome, forty years ago, on Friday, July 13, 1979. It’s 8:20 in the morning, and Lieutenant Colonel of the Carabinieri Antonio Varisco, coming from his residence on Via del Babuino driving his BMW with Rome license plate K37128, is traveling along Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia to go to work at Piazzale Clodio.
Antonio Varisco, in the Carabinieri since 1951, had been commanding the “Judicial Services Department of Rome” since 1976, which had recently been hosted in the then-new headquarters of the Roman Tribunal. But for over twenty years, that office, previously named the “Translation and Escort Unit of the Tribunal,” had been firmly in the hands of the same Carabinieri officer. He had commanded, since 1957 when he was just appointed Captain, what was still called the “Rome-Tribunals Station.”
On that hot morning forty years ago, from a car following him with 5 people on board that then pulled alongside his vehicle, as smoke bombs were thrown, a sawed-off shotgun appeared, from which 18 shots were fired, killing the officer with unprecedented ferocity. The investigation into the motive of the murder immediately raised many doubts, especially concerning the weapon used, a sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot: the modus operandi seemed more Mafia-style than terrorist.
However, the murder was claimed an hour and a half later by the Red Brigades with an anonymous phone call to the Ansa news agency. Three days later, a flyer with the characteristic symbol of the 5-pointed star was found, stating that Antonio Varisco had been killed as a “symbol” of the State, as a former collaborator of General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa and a liaison between the judiciary, law enforcement, and prisons.
In 1982, the Roman brigatist Antonio Savasta, who turned “pentito” (informant) immediately after his arrest in Padua following the raid that led to the release of the American General James Lee Dozier, NATO commander in Southern Europe, kidnapped in Verona on December 17, 1978, and held captive by terrorists for 42 days, claimed responsibility for the attack. In 2004, after her capture, Rita Algranati, the ex-wife of brigatist Alessio Casimirri, already sentenced to life imprisonment in 1988 for the murder of Judge Riccardo Palma and DC Councilor Italo Schettini, and involved in the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, confessed her involvement in the murder. The other members of the hit squad remain unknown, with at least five people believed to be involved, plus other possible “collaborators.”
An attack whose “circumstances” are still shrouded in mystery after forty years. For over twenty years, Lieutenant Colonel of the Carabinieri Antonio Varisco, born in Zara on March 29, 1927, can be said to have been the true “Commander of the Tribunals of Rome.” In that vast period of shadows and unresolved mysteries dominated by the “strategy of tension,” coup attempts, terrorism from both Right and Left, old and new criminal organizations, Freemasonry, rogue intelligence services, espionage, high-profile murders, and a political class involved in numerous major scandals that often remained unclarified.
“Tonci,” as he was known to his five sisters and closest family, was the man who truly knew everything and everyone. Thus, there were certainly many potential “enemies” who would have welcomed his “exit.” Lieutenant Colonel of the Carabinieri Varisco fell victim to an ambush two days after the assassination of Milanese lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli, the liquidator of the banks of Michele Sindona linked to the Mafia and P2, and eight days before the murder of Palermo’s Chief of Mobile Police Boris Giuliano, killed by “Cosa Nostra.” Investigator, Boris Giuliano with whom Varisco had “contacts” and had just met in Milan, engaged in the investigation of Sicilian bankrupt businessman and the death of Ambrosoli.
To be killed when the Carabinieri officer was about to leave the Force ready to take up a position in a major private company (Editor’s note: Farmitalia-Carlo Erba, information from Article 21). A decision, as some “friends” later reported, made because he was “tired and worried.” Antonio Varisco was awarded the Gold Medal for Civil Valor posthumously, and the Municipality of Rome named a street near the Criminal Court in Piazzale Clodio after him.