1985
March 27, Rome
Ezio Tarantelli, 43 years old, university professor and economist
The Red Brigades killed economist Ezio Tarantelli at the University of Rome where he taught. At the end of a lecture at the Faculty of Economics and Commerce, two brigatists used a submachine gun to attack the professor in the university parking lot. The assassination was claimed by the Red Brigades for the construction of the Combatant Communist Party, with a 70-page document left on his car. Tarantelli was criticized in the document for his role as a consultant for CISL in the agreement between the government and unions on the cut in cost of living increases — the system of wage indexation implemented in Italy in the early 1980s.
Legal proceedings determined that the professor was murdered by Antonino Fosso (acquitted in the first instance and later sentenced to life imprisonment) and another person who remains unnamed. Barbara Balzerani, as head of the Rome branch of the Red Brigades that carried out the operation, was sentenced to two years in prison for “apology for the crime”. The Skorpion submachine gun used in the murder was later found in 1988 in a hideout of the Red Brigades on Via Dogali in Milan.
Ballistics exams revealed that the same weapon was used in other attacks, including against former Mayor of Florence Lando Conti in 1986, Senator of the Christian Democratic Party Roberto Ruffilli, who was killed in Forlì in 1988, and against two young MSI militants Franco Bigonzetti and Francesco Ciavatta, murdered on January 7, 1978, in the so-called Acca Larentia Massacre.