1981
May 20, Mestre
Giuseppe Taliercio, 54 years old, Engineer, Director of the Petrochemical Plant of Marghera
At the beginning of the 1980s, the conflict situation at Porto Marghera was very high. On January 29, 1980, Sergio Gori, the deputy director of the plant, was killed, and a few months later, on May 12, Commissioner Alfredo Albanese, who was investigating Gori’s murder, was assassinated. The Red Brigades held Taliercio responsible for the work-related deaths that occurred during his managerial tenure.
Kidnapping and Murder
Taliercio was kidnapped on May 20, 1981, by several brigadists from the Venetian column. Three men in plain clothes and one dressed as a finance officer rang the doorbell at his home, where he was with his wife and children, locked him in a box, and took him away. He was hidden in a farmhouse near Udine. After 46 days of captivity, Antonio Savasta, considered the leader of the Venetian brigadists, executed the sentence by firing about twenty shots with two different pistols at the trunk in which Taliercio was confined. His body was found near the Montedison plant, locked in the trunk of a Fiat 128.
During his captivity, the Red Brigades never explicitly demanded anything in exchange for his release. Francescutti, one of the three brigadists who carried out the kidnapping, said, “Those in the BR who managed this kidnapping from Rome expected the other side to make offers. The idea of having kidnapped someone responsible for social crimes like workplace deaths or pollution seemed to give us the right to decide over life and death.” However, no offers were made to the BR, and only twenty years later did a Montedison executive claim that the then-president Schimberni had given carte blanche if money was needed for Taliercio’s release. The results of the autopsy revealed that Taliercio had not eaten in the last five days and had a broken incisor, likely due to mistreatment; during his captivity, as later emerged during the trial, he had opposed collaboration with his captors.
The funeral took place on July 10, 1981, in the Parish Church of Marina di Carrara in the presence of President of the Republic Sandro Pertini.
Trial
Antonio Savasta, a member of the Red Brigades, who confessed to being the perpetrator of the murder and became a state witness, was sentenced to 10 years in prison due to a significant reduction in his sentence; the terrorist Cesare Di Lenardo and the three material executors of the kidnapping, Pietro Vanzi, Francesco Lo Bianco, and Gianni Francescutti, were sentenced to life imprisonment.