1978

March 16, Rome
Oreste Leonardi, 51 years old, Major Marshal Assistant to the Carabinieri
Domenico Ricci, 43 years old, pinned by the Carabinieri
Giulio Rivera, 23, Public Security Guard
Francesco Zizzi, 29, deputy brigadier of Public Security
Raffaele Iozzino, 25 years old, Public Security Guard

On Thursday, March 16, 1978, in Rome, the debate was scheduled in the Chamber of Deputies and the vote of confidence for the fourth Government chaired by Giulio Andreotti: it was a moment of great importance since, for the first time since 1947, the PCI would contribute directly to the parliamentary majority that would support the new executive. The main architect of this complex and difficult political maneuver had been Aldo Moro, president of the Christian Democracy.

With a strenuous work of mediation and political synthesis, Moro, who had undertaken in-depth talks with communist secretary Enrico Berlinguer, had managed to develop the political relationship between the two major Italian parties that emerged from the 1976 elections, the Christian Democracy and the Italian Communist Party. Aldo Moro had had to overcome strong internal resistance to his party and contrasts between the various political forces: until the last few hours new problems had arisen related to the ministerial composition, judged unsatisfactory by the communists, of the new government led by Giulio Andreotti.

On February 28, during the consultations in Montecitorio, Moro sposed to the Christian Democratic parliamentary groups his analysis of the situation, and his prognosis. It was his last public speech. Moro recognized that for years something had failed in the normal mechanism of Italian democracy because, after the elections two years earlier, two winners had emerged; therefore it was necessary to take advantage of the willingness of the PCI to ‘find an area of harmony, an area of understanding that allows us to manage the country as long as the difficult conditions to which the history of these years has brought us last’.

On March 11, Andreotti went to the Quirinale with the list of ministers: previously Berlinguer had asked that the ministers considered the most anti-communist be removed from the list and that some technicians be appointed. Within the PCI there were those who saw in that monochrome executive a provocation. Giancarlo Pajetta announced that he would not participate in the votes. Among the opinions of those who wanted to refuse the government, and those who wanted to accept it, a third prevailed: the communists would have solved the dilemma after listening to Andreotti’s speech in the Chamber.

Aldo Moro was also the target, in addition to political attacks, of scandalous maneuvers aimed at undermining its authority. As part of the investigation into the so-called Lockheed scandal, it was told in the press that the famous ‘Antelope Cobbler’, the mysterious main political referent involved in the financial transaction with the US aviation industry, could have been Moro. On the morning of March 16, 1978, the newspaper la Repubblica published on the third page an article in this regard with the title: Antelope Cobbler? Very simple, it is Aldo Moro, other important national newspapers reported the same news.

The presentation of the programmatic statements of the new Andreotti government to the Chamber of Deputies had been set for 10:00 on March 16 and from 8:45 the men of Aldo Moro’s escort were waiting, outside his house in via del Forte Trionfale 79, for the politician to leave his home to accompany him to Parliament. Aldo Moro got off a few minutes before 9:00] and was accompanied by the carabinieri marshal Oreste Leonardi, his faithful collaborator for many years, to the representative car, a Fiat 130 unarmored sedan, where he sat in the rear seats. Immediately after the small convoy, the president’s car and that of the escort, he set in motion in the direction of Via della Camilluccia. The cars were proceeding at a fairly fast speed, while the politician consulted the morning newspaper package: before reaching the Chamber of Deputies, the usual stop in the Church of Santa Chiara was scheduled.

At about 9:00 am in via Mario Fani, Trionfale district, the car with Aldo Moro on board and that of the escort were blocked at the intersection with Via Stresa by a group of terrorists who immediately opened fire, killed the five men of the escort in a few seconds and kidnapped Moro. The terrorists immediately restarted in several cars and lost their tracks. In via Fani there remained the Fiat 130, with the ‘Roma L59812’ on which Moro was traveling, with the corpses of the driver, pinned by the carabinieri Domenico Ricci (43 years old) and the head of security, marshal of the carabinieri Oreste Leonardi (51 years old), and the Alfa Romeo Alfetta with the ‘Roma S9339393’ of the escort agents with the corpse of the guard on board. Giulio Rivera (23 years old) and the deputy brigadier of Public Security Francesco Zizzi (29 years old) seriously injured but still alive; supino riverso on the road level, near the car, also remained the body of the P.S. guard. Raffaele Iozzino, 24 years old. In front of the Fiat 130 remained a family Fiat 128 car with a license plate of the diplomatic corps ‘CD 19707’, stopped at the intersection and abandoned by its occupants.

The first communication to the police of the events that happened was recorded at 9:03 at 113 which received an anonymous phone call informing of a shooting that took place in via Mario Fani; the operational center of 113 then immediately alerted the patrol of the Commissariat of Monte Mario that was parked in via Bitossi. Officers were warned that ‘several gunshots were heard’ in Via Fani. From the documentation of the Police Headquarters it appears that already at 9:05 the first communication of the agents of the patrol of Monte Mario arrived who, arrived on the spot in via Fani, provided for the removal of the crowd that had gathered, inspected the cars with the dying colleagues, collected the first news from the people present and requested to “send the ambulances immediately, they are of the escort of Moro and have seized the honorable” (Sergio Flamigni considers the indication of the time present in the documentation of the Police Headquarters to be incorrect: in his opinion it would have been impossible for the agents of the patrol car in just two minutes to reach via Fani and carry out the first inspection. He believes that the time of the report in the rush of the moment was not indicated in the annotation and was probably added at a later date). The officers also reported that the thuts would move away on a white Fiat 128 with a license plate ‘Roma M53995’; the police officers of the patrol also issued the information that there would be four terrorists and would wear ‘divisions of sailors or policemen’.

In the meantime, after a second anonymous phone call, the Beta 4, Zara, V12 and SM91 steering wheels had also been alerted and sent via Fani: the Police Headquarters, Criminalpol, the Mobile Squad, DIGOS and the Commissariat of Monte Mario were informed of the first news. In the following minutes, by 9:10 am, it was communicated to the car radios of the steering wheels by the operating room of the Police Headquarters to research, in addition to the white Fiat 128 in which four young people had been reported on board, also a Fiat 132 blue car with ‘Roma P79560’ and a ‘dark Honda motorcycle’. At 9:15 a.m. the police station communicated the news of the ambush in via Fani to the operations center of the Legion of the carabinieri of Rome. At the same time the operations center also recorded the telephone communication of Pino Rauti who, living in Via Fani, had the opportunity to observe from a window some phases of the ambush and immediately communicated that he had heard bursts of machine guns, that he had seen two men dressed as air force officers and that he had observed a blue Fiat 132 move away.

(…)

The real number of members of the brigade group in Via Fani, their identity and their dislocation at the place of action have been from the beginning highly discussed elements and sources of great diatribes and largely discordant assessments in the procedural, public and historical levels. The brigadists, collaborating or otherwise interested in describing the events of Via Fani, have provided over time often contradictory information, not entirely reliable, and have shown considerable reticence regarding this decisive subject.

Initially no brigadist directly participating in the events in Via Fani collaborated with the investigators and therefore the first trial on the facts of the Moro kidnapping, celebrated between 1982 and 1983, had to be based on circumstantial elements and on the testimonies of some collaborators of justice, including Patrizio Peci, who having not been actively involved, reported only information learned indirectly. The first trial condemned ten terrorists as material responsible for the ambush: Lauro Azzolini, Barbara Balzerani, Franco Bonisoli, Adriana Faranda, Raffaele Fiore, Prospero Gallinari, Mario Moretti, Valerio Morucci, Luca Nicolotti and Bruno Seghetti. It was Valerio Morucci who, starting from his testimony given before the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry of 1983, began to tell in detail the details of the ambersh, while initially refusing to provide the names of the participants. At first he said that the terrorists involved had been ‘just over twelve’, then during the 1985 appeal process he reduced the number to nine participants (a figure later confirmed by Bonisoli). In that place he reconstructed the phases of the ambed: he excluded that Lauro Azzolini, Luca Nicolotti and Adriana Faranda had been part of the group in via Fani and implicitly confirmed that the other convicted at first instance had actually contributed to the criminal act. His claims were trusted by the Court of Appeal in Rome.

Over the years the brigadists confirmed the presence of Moretti, Bonisoli, Gallinari, Balzerani, Fiore, Morucci and Seghetti and gave them a partial reconstruction of the facts and the role of the main participants in via Fani. In addition, Morucci, in the third trial on the Moro case, indirectly revealed that Alessio Casimirri and Alvaro Lojacono had also been part of the group with the role of back cover along Via Fani.

In 1994 Mario Moretti, in his memoir, described the presence of a tenth component, a woman – later identified in Rita Algranati – who would have first spotted the cars of the Christian Democrat politician and signaled the arrival of the convoy: finally the name of Raimondo Etro also appeared, whose presence in the area was considered probable on March 16 with the task of collecting the weapons used by the fire group after the ambed. However, on the basis of the procedural findings and the investigations of the parliamentary committees, the versions of the brigadists, modified numerous times over the years, were not considered entirely exhaustive: here, and also at the public level, it has continued to be considered that the number of participants in Via Fani was higher.

In particular, in addition to hypothesizing the presence of other people at the intersection of via Stresa in support of Balzerani and another person already on board the blue Fiat 128 on which Morucci, Balzerani and Bonisoli would have fled, it was considered above all highly probable that two other terrorists were present on board a Honda motorcycle, as reported from the beginning by at least three witnesses (including the engineer Alessandro Marini who, on board a moped at the intersection of via Fani and via Stresa, would have seen the two on the bike, also receiving mitre shots that hit his windshield). Even the traffic police officer not on duty Giovanni Intrevado who, with his Fiat 500, was blocked at the intersection of Via Stresa by a woman armed with a machine gun without being able to intervene, reported that he had seen a ‘large displacement’ motorcycle with two men on board. The presence of other militants on a Honda motorcycle has always been denied by the brigadiers. Raimondo Etro denied that he was one of Honda’s passengers and said that Alessio Casimirri had informed him of the unforeseen presence of a motorcycle that had nothing to do with the brigadista commando.

In addition, from the account of some witnesses, including the engineer Marini himself, and from the results of the expert reports on the corpses, partially discordant conclusions were reached in court with respect to the brigade’s version on the exact mode of the ambush: these reconstructions would provide for the presence of another man on board the Fiat 128 CD next to Moretti. It would have been this man, according to the expert report of the 1993 trial, who would have descended from the right side of the Fiat 128 CD and opened fire from the right of the road, immediately fatally hitting Marshal Leonardi. This reconstruction would make it possible to explain the directions of the shots detected by the expert opinions on the bodies of Marshal Leonardi, 9 shots found with orientation from right to left, of Agent Rivera, 5 shots from right to left, and perhaps of Agent Iozzino and Deputy Brigadier Zizzi, on which the expert opinions are more uncertain. On the identity of this hypothetical brigadist in action on the right side of the road, no really reliable conclusions have been reached, although the writer Manlio Castronuovo believes that it was Riccardo Dura, a particularly determined Genoese brigadier, who died in 1980 in the clash of via Fracchia in Genoa.

The brigadists have always ruled out the presence of their militants on the right side of the road and have highlighted that they opened fire only from the left to avoid serious risks of fortuitous accidents with the possibility of hitting each other by mistake. In fact, it should be noted that most eyewitnesses only reported seeing a variable number of ‘aviers’ firing from the left side of the road at stationary cars. Regarding the possible presence of Riccardo Dura in via Fani, Valerio Morucci excluded her decisively in the trial, revealing that the Genoese brigadist had actually been initially included in the group with the role of helping Barbara Balzerani at the intersection of via Stresa, and had also arrived in Rome where he lived in the latter’s apartment, but a few days before the ambush it was decided to give up his participation.