1978

April 11, Turin
Lorenzo Cutugno, 31 years old, custodiant

Lorenzo Cutugno was wounded in an ambush, on the door of the house at 7.30 in the morning, by two members of the ‘Red Brigades’. Cristoforo Piancone and Nadia Ponti. Although he had been shot in the legs, he took to the streets and managed, with his own weapon, to injure the attackers. At that point a third intervened, Vincenzo Acella who, leaving the car where he was waiting for the accomplices, hit the policeman in the back, and then shot him with a fatal blow to the head, after he was already wounded and poured to the ground. The wounded terrorist, Cristoforo Piancone, abandoned by his comrades in a nearby city hospital, later declared himself a political prisoner and was convicted. The murder of Agent Cutugno represented a moment of the attack launched by the ‘Red Brigades’ against those who, in various capacities, operated in the penitentiary sector. It followed that of the magistrate Riccardo Palma, who was less than two months old, and preceded in particular those – of shortly thereafter – of the marshals Francesco Di Cataldo and Antonio Santoro, the agent Giuseppe Lorusso, the magistrate Girolamo Tartaglione and the criminal anthropologist Alfredo Paolella.