1972

31 May, Peteano di Segrado (Go)
Franco Dongiovanni, 23 years old, carabiniere
Antonio Ferraro, 29 years old, Carabinieri brigadier
Donato Poveromo, 33 years old, chosen carabiniere

Of all the fascist massacres, that of Peteano is often forgotten: due to the number of victims (three, all carabinieri) and because it occurred not in a bank, in a square or on a train, but on a dirt country lane, at night , on the outskirts of a very small hamlet of a tiny municipality in a province at the extreme eastern border of Italy, that of Gorizia. A massacre carried out on the outskirts of everything, which was also considered non-political for a good ten years. A “marginal” massacre, however, still singular, above all for one reason: it is in fact the only one of which we know the culprits, both executors and instigators. One of them, Vincenzo Vinciguerra, took responsibility for it, self-confessed. He did it in 1984, twelve years after the events, but he was already in prison, after having handed himself over to the police. In 1979 he had in fact voluntarily put an end to his inaction which, through Spain, Chile and Argentina, had allowed him to escape arrest after being convicted of another very singular crime: an airplane hijacking, the first in the history of Italian civil aviation.
The facts date back exactly half a century ago. On the evening of May 31, 1972, an anonymous phone call to the Gorizia Carabinieri reported the presence of a white Fiat 500 abandoned in a small street just outside Peteano di Sagrado, with holes in the windshield that looked like bullet holes. The checks are triggered, the car is searched, second lieutenant Angelo Tagliari decides to open the bonnet and activates the lever. But a detonator (technically a tear-off igniter) is attached to that lever and the car, packed with explosives in the front trunk, blows up, killing the three carabinieri who were right in front of the hood. The victims all come from the South: Brigadier Antonio Ferraro, Sicilian, 31 years old, and the Carabinieri Donato Poveromo, Lucanian, 33 years old, and Franco Dongiovanni from Lecce, just 23 years old. They were all married and Ferraro’s wife was pregnant. The open door instead acts as a shield for Tagliari, who was nevertheless seriously injured: thrown many meters away, he lost a hand and also suffered burns and wounds.
The attack is not claimed. And the investigations, carried out irregularly in the first person by Colonel Dino Mingarelli, commander of the Carabinieri Legion of Udine (on the orders of General Giovanni Battista Palumbo, commander of the Pastrengo Division of Milan and PID member) are immediately directed towards Lotta Continua environments of Trento. It is a completely unfounded lead, which however will be pursued for several months. However, the Udine section of Ordine Nuovo was left undisturbed, even though demonstrative bomb attacks had been repeated for months in Friuli, the origins of which could clearly be linked to neo-fascist environments. Then, on 6 October, the aforementioned Ronchi dei Legionari hijacking took place: a small civilian plane, destined for Bari, was forced by an armed passenger to return to the Julian airport. With the aircraft on the runway, a tense negotiation takes place with the control tower. The hijacker demands money, frees the passengers but keeps the crew kidnapped. However, at a certain point he manages to abandon the plane. The police surround the plane, there is a shootout, then silence. Only many hours later the police and carabinieri boarded, finding the hijacker already shot to death. This is Ivano Boccaccio, an ordinologist, still holding a pistol in his hand. And that gun appears to belong to Carlo Cicuttini, another Ordinovist, but also secretary of the Manzano section of the Italian Social Movement. While Cicuttini has already fled to Spain, Vinciguerra was also interrogated in those days. Then he too will flee. Meanwhile, on Peteano, the investigations have moved on to a group of Gorizia residents: it is the non-political “yellow trail”, which culminates in 1973 with the arrests of six people. Their motive, claims Mingarelli, would be an unspecified desire for revenge against the force. They are arrested, although the elements are fragile: they will spend a year in prison, only to be tried (in a dramatic and disconcerting trial) and acquitted (but the final sentence will only arrive in 1979). The story of Peteano and that of Ronchi will remain separate for a long time, because the Carabinieri themselves made decisive evidence disappear: the shell casings of the bullets fired at the Fiat 500 in Peteano, which were 22 caliber, and the inspection reports which attested to their discovery. . 22 caliber was also the gun found in Boccaccio’s hand on the hijacked plane. And the voice of the phone call that had attracted the police to Peteano was the voice of Cicuttini.
Judicial truth it arrived only in the late 1980s, thanks to an investigation by the Venetian investigating judge Felice Casson (from which the one on Gladio also began), which made it possible to identify the guilt of the Friulian ordinovists: Vinciguerra decided to take responsibility for the massacre, despite initially covering Cicuttini (and without ever involving Boccaccio, who was already dead). The Assize Court sentenced him to life imprisonment, but he did not appeal. He also sentenced Cicuttini to life imprisonment, who instead attempted the second degree in absentia, in vain. Only in 1998 was he arrested in France, attracted by Digos, after Spain had twice denied his extradition. Casson’s investigation also ascertained that the Italian Social Movement, still in the mid-seventies, had sent him 32 thousand dollars to Spain to undergo an operation on his vocal cords and therefore be able to escape any investigations into the Peteano massacre, given that his phone call had been recorded: the party leader Giorgio Almirante, indicted for aiding and abetting, will escape the trial only thanks to a providential amnesty, which he decided to make use of even before the trial.