1980
February 22, Rome
Valerio Verbano, 19 years old, student
Born in Rome on February 25, 1961, into a family from the petite bourgeoisie with an anti-fascist background, with his father employed by the Ministry of the Interior and a member of the Italian Communist Party, and a mother who was a nurse, Valerio Verbano began his political involvement in 1975 within the autonomous collective of his own school, the Archimede Scientific High School, located in the Roman district of Nuovo Salario. His active militancy, sometimes even at the risk of his own physical safety, extended beyond the school environment through his membership in the Valmelaina Fight Committee, a territorial emanation of Workers’ Autonomy.
Like many boys his age, in addition to his political commitment, from childhood he shared his passion with other interests, such as sports (especially martial arts like judo and karate), as well as music (Beatles, Pink Floyd), and football fandom for AS Roma, his favorite team. Through another of his interests, photography, he began documenting the political events of the time and compiling a personal investigation into far-right movements in the capital.
On April 20, 1979, Verbano was arrested by the police along with four other boys while, outside an abandoned farmhouse near the Roman suburb of Fidene, they were preparing to manufacture incendiary devices (some Molotov cocktails). The search conducted by the police immediately after the arrest at the residence on Via Monte Bianco 114, where Verbano lived with his parents, led to the discovery and seizure of a firearm with the serial number erased (a Beretta 6.35) and documentary material, including several files compiled by Verbano with profiles of right-wing extremists. Tried, on December 22, 1979, he was sentenced to seven months in prison to be served at the Regina Coeli prison in Rome.
The Murder
“I had a son, Valerio, who filled our lives and they killed him. He fell on the couch in that corner, his head where there’s now that stuffed kitten. They were fascists, perhaps in revenge, because Valerio was part of Autonomy, or perhaps out of fear. Valerio was their sworn enemy, he was compiling a dossier on the fascists in the neighborhood, who knows? But since that day, we’ve lived with a purpose, to discover the truth about our son. To name the three murderers who killed him before our eyes. If his death remains a mystery, my son would be killed for the second time.”
On February 22, 1980, around 12:44 p.m., three armed youths wearing ski masks entered the Verbano home on the fourth floor of Via Monte Bianco 114, in the Monte Sacro district of Rome. Posing as friends of the son, they managed to convince Verbano’s parents to open the doors of their home; once inside the apartment, armed with silenced pistols, the three tied up and gagged the parents, who were immobilized with adhesive tape, and took them to their bedroom. At that point, they waited for Valerio to return home from school, not yet having arrived.
Upon his return, around 1:40 p.m., when he opened the door to his home, Verbano was immediately attacked by the three. In the ensuing struggle, Verbano managed to disarm one of the attackers and attempted to escape through a window of the apartment. However, he was struck by a gunshot to the back that perforated his intestines, causing him to fall seriously injured on the living room couch. When the attackers fled, in the confusion, they left in the apartment a ski mask, a .38 caliber pistol with a silencer, a dog leash, a pair of sunglasses, and a shirt button.
Alerted by the gunshot, neighbors rushed into the Verbano apartment immediately after the assailants fled, working to free the parents and to help, in vain, the boy, who died shortly thereafter, even before being loaded into the ambulance that would have taken him to the hospital.
The murder had a huge impact on the city, also thanks to Verbano’s political activism. On February 25, the day of the funeral (and his birthday), there were several episodes of violence by groups linked to Autonomy, harshly repressed with charges and tear gas by the police, even inside the Verano cemetery, where Verbano was buried. From the windows of the San Lorenzo police station, an adjacent Roman neighborhood to the cemetery, several gunshots were even fired at the funeral procession.
Claims
On the same day of the murder, at 8:00 PM, the first claim arrives, signed by an alleged leftist group, the “Gruppo Proletario Organizzato Armato” (Armed Organized Proletarian Group), which claims to have intended to target a spy, an informant, a police collaborator: in the statement, the murder is described as a mistake compared to the initial intention of inflicting punishment through kneecapping.
An hour later, around 9:00 PM, a second claim arrives signed by the Nuclei Armati Rivoluzionari (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), the main far-right extremist group of the time: “We have executed Valerio Verbano, the mastermind of the Cecchetti murder. The shot that killed him was fired with a .38 caliber gun. We left a 7.65 caliber pistol in the apartment. The police hid it.” And still under the NAR signature (Thor, Balder, and Tir commands), around 12:00 PM the next day, a second claim is delivered in which, although not explicitly mentioning Verbano’s murder, there is an allusive reference to the “hammer of Thor that struck in Montesacro.”
Ten days later, another flyer appears in Padua, also signed by NAR, categorically denying the involvement of the terrorist group in Verbano’s murder. Investigators, who exclude the truthfulness of this latter flyer, confirm that the most probable claim is the first one, made by NAR over the phone. At the time of the arrival of that phone call, indeed, the reference to the .38 caliber of the gun used for the murder, which was actually used in the ambush, had not yet been confirmed in the official autopsy report prepared by the forensic pathologist.