The crime of Pier Paolo Pasolini, killed on the night of 1 , in historical perspective that research on the motive and modalities of the aggression that caused the death, both of which have never been clarified, will finally be resumed”. This underlines the parliamentary anti-mafia commission which, at the end of the last legislative period, passed a report now published precisely on the case of the author and director in the year of his centenary.
The Antimafia’s work focused in particular on the “acquisitions related to the theft of the original film ‘Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom'” and the “possible links” of that theft to the assassination of Pasolini.
“Particularly serious omissions”
The report highlights that there were investigations by investigative journalism that “definitely destroyed the initial hypothesis, unfortunately supported at the time by the media and some court rulings, that the writer’s murder was merely the tragic result of a sexual encounter that led to a spontaneous one Assault by a Single Person, namely Pino Pelosi (Conclusively Convicted of the Murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini, ed.)”.
Reviewing recent research, the Antimafia recalls “particularly serious omissions” regarding the “immediate investigations that should have been carried out”, such as “the failure to hear the witnesses who lived in the barracks in the area and who had heard what had happened that night and who would have taken into account the indications from the outset that the attack was carried out by numerous people” or “that after the failure to cordon off the crime area there were no detailed reports on the seriousness of the crime – injuries that Pasolini suffered and the means by which it was inflicted”.
The connection with the Banda della Magliana
The commission therefore decided to examine this subject “also because of its apparent connections with the organized crime world in Rome at the time, but essentially because of some testimonies by Maurizio Abbatino (one of the leaders of the Banda della Magliana, later a Collaborator of Justice ed) ‘ which was heard by the commission of inquiry on ‘two separate occasions’. The researcher and journalist Simona Zecchi, who dealt with the Pasolini case, was also heard during the proceedings.
Among the issues at the heart of the commission’s work was the theft of some movie pizzas that took place in a Cinecittà shed on August 15, 1975, including an original film featuring scenes from Pasolini’s film Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. . According to some hypotheses at the beginning of the meeting in Idroscalo di Ostia, where the poet and director died, the intention was precisely to recover the film so as not to lose irretrievably some scenes of his film. A meeting that, according to this hypothesis, would not only have been a “trap” by Pelosi.
Pasolini’s crime
According to the reconstructions known so far, Pasolini was brutally murdered on the night of November 2, 1975 at the age of 53 at Idroscalo di Ostia by being hit and run over by his own car. The massacred body was found by a woman. His friend Ninetto Davoli will recognize him. The murder was blamed on Giuseppe “Pino” Pelosi, a 17-year-old from Guidonia already known to police as a car thief and “boy of life”, who had pulled over the writer’s car that same night. Pelosi claimed to have been in the Piazza dei Cinquecento in front of Termini station with three older friends.
After a dinner offered by the writer, the two made their way to the outskirts of Ostia. The tragedy, the ruling said, happened after an argument over some of Pasolini’s sexual demands, which Pelosi refused to comply, that degenerated into an altercation outside the car. The young man was then beaten with a stick by the writer, which he then took possession of to beat Pasolini until he was badly injured but still alive.
Pelosi would then have climbed into Pasolini’s car and hit the body multiple times with his wheels, crushing his chest and causing his death. Pelosi’s clothes showed no bloodstains. Pelosi was convicted in the first instance of first-degree manslaughter in collaboration with unknown persons and on December 4, 1976, by the Court of Appeals’ verdict, which, while upholding the verdict of the sole defendant, partially reformed the first-degree verdict, excluding any reference to the involvement of other people at the murder.
Pelosi died on July 20, 2017 at the age of 59. Thirty years after his death, the testimony of Sergio Citti, a friend and colleague of Pasolini, about the disappearance of copies of the last film Salò and a possible meeting with criminals to negotiate the refund has surfaced. Sergio Citti died a few weeks later of natural causes.