“How well they sleep!”, “Shut up, there are two dead people on board…” And laughter. Relax. They had her for 36 hours massacred with kicks and punches, drugged, tortured, Dragged with a strap around her neck, raped and now let go. A cynicism mixed with wildness that corresponds to that of the worst criminals of history, the Zodiac Killer, Jack the Ripper and all the others, except they were “good guys”. It’s the terrible story of Circeo massacre. On September 29 and 30, 1975, three students, Andrea Ghira, Angelo Izzo and Gianni Guido, kidnapped, raped and tortured the young Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti. The first died, the second miraculously saved herself by pretending to be dead. Those were the times of divorce, abortion and the emancipation of women the most outrageous of all crimes shocked Italy.
The three tormentors
The evening of September 30, 1975 a white Fiat 127 drove on Pontina, Towards Rome. On board were three twenty-year-olds who had grown up in the area Parioli and registered with classical high school in a Catholic institute, San Leone Magno. Three names destined to become Symbol of evilalready known through numerous criminal raids and right-wing sympathizers: Andrea Ghira22 years old, son of an entrepreneur who became famous as a water polo champion in his youth; Angelo Izzo, twenty years old, enrolled in medicine; Gianni Guido, nineteen years old, aspiring architect. “We were warriors, so we raped, robbed, stole. “That was the mentality that united us,” Izzo will say. The trio stood Return home after the massacre: The music on the car radio was playing at full blast, the soundtrack from “The Exorcist” was playing, and the victims had stuffed them into the roof rack afterwards killed. Both, they thought… But no: one she was saved pretend to be dead. He was called Donatella Colasanti and she had a cascade of curly hair, while the friend Rosaria LopezHis round, angelic face had not been able to withstand the violence, and now it had happened a lazy bundle wrapped in a blanket.
The victims
Here it is, the first Femicide entered that Collective memory of an entire country, thanks to the images of black and white television: the massacre of Circeo – told since November 14th in the series “Circeo”, with Greta Scarano, broadcast on Rai1 – has marked an era and stirred up different emotions: anger, indignation, the desire for civic growth. Was a class crime, First. generations of girls identified and moved and thought of. Friends since childhood, locals MontagnolaWorkers’ and white-collar districts in the south of Rome, Donatella Colasanti, 17 years old, University studentand Rosaria Lopez, 19, Barman, both came from simple families. They spent the afternoons together. you read Photonovels. Rosaria, the last of the eight children of a land registry clerk who emigrated from Sicily in the 1950s, he dreamed of making films and he had already tasted the spotlight when he attended an unsuccessful audition for Zeffirelli’s “Romeo and Juliet.” They were sunny, naive.
The trap in front of the cinema
The three Pariolians had connected them to the a few days earlier “Mushroom” barthe EUR Tank restaurant frequented by groups of teenagers, and between a Coca-Cola and a joke they had managed to secure a date for Monday September 29th at 3.30pm before the Embassy cinema by Montagnola. However, only Izzo and Guido showed up. Armed with the worst intentions. They had the keys to it in their pockets Seaside villa in Ghira, who would later join them. “What do you say, girls, if we go to a party in Lavinio instead of the cinema?” It’s more fun…” they suggested, showing their best smiles. Donatella and Rosaria they had accepted, they had no reason to suspect. Speaking of Lavinio, much closer to Rome than Circeo, that’s what the two of them were aiming for calm her down. And they had sprung into action. There were no cell phones back then. During the trip, Izzo stopped to make a phone call to the Villa Moresca landline to make sure it was empty and there was no servant, and then to Ghira to give him the green light. “Come on, you’re coming too! We’re almost there.”
Arrival at the Villa of Horrors
6:30 p.m. on September 29, 1975. After an hour-long drive during which they continued to joke and be pleasant, The nightmare came true As soon as the Izzo-Guido duo opened the door of the villa in Punta Rossa, giving way to Rosaria and Donatella. It will be the latter in the process that will do this explain as they threw away the mask: “The two immediately reveal themselves and ask us to make love, we refuse, they insist and.” They promise a million every. We refuse again. At this point Guido pulls one out gun and says, “We’re from the Marseillais gang, so when he arrives you’d better obey.” Jacques Berenguer You won’t stand a chance, he’s tough, he’s the one who kidnapped the jeweler Bulgari.’ We understand that we are trapped and we burst into tears…”
36 hours of torture
The violence, described in every detail Court documents and the newspaper reports say they will leave Italy is dismayed. For 36 hours – on the evening of September 29th, all night, the following day – the massacres that had now become three with the arrival of Ghira in the wrong role Leader of the MarseillesThey gave the unfortunate women no escape. Rosaria and Donatella continued ask to be released, but instead of inspiring pity, her desperation caused blood to spurt from her eyes. They stripped her, locked her naked in the bathroom, they scoffed forced to consume drugs because of their ethnic origins, tortured, they raped. “Guys, I’m going home and coming back…” This also happened in the middle of the torture: Guido he walked away not to worry Parents, he went to Rome, had dinner with them – sensible, like the son everyone would like to have – and late in the evening he returned to Circeo. Night of terror, dawn, the next morning. Until Donatella managed to grab the phone, call the police, and drive off the fury Murderer: Rosaria was drowned in the bathtub; Donatella taken with bars, dragged across the floor with a belt around his neck, Blow repeatedly to the head and then left there because she appeared dead. THE Body They were taken physically and placed in the back seat of Guido’s father’s Fiat 127. Here we are again on the Pontina: “How well these people sleep!”, “Shut up, there are two dead people on board…”
The discovery: “There’s a cat in a 127…”
They arrived in Rome on the evening of dinner 30. September, Ghira, Guido and Izzo. And they had great appetites. “Let’s have a pizza and then we’ll decide what to do with it,” one of the three suggested. Parked the car in Via Polain Nomentano, they moved away without fear of being discovered and for them it was salvation. Donatella Colasanti He started hitting the trunk with his fists to get attention. He groaned, he cried, he tried to scream but she still had a weak voice. At 10:50 p.m. a night watchman noticed it and raised the alarm on 112. “Swan, swan… There’s a cat meowing in a white 127 on Via Pola,” was the message operating room to the “Gazelles” who operate in the Villa Torlonia area. The SOS also reached a photojournalist via the radios tuned to the same frequencies, Antonio Monteforte, who flew to the spot. It was he who took the photo most famous photo of the crime news of the second half of the 20th century: Donatella emerges from the trunk of the 127 with bare shoulders black eyes wide openin disbelief that she is alive.
Two detainees and a refugee: the trial
The rest of the story – the coroner, the certified death From Rosaria by drowning, that recreation of the survivors in hospital because of injuries all over their body and a broken nose, the first examinations, the arrest by Angelo Izzo and Gianni Guido already at night, the contemporary leak by Andrea Ghira, the tall one Investigation – will give reporters work for the coming months, years. Donatella Colasanti, defended by a famous lawyer, Tina Lagostena Bassi, became a civil party in the trial against the executioners. The feminist associations They did not miss the hearing and were happy when the verdict was read out. On July 29, 1976, the Rome Assize Court sentenced everyone to life imprisonment: Gianni Guido and Angelo Izzo present in the courtroom, Andrea Ghira in absentia.
Ghira on the run, dead (perhaps) in Melilla
But it wasn’t over yet. There History of Ghira became a disturbing sequel to the massacre of Circeo: sentenced to life imprisonment, and yet never entered a cellThanks to important canopy. According to later reconstruction, the young fanatic of fascism and the deeds of Marseilles he managed to escape immediately Spain, where he took the false name Massimo Testa de Andres and joined the Foreign Legion. Then he moved Melilla, the Iberian enclave in Morocco, where died of an overdose in 1994 and was buried. The true identity – which the Lopez family does not believe in, as they are convinced that he is still living under an assumed name – is discovered through DNA testing in December 2005.
Guido, regrets and benefits
Now in the Appeal sentence Published in 1980, the only one Guido had benefited from a reduction in sentence (from life imprisonment to 30 years) because of the words Buses and the payment of 100 million lire to the Lopez family as compensation. But it wasn’t enough for him. The pariolino, who had not missed dinner with mom and dad while killing, wanted more: la Freedom. In 1981 the time had come escaped from the prison of San Gimignano to seek refuge abroad, initially a Buenos Aires and then to Panamawhere he was captured in 1994 under the guise of an unsuspecting car dealer and from there delivered in Italy. Years of harsh prison sentences followed, but they passed quickly: in 2009, after the trial for good behavior, sentence reductions, etc out in foster care Gianni Guido gained final freedom from the social services. Whatever Izzo would have done if he hadn’t stained his hands with blood again…
Angelo Izzo’s new carnage
The story of the third of the gang It’s like a textbook on criminal psychopathology. At the end of 2004, despite his life sentence, Angelo Izzo obtained from the supervisory court Half-freedom. And shortly afterwards, in the middle of his Obligation (“I was a predator, rape and killing were like stealing jewels,” he later said), he took advantage of that Permissions killing two other women, Maria Carmela Linciano, 49, and Valentina Maiorano, 14, wife and daughter of a repentant member of the Sacra Corona Unita, known from his cell in Campobasso. It was April 28, 2005. After being tied up and suffocated, he buried her in the yard of a house. Another double Femicide without anyone being able to save themselves this time. There was a lot of controversy about this Justice too permissive and in January 2007, at the end of a trial with an obvious outcome, the new one lifelong prison sentence of the temperamental criminal with big eyes.
Donatella’s will
However, Donatella Colasanti did not have time to see Izzo again in prison: that same year she had fallen ill and lost the new fight. He died at the age of 47, on December 30, 2005, at the Regina Elena Oncology Hospital in Rome for breast cancer. His tenacity and his memory for facts massacre lasted 36 hours at Villa Moresca andlast hour of the trip in which he heard the murderers joking from the trunk of the Fiat 127, had proven crucial in the trial against the torturers. His last words Before they died, they said, “Let us fight for the truth.”
Letizia Lopez: “They’re still killing us”
Today in addition to Memory of an entire nationtwo victims remain public gardens in Rome, with their names on plaques at the entrance: Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti. One in the Grotta Perfetta neighborhood, where the little girl who wanted to be an actress lived and where her older sister still lives, and the other a few blocks away, on Via Costantino. Letizia LopezHer life was marked by another loss, the loss of her partner Ugo, a 72-year-old pensioner, in a traffic accident, but she never held back in civil disputes. The pain was for her Source of engagement and from Hope to pass on to new generations. She has mixed reactions to the journalists who continue to call her (here is the interview with Corriere for the series “What happened to them”) out of anger and passion: “Almost half a century has passed and they continue to kill us, that is the central point, do you realize that?” I am disappointed? Yes very much. Tell me what’s changed. There Company stayed motionless and upstream there is a problem that has never been highlighted enough: men’s lack of awareness. At the sit-ins, at the demonstrations, at my sister’s memorial services, me I still only see women, can you explain to me why?” Rosaria, Donatella and these three “good guys”. It happened 48 years ago. It’s hard to blame her. ([email protected])
November 14, 2023
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