A man of the institutions is hit when "he has become too dangerous, but he can be killed because he is isolated".
In the last interview with
Giorgio Bocca
, General
Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa
described his condition as follows: besieged by the mafia, surrounded by widespread hostilities, left without the powers he had claimed when he was sent to
Palermo
after the successes against terrorism where he would be He was killed by a mafia commando with his wife and escort agent 40 years ago, on September 3, 1982.
His challenge to the mafia, which began in
Corleone
as a young carabinieri officer and continued in Palermo between the 1960s and 1970s, was resumed on April 30, 1982.
Pio La Torre
had just been killed and Dalla Chiesa had had to hurry up to take on ran the post of superprefect.
It was clear with the government: he was also coming to investigate the "most polluted political family on the island", with a reference to the Sicilian Andreotti group.
His plan was to hit the military structure of Cosa Nostra and break the system of collusion between the mafia and politics.
Those claimed and promised powers had not yet been conferred on him when he was killed with his wife
Emmanuela Setti Carraro
and his collaborator.
Domenico Russo
.
Since the announcement of the appointment, Cosa Nostra was preparing its offensive.
"When I heard on television that he had been promoted to prefect to destroy the mafia, I said: let's get ready, let's put all the hardware in place, all things ready to welcome him: here we kick his ass like a priest's hat", said
Totò Riina
to the Apulian mafia boss
Alberto Lorusso
in a conversation intercepted in prison.
A firing group from Cosa Nostra had fired but there was a "causal not directly attributable to the mafia".
Pietro Grasso was convinced of this when, as national anti-mafia prosecutor, he asked himself if it could be said that "the whole truth has been established, that all responsibilities have been discovered".
That question still remains open 40 years after the massacre, the judges of the assize court underline: "We can certainly agree with those who argue that large areas of shadow persist, concerning both the ways in which the general is was sent to Sicily to face the mafia phenomenon, both the coexistence of specific interests, within the same institutions, to the elimination of the danger represented by the determination and capacity of the general. '' life imprisonment with the dome
Raffaele Ganci, Giuseppe Lucchese, Vincenzo Galatolo and Nino Madonia
.
The only certain thing was written by an anonymous hand in the place of the attack: "Here the hope of honest Palermitans died".
To the dismay of the city, Cardinal Salvatore Pappalardo
's anathema echoed
: "While in Rome they are discussing Sagunto is being conquered".
Sagunto, that is Palermo, had been put on fire by a criminal system that Dalla Chiesa had immediately revealed with a report against
162 bosses
: the original nucleus of the maxi-trial in Cosa Nostra.
On the collusion front, the general's initiatives, the judges wrote again, were a "wake-up call for those who drew with impunity and illegally benefited from the relations between the mafia and politics, especially in the world of procurement".
In those
hundred days
From the Church he received terrifying signals.
The first in June with the massacre of the ring road: the boss
Alfio Ferlito
, the driver of the van that was transferring him from one prison to another, three carabinieri from the escort were killed.
A month later the infamous "triangle of death" took place between Bagheria and Altavilla Milicia, a slaughter culminating in a double murder: the corpses were loaded onto a car left in front of a police station.
It was the last act of the challenge.
"The operation Dalla Chiesa is over", was the claim sent to the newspaper
L'Ora
.
It was not, in truth, yet concluded if it was the general's turn immediately afterwards.
The "coexistence" of interests, of which the sentence speaks, hangs over one of the many mysterious episodes that Dalla Chiesa was dealing with.
On the evening of the crime, someone went to look for sheets in the prefect's residence to cover the corpses.
But he widened his gaze to the
safe
where the general kept burning documents, including a dossier on the Moro case.
When the safe was opened it was empty.