There are some people under investigation for the murder of Benedetto Petrone, the 18-year-old communist worker killed on 28 November 1977, in Bari, during an action by a group of fascist militants.
The Bari Prosecutor's Office has in fact entered the names of some people in the register of suspects - but at the moment it has not emerged either how many or who they are - after the investigating judge Angelo Salerno ordered new investigations into the case last July, rejecting the request for dismissal made by the Prosecutor's Office - due to statute of limitations - of the investigation opened in 2017 against unknown persons.
The investigating judge, in fact, noted that the crime of murder could not be considered prescribed as it was aggravated by cruelty and frivolous motives.
The judge, however, did not consider the aggravating circumstance of the reconstitution of the fascist party to exist.
For the first time in almost seven years, investigators may have identified alleged accomplices in the Petrone murder, for which the sole perpetrator, Giuseppe Piccolo, was sentenced to 22 years in prison by the Assize Court of Bari, a sentence reduced on appeal at the age of 16 in 1982. Piccolo committed suicide in prison two years after the second degree sentence.
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