New Investigation into Pasolini Murder Case – 51 Years After Director's Death
Rome's public prosecutor's office is reopening the Pasolini murder case. The trigger is a request by lawyer Stefano Maccioni based on DNA traces from 2010.
Rome's Public Prosecutor's Office Reopens Pasolini Murder Case
The public prosecutor's office in Rome has initiated new investigations into the murder of Italian director and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. As kurier.at reports, the artist was killed in the night of 1 to 2 November 1975 in the coastal town of Ostia near Rome – now, more than five decades later, the case is to be re-examined.
The trigger is a criminal complaint filed by lawyer Stefano Maccioni, who requested that the case be reopened on the basis of DNA traces secured in 2010. "We hope that Rome's public prosecutor's office can finally provide the answers we have been seeking for so many years," Maccioni said. He also appealed to persons who had remained silent until now: "We invite everyone who has preferred to remain silent until now to come forward and speak."
The Pelosi Case and the Controversial Verdict
In 1976, then 17-year-old Giuseppe Pelosi was convicted as the alleged perpetrator – for manslaughter, to nine and a half years in prison. This verdict is now widely regarded as a miscarriage of justice. Pelosi confessed the day after the crime, but retracted his confession years later and claimed he had been forced to do so under pressure. In 1983 he was released on probation; in 2017 he died of cancer at the age of 58.
The first court verdict itself had assumed that Pelosi was not alone in committing the act. A later appeals court upheld the conviction but made no finding of accomplice involvement. Italy's Supreme Court also confirmed this decision.
Earlier Requests Failed
Maccioni previously represented Guido Mazzon, a cousin of the murder victim. Today he works, among others, for the journalists' association of the Latium region, director David Grieco, and writer Giovanni Giovannetti, who are campaigning for the case to be solved. The public prosecutor's office had rejected previous requests for reopening the investigation from 2016 and 2023. The new proceedings are now intended to examine whether other persons were involved in the crime.
Politically Motivated Murder Never Proved
Pasolini was regarded as one of the most significant Italian filmmakers and writers of his time, known for works including "Uccellacci e uccellini" and "Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom". As a left-wing political commentator, he had also made a name for himself. Because of his final film, in which he criticised the Mussolini dictatorship of 1944 to 1945, he had received death threats from far-right organisations. However, the suspicion of a politically motivated murder has not been confirmed to this day.
Source: Google News AT — Crime (de)