50 years ago Pier Paolo Pasolini was beaten, run over and massacred. With the identified culprit now dead, half a century later, his murder remains shrouded in mystery between shared responsibilities and false declarations.
The November 2, 1975 the writer was killed by Joseph Pelosihis body brutally massacred And invested from his own car. Pier Paolo Paolini he was one of the most important figures of the 20th century, writer, journalist, poet, director and philosopher. His filmography and works influenced the cultural landscape of the 20th century. Figure controversial of his time, his articles of denunciation made him a awkward characterbut despite this his death was immediately classified as a sexual homicide.
It’s the TG1 of 2 November 1975 to give notice of the murder of Pier Paolo Pasolini and he does so by reading the testimony given by his murderer Joseph Pelosiboy of life: «I saw the table on the floor and I gave it to him broken in the head. He didn’t seem to hear anything and didn’t even seem to hear two kicks in the “balls”. Then I grabbed his hair and kicked him twice in the face. The Paul he staggeredbut still found the strength to give me one beaten on the nose. At that time I never saw us again and with one of the two pieces of the board I cut him several times until I heard him fall to the ground and gasp. Immediately afterwards I got into the car and I was escaped with that. In fleeing I don’t know whether or not I passed with thecar on the body of Paul”.
The night of the murder
Pasolini he had returned from Paris for a couple of days and on the evening of the murder he had had dinner with the actor Nino Davoli and his family at the restaurant The Tomato to San Lorenzo. After dinner around 11pm he went to a bar in Piazza dei Cinquecento to Rome near the Termini station. In that place under the arcades he had met his murderer, Joseph Pelosi called “The Frog” after letting him board his Alfa Romeo GT grey, the two will be seen for the last time at the restaurant The Blond Tiber in via Ostiense, where Pasolini, a regular customer, had taken Pelosi to eat.
Shortly after midnight they got back into the car and after making a brief stop at a petrol station they set off towards the Idroscalo di Host. Once we arrived at our destination, Pasolini stopped the car, consuming a oral intercourse incomplete with the Pelosi then got out of the car for urinate. The poet, according to what was stated only by the statements of his murderer, followed him trying to have a sexual intercourse with him not consenting and seeing his resistance, hit him with a stick causing him a small head wound. The blow received from Pasolini, Pelosi reports, triggered the murderous fury. In his deposition he stated that he had detached a piece of wood from a fence and then used it to beat wildly the poet to such an extent that detach one of his ears. In running away he has it heartbroken the body by hitting it several times with his car.
It will be stopped after a pursuit at 1.20am on board Pasolini’s Alfa GT come on carabinieri of Ostia. He was arrested for car theft, but no one yet knew who Pasolini had done it killed. The discovery of corpse it occurred at 6:30 a.m., only then did Pelosi he will confess the crime. Pier Paolo Pasolini was found in a prone position, lying down with his right arm under his chest and his left along his side, his face completely disfigured soaked in dust and blood. To recognize his body tortured the friend Nino Davoli at 10 in the morning.
The autopsy
The autopsy examination on Pasolini’s body speaks clearly. The writer was victim of a massacre. The necropsy examination, reported in the Professor’s second medical-legal report Faustino Durantedescribes a corpse disfigured which bears the marks of a ferocious obstinacy. The report reports in detail the fatal injuries on the poet’s body: «Two large ecchymotic abrasions on the lateral frontal regions. A bruised bruise in the zygomal regions. The jaw is fractured in two places. The right ear is completely torn from his system. The flattened nose deviated to the right. Fracture of the phalanges of the left hand, 10 rib fractures, fracture of the sternum. Wounds on shoulders, chest and loins. Capsular tears in the liver 15 and 7 cm long. A violent trauma bruising to the testicles. The cause of death was lo heart burst caused by his car being overtaken.”
Doubts about the murder
Unfortunately, the investigations did not take into account many scientific details and the case was closed. The poet massacred at the Idroscalo of Ostia, according to the chronicles of the time and the investigations conducted, was killed for a “issue between homosexuals” as if there was a desire to kill his provocative and anti-bourgeois character together with him.
According to the legal opinion of Dr Faustino Durante of 1976, the analysis on the body «leads us to validly advance the hypothesis that Pasolini was the victim of the attack of more people», same conclusion reached with the first instance sentence Where Pelosi was sentenced to 9 years, 7 months for voluntary homicide in collaboration with unknown persons. Subsequently the Court he considered it “extremely unlikely that Pelosi could have had one or more accomplices.” A sentence that became final on April 26, 1979 and confirmed in Cassation.
Sentences aside, i doubts remained. Pino Pelosidespite having massacred the poet, was not stained with blood. He only had small splatters on a shirt cuff and on the edge of a shoe as if he had assisted and did not participate in the crime. His story from that evening it doesn’t match with scientific reconstruction. Pelosi stated that she hit Pasolini in the head several times with a wooden board and then kicked him in the scrotal area. Blows that would have prevented the writer, according to the expert report, from being able to get up again, while his body was found crushed from his car 70 meters from where he had been kicked. Pasolini, in fact, in a gesture desperate he had tried to escape, he got up from the ground and after taking off his shirt he tried to staunch the copious blood loss caused by the serious injuries to his head, but he was hit by his car.
The car without blood
Another issue that has never been clarified is that of the car Pasolini. The Alfa with which his murder was carried out was used by Pelosi to run him over and then escape, but there were no traces of blood on the steering wheel of the car, but on the roof on the passenger side. A machine which, despite the type of very low set-up, was not damaged after the impact of the body and which remained parked in the judicial deposit of the Carabinieri four days before being analyzed. The night of the murder, Pelosi was stopped at Host after one with Pasolini’s car, but it was found the same evening the same car on the Tiburtina at three in the morning near where he lived Giuseppe Mastini said Johnny the Gypsy known criminal of the time, a version confirmed by Graziella Chiarcossithe victim’s cousin. How is it possible that the writer’s car was found twice? The day after the crime it seems that that same car was taken to the mechanic Antonio Pinna under repair at a body shop in Portuense, but the Pinna disappeared immediately afterwards.
The testimonies
Doubts upon doubts therefore, including the fact that Pasolini it was a athletea strong man, but was still overcome by a boy thin 17 years old. Furthermore, according to the testimony of the restaurateurs who saw Pasolini for the last time, the description of the boy who was with him it didn’t match to that of Pelosi. The poet was in the company of a blond boy with long hair very matching the appearance of Johnny the Gypsy.
Among the other testimonies there is that of a fisherman who lived in a shack at Idroscalo, which he said he had assisted to murder. According to his story, Pasolini that night he was massacred by more peoplebut his version wasn’t even taken into consideration. An insole from a shoe was later found on Pasolini’s car which did not belong to either Pasolini or Pelosi, but could conceivably have belonged to Johnny the Gypsylimping due to an old shootout with the police. Mastiffs it is the same one that the famous one gave to Pelosi military ring found on Pasolini’s car, which was the first thing the 17-year-old desperately looked for after confessing to the crime. Johnny Lo Zingaro was known for being a ferocious killerbut DNA tests carried out on a butt of his cigarette turned up nothing. It was the writer who wrote a counter-investigation into Pasolini’s death Oriana Fallaci on The European on November 14, 1976, thanks to an anonymous witness who had seen at the crime scene two motorcyclists that they would have killed Pasolini together with Pelosi. Over the years, Pelosi changed her story twice. In 2005 he himself will in fact be a retract his confession in a television program saying that he did not kill Pasolini and that the murderers had a Sicilian accent aboard a registered car Catania. In 2008, however, in a statement to the press he changed his version again: «I saw a motorbike following us with its Borsellino brothers. At the Idroscalo I was grabbed by a guy with a beard who told me not to move, otherwise they would have me massacred. I got punched in the face and saw them pull Pasolini out of the car and take him they beat. What I said in 2005 was not true, that Pasolini’s assassins had a Sicilian accent, it was my opinion. misdirection. That evening I then saw a second car hit him the same to his.”
Frank And Giuseppe Borsellino they were militantsMSI. A undercover policeman he had heard them boast about the murder, but then they said they had made it all up and according to another reconstruction they had to meet Pasolini that evening because they had stolen the coils of his film Saló.
Joseph Pelosi he passed away in 2017 due to cancer and with him most likely the truth on the death of Pasolini.
