Mauro De Mauro, for which a journalist disappeared. Disorientation, services and mafia: after 50 years it is still a case without truth

On September 16, 1970, he disappeared in Palermo. Mauro De Mauro, a champion of journalism from L’Ora, the historic evening newspaper. An expert chronicler of mafia events with a dark past as a young militant of the X More of June Valerio Borghese, De Mauro disappears in the center of the Sicilian capital without a trace. In a short time its history becomes emblematic, so complicated and tortuous that it becomes a case. In fact, the case “, The case of Mauro, like the title of Giuseppe Pipitone’s book, published by Editori Riuniti in 2012, of which we publish an excerpt. It is the chapter in which the moments prior to the disappearance of the chronicler are reconstructed, reconstructed from court documents and witness statements. Fifty years later, little more remains. He blames the bad addresses that have manipulated and stolen dozens of items. The trial in the De Mauro case ended in 2011 when the Palermo Criminal Court acquitted Totò Riina, at that time the only survivor of the mafia group that supposedly organized the kidnapping. In fact, it was not – in all probability – who killed De Mauro our thing. Indeed, the journalist’s crime would have matured in a different context, with the mafia bosses only playing the role of the murderer. The investigation of the Pavia prosecutor for the murder of Enrico Mattei and that of the Sicilian prosecutors have reconstructed as probable the track that connects the disappearance of De Mauro with the elimination of the historic president from Eni. The murder of also appears to be linked to the two crimes Pier paolo pasolini. However, in the De Mauro case, Riina was also acquitted on appeal and in the Supreme Court. “The truth was massacred by a massive disorientation and directed“Wrote the judges on the grounds for the sentence.

***

Viale delle Magnolie is a street in the heart of the new residential districts of the city of Palermo. Behind there is avenue Sicilian region, the traditionally bottled ring road that runs completely through Palermo and connects it to the highway. In parallel, however, stretches viale Lazio, a boulevard famous above all for the massacre with machine gun fire in which Bernardo Provenzano would have earned the nickname “tractor”. Crossing via Sciuti, a long artery that leads directly to the center, through half a century of winter residence of Vito Ciancimino, true demiurge of this new limitless portion of the city. It is an area defined as residential, and that, as such, pretends to appear elegant: the testimony of how modernity was intended in Palermo in the 60s and 70s. Elsewhere it was called “economic boom” or “building expansion“, Here it went down in history simply as” the sack “, the much Palermo. It was divided into two parts. In the first, a series of style villas were quietly demolished Freedom who were said to be the pride of the city, and at the same time (coincidentally) were released on four thousand building permits to four or five simple carpenters, that is, figureheads who have become very rich. And after having marked the face of the city, it was thought of repair it in an abominable way. In the second moment of the looting, in fact, instead of the smoking ruins of the demolished fairytale villas, they began to build high-rise buildings, ten, twenty or thirty stories, separated by avenues that intersect in disorder, in which the already rare road signs give the same value as the trinkets. Skeletons of desolate bushes, which a few days a year turn into trees, emerge from the corners of the gray sidewalks a few feet from the low walls that surround the condominium areas. On almost all roads, the holes are deep and plentiful, difficult to see at dusk when electrical lighting is dim and intermittent.

Viale delle Magnolie is also a dark street and the Bmw dark blue You will probably have to avoid a couple of craters along the asphalt before parking at the curb in front of 58th Street. A tall, dark man with a square face and lit cigarette between lips. The bluish smoke escapes from his nostrils, curiously asymmetrical: one of the two is larger than the other, forced to enlarge by a deep scar at the height of the curvature of the nose, which therefore appears incredibly hooked. The man is called Mauro De Mauro, has Apulian origins and a Neapolitan accent, has been in Palermo for more than twenty years, and for eleven years has worked in a small evening newspaper that at the time sold between 15 and 20 thousand copies: it is called Hour.

The man with the incredibly hooked nose gets out of the car dragging a leg that appears evidently stiffer than the other: a kind of asymmetry that extends from the nose also to the flaccid gait. An asymmetry that would have been caused by nothing less than a sawn tree trunk that blocked his way years ago: he did not see it because it was night and his car crashed. At least that’s what he had said. Someone more suspicious than the others, however, said that it was not true, that De Mauro had that stiff leg and that nose sewn up because it had been fascist, a friend of the Germans, and one day the partisans had taught him a good lesson to the sound of the blows. Maybe it was true. Or maybe it was talking. In reality, many simply did not care: they had known him for twenty years and for them Mauro is now “lame” For nature.

Just as it is “naturally” a champion chronicler: «One with hard hornsAs they said in Palermo, stubborn, determined and incredibly effective. In fact, Mauro De Mauro was one of the best active reporters in townCareful, precise and with an unmatched ease of writing.

Even that day, that Wednesday September 16, 1970, before parking in Viale delle Magnolie at number 58, Mauro worked hard. The editorial team ofNow is in a three-story building on the corner of the plaza Naples and square Hungary, where Mauro entered A quarter to 7 in the morning, punctual as always. He started working in the sports supplement, a sector to which, inexplicably, he has been transferred for a few months: «Per relive the sportWill say later.

At noon he reviewed the first edition of the paper, made some changes, and then went to the printers, from the proto, to review the second edition. Then went to Mondello, in the establishment “La Torre”, to bathe and eat something. Although it is the end of September in Palermo it is still hot, very hot. A hot sultry, summery, a heat that takes the heat away because the sirocco continues to sweep the city with force, until sunset, after sunset. In the afternoon De Mauro also went to the hairdresser, asked to have his hair cut, but there were too many people, so he returned to the newsroom. In his hand, the barber would later say, he had one On yellow, rectangular, of what they call “commercial type“About a foot wide and about eight high. At seven o’clock in the afternoon he called home and announced to his wife Cook a possible delay. At about half past eight he left the smoke-filled rooms of the Hour. He got into his dark blue BMW and headed home to Viale delle Magnolie, where he has lived with his family for two years. But first he stopped in via Pirandello, at Spatula bar to buy three packs of cigarettes, his unfiltered Nationals, two ounces of coffee, and a bottle of wine. Not ordinary wine, but quality wine, french wine, as it was called at that time chardonnay.

After having bought coffee, wine and cigarettes, she arrives in via delle Magnolie shortly after 9 pm, at the same time as her daughter and her boyfriend, Salvo Mirto, arrive. Franca and Salvo are happy: in fact they have to get married in two days and in De Mauro they are all brilliant for the wedding. The two boys see Mauro as soon as they enter the hallway of the building, press the button to call the elevator and wait. However, after a few minutes, Mauro still hasn’t entered. Franca takes a few steps toward the door to see what her father had done with her. Against the light you can see Tree men that materialized in the Bmw dark blue: Mauro seems to be at the wheel again, so he is back in the car. “AmmunniLet’s go, shouts the shadow of a man who now occupies the passenger seat, the one where there was coffee, French wine, cigarettes, and maybe even that rectangular yellow envelope. Mauro turns the car key, starts the engine, and drives off, his tires screeching on the asphalt. Franca watches the car drive away, looks at her father who is staring down the road without even saying hello, then retraces his steps and takes the elevator. It will be a matter of a few minutes – she thinks – a sudden absence as it used to happen: soon her father would be back for dinner. Otherwise, she would surely have warned or intervened. It’s dark and you probably haven’t even seen her, there in front of the building, concentrating as she drove. Furthermore, those men seemed to know them. Meanwhile, the sirocco has calmed down but it’s still hot. It’s 10:00 am and 9:00 pm at the latest 21 and 15 of Wednesday 16 September 1970. No one knows yet, but it’s just disappeared in the air, in a moment, Mauro De Mauro, Palermo’s journalistic piece of the 90s, the most commented, perhaps the most the city’s envied chronicler. “Amuninni” he yelled from a shadow, screeching tires who eat the asphalt, and then the silence, not even broken by the sirocco that has released its breath: then a journalist disappears a Palermo.