Italian justice reopens case of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s murder, 51 years after his death

Italy continues to seek the truth about the death of writer and filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, as almost no one believes the official account of his murder, which took place 51 years ago, in the early morning hours of November 2, 1975, in a vacant lot in Ostia, on the outskirts of Rome. The very verdict that convicted the 17-year-old who confessed to the murder, Pino Pelosi, already cast doubt on whether he acted alone, and since then there have been numerous hypotheses and attempts to reopen the case. The most recent efforts have come from Rome attorney Stefano Maccioni, who has been investigating the crime for years, has published books detailing his findings, and previously succeeded in getting the prosecutor’s office to reopen the case in 2010 and 2023 — though it was subsequently closed again on both occasions without reaching any conclusive findings. Maccioni has now tried again, filing a complaint a year ago, and the Rome District Attorney’s Office has agreed to reopen the case.This time Maccioni has produced previously unknown testimony, which Italian media say comes from a retired member of the security forces who has previously unseen information about the initial investigation. The fact is that the inquiry and the trial were handled quickly: six months after the crime Pelosi was sentenced to nine years and seven months in prison, although the judge clearly indicated that the investigation should continue: “The court considers that the case file overwhelmingly shows evidence that Pelosi was not alone that night.”The accused died in 2017 at 59 and took the secret to the grave. After leaving prison he wrote books and gave interviews offering contradictory accounts. On several occasions he said that the crime was actually carried out by three or four people who appeared at the scene and later threatened him if he spoke.Pelosi was arrested a few miles away while driving the director’s car in the wrong direction. His account at the trial was that he refused to engage in a sexual relationship; Pasolini became aggressive, and he knocked him down by hitting him with a board. Pelosi then panicked, got into the writer’s car to flee, and as he drove away, he accidentally ran him over. The whole incident could be reduced to a sexual encounter and a fight that ended badly. But the truth is that the context of those years offers more complex perspectives.The attorney, who in the past represented one of Pasolini’s cousins, Guido Mazzon, is now acting on behalf of the Lazio Region Journalists’ Association, film director David Grieco, and writer Giovanni Giovannetti. In this new effort to reopen the case, he is pursuing several lines of inquiry. On the one hand, he notes that new information has emerged from recordings made by the public television network RAI at that time and that a thorough review of the information gathered so far “leads to a single conclusion: it is not certain that Pelosi was alone on the evening of the murder, so it is essential to establish who was with him that evening.”As Maccioni has been pointing out in recent years, he has focused on what Pasolini was doing in the months before his death: the film Salò, released posthumously, and the book Petróleo, which he left unfinished and which was published years later. He also refers to articles published in the days after the crime that provide clues.The thesis linking the crime to Pasolini’s activities is already known and points to shadowy plots from Italy’s Years of Lead and the so-called “strategy of tension” involving violent neo‑fascist groups. Petróleo dealt with political and mafia plots involving ENI, the Italian hydrocarbons giant, and the suspicious 1962 plane crash that killed its president, Enrico Mattei, another Italian mystery. Pasolini was also among the first to denounce, in his articles for Corriere della Sera, the connections between power and destabilization operations by intelligence services. One hypothesis is that Pelosi was used as bait to lure him to the Idroscalo di Ostia — a remote spot he sometimes visited with casual partners — to set up an ambush.The lead concerning his last film is based on the theft of some reels at the Cinecittà Studios and the possibility that Pasolini went to Ostia for a mysterious meeting to recover them, especially since it emerged that members of the Banda della Magliana, the Roman criminal group that at the time was linked to the dirtiest operations of the intelligence services, took part in the celluloid theft. No one ever believed Pelosi acted alone, but it was not possible to go further. Prominent reporter Oriana Fallaci wrote an article days after the crime with testimony pointing to the presence of other people.The first investigation prompted by Maccioni relied on DNA from three individuals found on Pasolini’s clothes, which could not be identified. The data were compared with 30 people who had appeared in the inquiries, but all the tests were negative. In other words, someone else was at the murder scene, but who they were remains unknown. “As has been clear for almost 18 years, the judicial truth that attributed sole responsibility to Pelosi has been swept away in recent years by the scientific evidence we requested,” Maccioni explained.“We trust that the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome will finally be able to provide the answers we have been seeking for far too many years,” the lawyer said. “At the same time, we urge all those who have chosen to remain silent about what they know until now, to come forward and speak.”Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition