The Catholic School

by Edoardo Albinati

  . . . MEMBERS of the National Front had been responsible for the murder of ***, a treasurer for the National Front, drowned and thrown down a well with his dog in December 1969 in the neighborhood of Ammazzalasino (Affogalasino??) probably because he was on the verge of revealing details about the bombings of December 12 (Piazza Fontana), with which he was said to be quite disgusted.

  WHAT IS STRIKING is this willingness of theirs, the fact that they were ready for anything, capable of anything . . .

  THE DRUGS WERE STORED on the farm of *** in Colonna where I would processs it and cut it. Also involved in this traffic was another classmate of mine, Scataglini, who was at the time in class 5B at the scientific high school (the same class as Cassio Majuri), and whose father owned a pharmacy on Via Rovereto. Scataglini supplied me with milk sugar to cut the heroin. He had an apartment in Casal Palocco that we used as a place to store the already refined heroin.

  ALONG WITH SUBDUED, the Legionnaire, and Cubbone, they constitute a cell of the Dragon’s Eggs, an organization founded on the ashes of the Second World War and which linked together militant groups ready to spring into action, bent on antidemocratic and anti-Communist struggle. The Dragon’s Eggs, as an organization, was responsible for four other murders, described vaguely and incoherently by Angelo, three of them at the hand of Subdued, and to be specific, the murders of an ex-convict named Carletto ***, a Roman hotelier, and then one other person, who knows what their name was or when they were killed, in the course of a robbery, while Angelo was behind bars (but if he was behind bars for the Circeo crimes, then how could Subdued have taken part? Ah, right, it’s the time he spent behind bars prior to the CR/M . . .), and then one last murder that took place in Mantua in the summer of 1975, committed, according to Angelo’s testimony, by the Legionnaire, together with certain others, and the victim was said to be another ex-convict who had been bothering a Fascist matron with attempts at extortion, a woman who had ties to the National Front, and who owned a factory that produced the well-known game of pick-up sticks called Shangai.

  . . . THEY RENT AN APARTMENT near Piazzale delle Province, and there a class is taught on the use of explosives, run by an ex-officer of the OAS [Organisation armée secrète] and by a very serious Tuscan who would show up with his briefcase, deliver his lecture, and then leave; this man was later identified as Mario Tuti, after his photo was published in the newspapers for the Empoli double murder. One lesson in particular had to do with how to activate an explosive device through the use of an ordinary garage door remote control.

  INTERROGATION SESSION OF DECEMBER 16, 1993. Angelo talks about his time on the run, from his escape from Alessandria Prison on August 26, 1993, until his arrest in Paris twenty days later. It was an escape strictly from a legal point of view, not in the traditional sense of the term: in fact, Angelo simply failed to return to Alessandria Prison at the end of his furlough.

  He claims that he was in Paris, Brussels, Antwerp, London, and Barcelona . . . and to have been in touch with Armenian bankers and Middle Eastern criminals. He spends time in offrack betting parlors, spends time with narcotics dealers, the Magliana Gang (inevitable!!). At the residential hotel in London, he registers with the name of a friend.

  THEN, let’s see what else he says . . . ah, here we go:

  . . . I WANTED TO HELP some people in Sarajevo, I gave three thousand marks to some smugglers so they could get a young woman out of the country; she had written to me asking if I could save her . . .

  . . . I had planned two major armed robberies, one in London and one in Biella, though I never carried them out . . .

  WHEN I CHOSE not to return to prison, I only had a couple of million lire [a couple of thousand dollars] that my parents had given me, plus a sum in foreign currency that was worth roughly 100 million lire [roughly a hundred thousand dollars], from two secret bank accounts, one in Switzerland and one in Austria.

  ON AUGUST 30, 1993, Angelo phones Subdued from London, or rather he has Subdued call him at a phone booth near the Ferrari dealership in Kensington. “What have you done? Did you betray me?”

  There were moments of coldness . . .

  THEN SUB INVITED ME to join him in South America, promising that he’d give me half of his cash, so I could get plastic surgery done on my face in Brazil and then go live in Argentina. I was a wreck. I needed money weapons and identity papers. Subdued told me that he was in Goa, India, on a spiritual retreat. As to where he was actually calling from, I couldn’t say . . . (to offer a more complete array of information: Subdued had escaped from San Gimignano Prison after serving five or six years behind bars for the CR/M. Two years on the run and he had been arrested again in Buenos Aires. While awaiting extradition, he had once again managed to escape, from the prison hospital where he had been admitted for hepatitis, in 1985. In 1994 he would be caught by Interpol in Panama, and extradited to Italy. He’s been a free man since 2009).

  OR ELSE I COULD HAVE GONE to Hong Kong under the protection of a very powerful manager of casinos and gambling dens . . .

  Or another possibility was Tijuana, in Mexico . . .

  But were these real, solid possibilities? I couldn’t tell.

  I INTEND TO OFFER the greatest possible collaboration in order to bear out my absolute credibility . . . I will therefore abandon all my reserve on the subject and tell the full story, down to the smallest details . . . I have decided to shine a spotlight on my misdeeds.

  I WAS A SCHOOLMATE of Cubbone’s for thirteen years, and with him I carried out two armed robberies and a murder.

  . . . ROBBERY OF A GUN collector on Via Panama in Rome, October 30, 1973. Angelo, the Legionnaire, and Cubbone use as their inside man a friend of the gun collector’s son. At trial, Angelo was acquitted because the Legionnaire assumed all responsibility and was sentenced to five years. The three of them entered the apartment, armed, with the excuse of returning a book to the gun collector’s son. The wife was at home, with two housekeepers, one of whom was a Filipina. We were armed, with our faces uncovered, when we knocked at the door, but before anyone answered we slipped hoods over our heads. We stole weapons and jewelry, including a .22-caliber long rifle that was found years later (in 1977) in a duffel bag on Piazza Augusto Imperatore immediately after the murder of Giorgiana Masi. (??) and an MP 40 submachine gun . . . I recognized it as my own.

  . . . ROBBERY ON VIA NOMENTANA in 1974 with wounding of the jeweler ***.

  . . . BANK ROBBERY on Via Nomentana/Via XXI Aprile: aside from the usual Angelo and Cubbone, there was also Renatino de Pedis (. . . Banda della Magliana, the transcript annotates: now deceased) and Spezzaferro (from Tufello). Angelo armed with an Uzi. Twenty million lire was the take.

  Fall 1974, robbery in Avezzano (jewelry store) carried out by Subdued and an ex-convict named “Capone.”

  IN OCTOBER OR NOVEMBER 1974, Cubbone and Subdued, together with a couple of guys from Cinecittà, organize but fail to successfully pull off the kidnapping of A*** A***, from in front of a boarding school run by nuns. They have a station wagon with a hidden cargo compartment in which to hide the hostage. But the girl manages to break free while they are trying to capture her, and she manages to mingle among the female students of the boarding school.

  . . . (IT’S A MONOTONOUS LIST . . .) umpteenth armed robbery at the Tiburtino post office, June-July ’75, the usual crew plus two others. Angelo does not take part but they give him a share of the loot (30–40 million lire) because he provided the weapons: two .357 Magnums, an MP 40 submachine gun, two RCSM35 hand grenades.

  . . . RAPE OF A.B. AND L.C.: Angelo is arrested. While he is in prison, in the winter of ’75, armed robbery of a shylock.

  . . . ARMED ROBBERY OF A BANK at the Bologna wholesale markets between January and June ’75 . . . Subdued and Cubbone pulled it off while Angelo was in prison, and when he gets out they give him 4 or 5 million lire.

  IN THE SUMMER OF ’75, armed robbery of the Marina di San Nicola post office: the usual four-man formation. After the
robbery, they take refuge in the villa of a classmate from SLM where Ezio Matacchioni would later be kidnapped and then released.

  . . . ARMED ROBBERY OF A BANK in Lacona (Monte Circeo) at the end of August ’75 . . . I planned this robbery personally . . . I was the lookout and I was armed with an Israeli Galil rifle and a Colt .38. The take: 50 million lire.

  CUBBONE, the Legionnaire, and Subdued, in September ’75, kidnap the son of the builder Francisci. The hostage was held for five days in the villa at Monte Circeo and the ransom paid was 300 million. They gave me 20 million even though I hadn’t taken part.

  LIQUIDATION OF THE FUGITIVE Amilcare Di Benedetto for having broken a rule. I killed him myself in a farmhouse near Riccione, with two shots from a .38-caliber handgun, and the corpse was wrapped in oilcloth and transported to the garage of the villa of *** (another SLM classmate, as found in the class ledgers . . .), and then taken out in a pilot boat, also belonging to ***, and presumably dumped in the open sea.

  THE MONEY PILED UP BEFORE we were sent to prison for rape went into the hands of three “clean friends,” one of whom was ***, mentioned above, who invested the money profitably in mutual funds. (At the time he lived in Locarno with Swiss citizenship.)

  AFTER THE CR/M, the Legionnaire relied on Cubbone’s logistical support to remain on the run. With Cubbone, he attempted an armed robbery at the Italgas office near Piazza Barberini; it was unsuccessful, though, because after tying up the guards and setting to work to cut a hole in the safe—which was thought to contain 600 million lire—with a thermal lance, the billowing smoke forced them to stop. We were told about this episode by Cubbone himself, the day that he was captured on Ponza and found himself transiting through Latina Prison, where we were incarcerated. Cubbone had been arrested for the Matacchioni kidnapping.

  THE FANTASTIC FOUR in the summer of ’75 prepared the kidnapping of F*** S***, daughter of the owner of a company traded on the stock market (namely?!) and who lived on Via della Carminuccia (would that be Via della Camilluccia . . .?).

  WHILE WE WERE PREPARING FOR THIS “JOB,” at Circeo we met Ezio Matacchioni, who suggested that we kidnap him and demand a ransom of a billion lire [roughly a million dollars], money that his uncle had managed to smuggle to Switzerland in the course of bankruptcy proceedings. We ignored the suggestion since we were preparing the kidnapping of F*** S***; but then when I read that Matacchioni actually had been kidnapped, I thought that it was as a result of that plan, even though Cubbone, again during his short stay in Latina Prison, told me that the kidnapping had been carried out against Matacchioni’s will, and that he had been treated in a fairly brutal manner. Subsequently, Cubbone went on the run from the law and the Legionnaire went to Sweden and then to Argentina.

  WHEN THE LEGIONNAIRE WAS ARRESTED for the armed robbery on Via Panama, I was promised that I would be introduced to a highly placed official in the intelligence services. I wanted to help the Legionnaire, but it struck me as dangerous for me to meet an officer in the services, since I had actually committed the robbery in question, so in my place I sent my trusted friend *** (one of the names mentioned most frequently by Angelo, who brushed close to the CR/M, which, by pure chance, he had not participated in because “he had some studying to do”) to the meeting, and he was taken to the villa of Frank Coppola in Ardea . . . the individual identified himself as an officer in the intelligence services and a Fascist comrade, *** was convinced that he had met him before at the home of the cabinet minister ***, who was a family friend, but once he learned the names of the judges who were conducting the pretrial investigation of the Legionnaire, the secret agent said they couldn’t be approached because of their honesty and because their political ideas were diametrically opposed to the right wing.

  . . . DURING HIS TIME ON THE RUN, the Legionnaire was certainly in Italy in 1977, where he had taken part in the kidnapping of Stefano Scarozza, a Roman.

  . . . THE LAWYER WHO WAS DEFENDING ME and Subdued during the time of the appeals trial for the CR/M (1980) brought us reports about the Legionnaire, with whom he was in contact. For instance, he met him on Viale Libia in the company of two Fascists. Sub and I, who were a couple of reckless fools, had it in for the Legionnaire, in prison we felt he had abandoned us, he’d allowed us to be lynched by the Communists and the feminists at various demonstrations without carrying out any reprisal. The lawyer told us that that wasn’t true, that the Legionnaire had taken action, and he made some reference to the killing of Giorgiana Masi. When Subdued, too, escaped from San Gimignano Prison, he got word to me about how tough life was as a fugitive from the law, and that really, all things considered, the Legionnaire hadn’t treated us that badly after all . . .

  HERE IS A STORY that sounds interesting . . .

  CASSIO MAJURI ATTENDED SLM, he was a few years older than us, from a very rich family, and he, too, was a Fascist comrade. He vacationed on the Côte d’Azur and in Versilia and during these trips he was in contact with the Marseille organized crime families and with groups of Fascist comrades. He was delivering large shipments of heroin and was involved in the actions carried out by the extremist group known as La Châine, made up of former militants in the OAS. Majuri fell into disgrace: he behaved like a bully, he skimmed off the top of the heroin imported from France, during one delivery I noticed that a certain amount was missing from each bag. Politically speaking, he didn’t act like a good Fascist comrade anymore, he was even friends with some Communist comrades, and word was that he had failed to deliver some letters sent from France, containing lists of activists, and that he had set them aside, in hiding, as an insurance policy in case of trouble. One evening at Bar Tortuga a number of leaders took me and Sub aside and informed us that at this point Majuri had become untrustworthy, that it was necessary at all costs to recover the material now in his possession, and then implement a definitive solution. They ended their summation against Majuri with this statement: we need to shoot this guy in the mouth. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when Majuri pulled up in front of the Fronte Studentesco [Student Front, a Fascist youth organization] on Via Tagliamento in his Mini Minor, and without a word to anyone, and with a defiant, mocking attitude, laid down rubber and took off, tires screeching. That same evening, the leaders, among them D***, asked us to arrange to recover the letters that Majuri had hidden and to find a definitive solution to the problem, which was actually not an explicit request to kill him, though we took it that way. Sub took it upon himself to reestablish friendlier relations with Majuri, so as to win his trust, but in the meantime, the three of us, with Cubbone, had already decided to take the matter to the bitter end. We were just seventeen, but we were very determined. One time, when I went to Cassio’s place, I noticed that he had very thick walls and that sounds couldn’t be heard outside. Subdued and Cubbone managed to steal a bunch of keys from him, and while he was away, searched his house for the letters, but the only interesting thing they found was a Bob Dylan record with a note written by Majuri inside it. The note said something along the lines of: “You all shouldn’t have left me alone,” and maybe it was nothing but the translation of a line from a song, but it could come in handy as a fake suicide note. On Sunday, we SLM students usually met in front of the school where the “beatnik mass” was celebrated. On one of those occasions, we overheard Majuri making admiring comments about the sister of another SLM student (the girl’s name is redacted in the transcript, perhaps because at the time she was a minor, but from here on we’ll refer to her conventionally as Perdìta, with the accent on the “i,” like the Shakespeare character . . .). Angelo thought we could use that girl to lure Majuri into a trap. Sub and Cubbone went and suggested a gang rape, to be done at his house, and Majuri was pleased at the idea, and added that there was no need to bring weapons to hold on the girl, because he already had a double-barreled shotgun. The evening agreed upon, Angelo went to get Perdìta, who had told her parents that she was sleeping over at the home of a female cousin on Via Fogliano, and the two of them we
nt to the appointment on Piazza Verbano with the others . . .

  Subdued and Cubbone were armed with handguns with silencers and they had given Perdìta a Colt .38, for the most part to make sure she was involved in the caper, so she’d feel like one of them. Then they went to Majuri’s house . . .

  Majuri was already in bed, naked, ready for the rape, his friends had acted out what was supposed to happen when the girl came upstairs, but then Sub leveled Majuri’s own shotgun, aimed it at his chest, and pulled the trigger. No one heard the shot or noticed them when they left. At the time his death was filed away as a suicide and the family did its best to cover up the scandal, hushing up any other theories, but in the milieu of Fascist comrades, it was a well-known fact that Majuri had been murdered, and even D*** himself once asked Angelo, “What on earth did you do, did you kill him? . . .”

  . . . AND I ANSWERED that we had just done what had to be done, and he replied that it wasn’t something that could be resolved in such a hasty manner, and that it should have been thought out more carefully. A few months later we were in the headquarters of Lotta di Popolo [a left-wing extremist group] and we were planning a reprisal against the Communists in the Department of Architecture. I commented on the conversation I’d had with D***, “That guy is really an idiot,” I said, and my friends added that if anything came out that suggested the Majuri death had been a case of murder, not suicide, then we ought to rub out D***, as well. Perdìta was very upset after Majuri’s death, and when, a few months later, I, ***, and Subdued raped a girlfriend of hers, G*** P***, who lived on Via Cortina d’Ampezzo, no. 3***, who chose not to go to the police to file a criminal complaint, Perdìta had a nervous breakdown and started running her mouth off to anyone who would listen, all things that I did my best to minimize with my friends because I was afraid they’d make up their minds to get rid of her, too.