To accept that Wilma Montesi was the girl in the car—and the witnesses concurred in their descriptions—would put the Montesi family’s assertions in doubt, according to which Wilma was never away from home very late. But the real behavior of that family, perfectly verified by the investigator, and the not forgotten circumstance that the mother of the Montesi family tried to induce the concierge to modify her statement, allows us to think that they knew something, a secret link their daughter had that they wanted to keep hidden at any cost. That’s why their statements were not taken into account, to rule out the possibility that the girl in the automobile was Wilma Montesi.
WERE THERE NO BYSTANDERS?
Moreover, the investigator resolved to call some people to give statements who hadn’t been taken into account by the two previous investigations before they were shelved, and who surely had something to say: the eyewitnesses who went to Torvaianica beach to see the corpse. Nobody had remembered them, specifically Anna Salvi and Jale Balleli. Called to make statements, they concurred in having recognized the corpse of Wilma Montesi as a girl who at 5:30 on April 10, 1953, had gone past their houses, in Torvaianica, in a dark-colored automobile in the company of a man. They also concurred in their descriptions of the man. And they stated that they had been on the beach looking at the body, but then they read in the press that the girl had died on the 9th, drowned off the beach at Ostia, and took no more interest in the case.
LOOSE ENDS
There were still a confusing number of loose ends. There was the declaration of another man who had seen the corpse on the beach. The previous afternoon, that man and his wife had walked past a black automobile, near Capacotta, and he had taken a long look at the girl who was in the car. His wife said, “You cheeky devil, you’re eyeing up that girl.” The next day, after having been on the beach looking at the corpse, the man went to find his wife and told her, “Guess what? The girl we saw yesterday afternoon turned up dead on the beach this morning.” But his wife did not want to confirm his statements to the investigator. However, Magistrate Sepe did not get demoralized for a single moment. Determined to move his work forward, he prepared to take the next step. A decisive step: a face-to-face meeting between Ana María Caglio and Ugo Montagna.
The Police Destroyed Wilma’s Clothes
Ana María Caglio arrived for the confrontation in complete command of herself. She confirmed all the charges laid out in her will. And she added a few new pieces of information, to extend them. She said that due to some publications giving publicity to the black car stuck in the sand in the first half of March (Piccini’s testimony), she had seen an Alfa 1900 outside the door to Piero Piccioni’s room. She said that when she saw that automobile she had remembered the publications she had seen in the press and tried to remember the license plate number, but that Montagna had discovered her aim and prevented her very ably. She remained firm in her charge that Piccioni and Montagna had visited the chief of police while she waited in the car. The charge was denied by Piccioni. But later it was proven that, in fact, that visit had taken place.
IN SPITE OF ACRIMONY
After all of Ana María Caglio’s charges had been examined and many of her statements verified, the magistrate reached the following conclusion: “It is necessary to consider Ana María Caglio’s various statements worthy of consideration in the course of the formal investigation, just as those previous to the second closure of the case and those of Muto’s trial, in virtue of the substantial uniformity of her statements, held firm with extreme exuberance, revealing her radical conviction, even in the dramatic face-to-face encounters with Montagna and Piccioni.
“It is true that Miss Caglio,” the magistrate continued, “was inspired by acrimonious feelings toward Montagna, having been abandoned by him after a not inconsiderable period of intimacy, which had provoked and established a profound affection in the girl’s spirits, constantly demonstrated in her correspondence”; but he concluded that this feeling could be the explanation of her behavior, that it should not be considered unfounded fruit of jealousy, or as rash revenge.
A BAD MOVIE
The actress Alida Valli summoned to make a statement about her telephone call from Venice, which she’d denied in the press, admitted that, in fact, the call had taken place, but that it had been completely different from the way the witnesses had described it. She said her account of that conversation had come from some newspaper cuttings, which mentioned Piccioni. Those cuttings—the actress said—had been sent to her house by the Milan agency, L’Eco della Stampa. To prove it, she showed the cuttings: one from La Notte, from May 6; another from Milano Sera, with the same date; another from Il Momento Sera, from the 5th, and another from L’Unità, from Milan, with the same date. Nevertheless, Alida Valli had forgotten something fundamental: her telephone call had been made on April 29. A week before the cuttings she presented as an alibi appeared in the press.
“THE AMALFI TONSILLITIS”
Something else still needed to be examined: Piccioni’s Amalfi tonsillitis. As has been said, the young composer of popular music said he’d been in Amalfi, with the actress Alida Valli, and that he’d returned to Rome on April 10. That night, both of them should have attended a get-together. However, it was found that Piccioni had not attended. But he had an explanation: he had been confined to his bed with tonsillitis, that very afternoon, and to prove it he presented Dr. Di Filippo’s prescription, carefully retained for a year. And he also presented a certificate of a urine analysis.
So much time had passed that Dr. Di Filippo did not remember the exact date on which he’d issued the prescription. But the investigator meticulously examined the medical books and found that the consultation did not accord with the date of Piccioni’s prescription.
In light of this suspicious difference, the prescription presented by Piccioni was submitted to a technical exam, and the graphologists agreed that the date on the prescription had been altered.
ANOTHER FALL
They then proceeded to investigate the authenticity of the certificate of the urine analysis. A Professor Salvattorelli, in charge of the bacteriological institute that had presumably done the analysis, declared that he did not know who had signed the certificate. Also, he looked in the appointment book and found that Piero Piccioni’s name did not appear in it or in any others related to the analyses the institute conducted. Trying to identify the signature, the handwriting experts attributed it to Dr. Carducci, who worked at the same institute. Dr. Carducci, in effect, recognized the signature as his own, but did not find in his books, or in his memory, any record of a urine analysis for anyone by the name of Piero Piccioni. Voluntarily, Dr. Carducci himself suggested the hypothesis that a false certificate had been written above his signature, on a blank piece of paper, or after erasing an authentic certificate.
“PLEASURE PARTIES”
Finally, the magistrate paid a visit to the house at Capacotta, where Gioben Jo must have lost, as declared, thirteen million lire. According to numerous testimonies, the famous “pleasure parties” were held in that house. It is a house situated a short distance from the place where Montesi’s body was found.
The investigating magistrate managed to establish that in that house Montagna and some of his friends would get together and occasionally swim in the sea, completely naked, on the neighboring beach. And he established, and wrote in the pretrial brief, that various people had been in that house, for instance, “definitely, more than once, Montagna and Ana María Caglio; at least once, Montagna and Gioben Jo, and on another occasion Montagna himself, a friend of his, and two girls.”
NO ONE IS SPARED
In the arduous task of putting the cards in order, the magistrate then examined one of the most serious charges that had been made in the Montesi case: the destruction of Wilma’s clothing by the police. When the Muto trial was held, the editorial offices of Attualità were searched and a notebook belonging to the journalist Giusepp
e Parlato was found. In one of his notes he said that in the course of a conversation with Signor de Duca, the latter revealed that a policeman had told him in May of 1953 that the day Wilma Montesi’s body was found, Piero Piccioni had gone to see the chief of police and handed over the clothing the corpse had been missing. After a painstaking investigation, the magistrate managed to identify a “Signor de Duca.” He was called Natal del Duca.
And Natal del Duca not only confirmed the above, but added something more: Wilma Montesi’s clothing had remained hidden for a while, but was then destroyed with the consent of the Montesi family. Del Duca then revealed the name of the police officer who had made the revelation. The officer was called to make a statement. And in the end, by virtue of the new testimonies, another charge was left floating in the air: not only had the clothes been destroyed, but also the garments found on the corpse were later substituted, with the consent of the family, to suggest that Wilma had not gone out dressed for a date.
“YOU TOO?”
At that tremendous charge, the magistrate ordered an analysis of the clothing that he was certain were the clothes found on the corpse. The analysis demonstrated that the content of sodium chloride found in the coat was considerably higher than that found in other garments. And he concluded: with the exception of the coat, none of the other garments had been immersed in seawater, unless they’d been washed or subjected to some other process that had eliminated the sodium chloride. Moreover, they were garments worn from usage, visibly deteriorated and stained in places. The magistrate thought it odd that Wilma Montesi would have changed to go outside, to put on deteriorated undergarments. So he called back the persons who saw the body on the beach and asked them, “What was the clothing like on Wilma Montesi’s corpse?” And they all responded the same way. The descriptions of the clothing seen on the corpse did not coincide with the characteristics of the clothing then in the magistrate’s power and analyzed by the experts.
Magistrate Sepe advanced the hypothesis that the corpse had really been undressed and the clothing substituted, with the agreement of some members of the Montesi family. The police commissioner of Rome, Severo Polito, was summoned to respond to that charge. And later for others.
Thirty-Two to Stand Trial!
The ex-commissioner of Rome, Severo Polito, began his defense saying that, actually, he had never paid much attention to the Montesi case. The investigating magistrate reviewed the files of the commissioner’s office and found some things that belied this assertion: among them, a copy of a press bulletin signed by Severo Polito, dated May 5, 1953. In that bulletin, never published by the newspapers, the commissioner said, “The news about the son of an unnamed, but clearly insinuated, high-ranking political personality is devoid of justification.”
On May 5 another communiqué had been given to the press, in which it was stated, “No investigation carried out since the discovery of the cadaver has enough validity to modify the result of the early investigations and verifications done by law.” That was the time when the hypothesis that Wilma Montesi had died accidentally while taking a footbath arose and was defended tooth and nail.
MORE PROOF
Besides, there was another piece of evidence proving that Severo Polito had taken a personal interest in the case. On April 15 he sent the chief of police a memorandum in which he confirmed once more the footbath hypothesis. In this memo it was taken as given that the girl had left her house at five o’clock sharp and had been seen on the train, where “she behaved like a perfectly calm, normal person.” The disappearance of some of her clothing was explained there: “The girl must have undressed to wade in the water up to her knees, as she had done in the past.” The magistrate demonstrated that the memo had three false statements: “In the past,” Wilma did not remove intimate apparel to bathe her feet; she did so in a swimsuit. She did not walk in water up to her knees; she only got her feet wet at the edge of the beach. And finally, she did not leave her house at five o’clock sharp.
IN MILAN?
At this stage of the investigation, the journalist Valerio Valeriani, of Il Giornale d’Italia, was summoned to give a statement to demonstrate the authenticity of an interview with Severo Polito, which was published in said newspaper. In that interview, the former police commissioner affirmed:
After the discovery of the body he had personally assumed leadership of the investigation.
The result of that investigation had confirmed the hypothesis of misfortune, based on solid elements.
Montesi suffered from eczema on her heels, which is why she had decided to submerge her feet in seawater.
As for the charges against Piero Piccioni, they were unacceptable, for he had demonstrated that the day the events occurred he had been in Milan.
“I DO NOT KNOW THAT MAN”
Interrogated on his relationship to Ugo Montagna, former police commissioner Polito declared that he had met the gentleman after the death of Wilma Montesi. However, various testimonies demonstrated that they had a long-standing friendship. Furthermore, the former police commissioner did not know one thing: at a certain point in time when Montagna’s telephone calls were monitored, he held a conversation with the then police commissioner that was certainly not an indication of a recent friendship. That call was made on July 3, 1953, right after Montagna was summoned to answer questions for the first time. In the course of the conversation, Severo Polito told Montagna, as the brief reports:
“You are a free citizen and can do what you want. You saw that Pompei himself already excluded two things: the question of narcotics and the apartment. You’ll see…”
And then Montagna, maybe more astute than the commissioner, told him:
“Alright, alright. Can we meet tonight at 11? Or no, let’s do it this way: let’s meet at 9 and we’ll have dinner together.”
And Severo Polito responded:
“Splendid.”
THE LAST STRAW
Moreover, the magistrate demonstrated that some pages were missing from the notebook impounded by the police in which Wilma Montesi had transcribed the letter she sent to her fiancé on April 8, evidently torn out after the notebook had been confiscated. It was not possible to establish, however, who tore out those pages, or when or with what objective.
Severo Polito could not give any explanation for his statements related to Piccioni’s stay in Milan. Piccioni had not been in Milan, and what’s worse, he had never tried to defend himself by saying he’d been in that city.
“Such original acts,” says the brief, “were followed by many others: serious omissions, false proofs of nonexistent circumstances, distortions of nonexistent circumstances, distortion of serious circumstances, voluntarily invented mistakes, all of them aimed at frustrating the verification of the cause and the true mode of Montesi’s death and removing any suspicion and avoiding any investigation related to the person who from the first moment was indicated and then as the principal author of the crime…”
THIS IS NOT THE END
On June 11, 1955, two years after Wilma Montesi left her house never to return, Piero Piccioni and Ugo Montagna have been summoned to stand trial. The first must answer a charge of culpable homicide. The second, as an accessory. The commissioner, Severo Polito, must answer to the charges previously cited.
But over two years of investigations, obstacles, closures, and reopenings of the case, nine men were added to the list; another twenty persons have been put on trial, most of them for false testimonies.
The arduous task of inquiry by Magistrate Sepe clearly established that Wilma Montesi was away from her home for twenty-four hours. What did she do during those twenty-four hours? That is the great gap in the pretrial brief. In spite of twenty people being tried for giving false witness statements, none of them intended to clear up the mystery; no one spoke of having been or having known of someone who had been with Wilm
a Montesi during the night of April 9, while her father was looking for her desperately in the Tiber. The next day, when Angelo Giuliani received the telegram saying that his fiancée had committed suicide, Wilma Montesi was still alive. She must have eaten at least twice more before she died. But nobody knows where she ate those meals. Nobody has even dared to insinuate that they saw her on the evening of April 10, eating an ice cream cone. It is possible that next month, during the hearings, we’ll find out the other side of this mystery. But it is also very possible that we will never know.
Series of articles from Rome published on September 17 and 19–30, 1955, El Espectador, Bogotá
The Disappearing Women of Paris—Are They in Caracas?
Madame Jeanne Cazals, the young and elegant wife of a rich French industrialist, left her couturier’s shop at seven in the evening, wearing a brand-new mink coat and with fifteen million francs’ worth of jewelry all over her body. She blended into the crowd concentrated on Rue Faubourg Saint-Honoré—maybe the most elegant and one of the busiest streets of Paris—on her way to meet her husband. She never arrived at that date. Madame Cazals disappeared without leaving a single trace, a single piece of evidence that would allow any conjecture about her whereabouts. Desperate, the police are clinging to a confidence Madame Cazals seems to have made, some time ago, to a close friend: “I’ve fallen into a mechanism it seems impossible to get out of.” It is an unusual clue. Madame Cazals’s habits were absolutely regular. Her reputation irreproachable. But in a city like Paris, where one hundred thousand people disappear mysteriously every year, no possibility should be ruled out.
The Scandal of the Century Page 12