The crime in Circeo, 45 years ago, that changed Italy
“Donatella and Rosaria: The Women Who Changed Italy’s History”
On Via Pola, September 29, 1975, the warm air of an early Roman autumn draped a comforting cloak over the buildings. The leaves on the trees were as still as if captured in a painting, undisturbed by any gust of wind. In the silence of that warm evening, a man paced up and down the avenue that ran through the Trieste district. His steps were slow and mechanical: heel to toe, heel to toe, the way one might pace when trying to pass the time. It was just after ten when a faint sound, reminiscent of a kitten’s squeak, caught the night watchman’s attention. It seemed to be coming from below, until the movement in the trunk of a white car parked by the road led him towards the vehicle.
The sound was coming from the trunk of the Fiat 127. Alarmed, the night watchman immediately alerted the carabinieri. Within minutes, they gathered around the small car, attempting to pick the lock. When it finally gave way, a bloody, disheveled face of a curly-haired girl emerged from beneath the door. She was naked and dirty. Beside her was a young dark-haired girl of similar age, motionless, with lifeless eyes and cold skin. As the girl next to her stared at the uniforms surrounding her, she was momentarily blinded by a flash of light. It was a chilling sight: inside this common car, a symbol of mass mobility and middle-class transportation at the time, lay the horrifying evidence of the society’s hidden criminal depravity. By a fortunate twist of fate, the cries for help had reached the ears of a night watchman, revealing a horror that otherwise would have remained buried with these two battered bodies. The next day, newspapers reported the discovery of two girls who had gone missing in Rome 24 hours prior.[…]
These so-called ‘good boys’ from Parioli – two of whom, Angelo and Andrea, had been previously convicted of rape with light sentences – had kidnapped the girls with the intent to torture and kill them. This was how young neo-fascists in Rome entertained themselves. They stole to fund their subversive activities, raped, murdered, and then returned home to eat dinner as if nothing had happened, just like Andrea, who took a break from the terror to attend a family dinner. Those were the lead years, the years of “strategic tension”, of armed ideologies, and violence masquerading as political struggle. It was a time when the sons of influential fathers explored their sexuality and power dynamics within political circles, asserting their social and political superiority through rape and violence. […]
Then began the most challenging ordeal for the sole survivor, Donatella, who was only 17 years old. Izzo and Guido’s defense sought to lessen the two’s culpability, arguing that there was no premeditation, and they attempted to undermine the victims’ credibility and reputation at every turn. This was a relatively easy task in the 1970s, a time when women’s dignity in rape cases was virtually non-existent.
In the summer of 1976, a grueling trial began. The Lopez family dropped their civil lawsuit after accepting a hundred million pounds in compensation from Gianni Guido’s family. On the side of the witnesses – who were now accused – stood only Donatella Colasanti. She refused any compensation, choosing instead to go to trial supported by hundreds of feminists. Lawyer Tina Lagostena Bassi, a champion for the dignity of female victims, defended her. As anticipated, Donatella and Rosaria’s lives, habits, and reputations were torn apart. Eventually, due to Donatella’s personal fight, the court sentenced the three perpetrators to life imprisonment. For the first time, Italians woke up to a country that was more progressive and sensitive to gender rights.
Donatella Colasanti, whose life was forever marked by that night in Circeo, never married or had children. She died from cancer at the age of 47 in 2005. The woman who survived by pretending to be dead spent her life pretending to be alive.
Angela Marino, Raped and Tortured to Death by the Three ‘Good Boys’ of Parioli: The Circeo Massacre
The Circeo Crime: Revisiting the Villa of Horrors, 45 Years Later
Rome, Eur. District, September 1975.
Valeria Teodonio
La Repubblica, 29.09.2020
Rosaria Lopez, a 19-year-old waitress, and her friend Donatella Colasanti, a student two years her junior, come from humble families in the outskirts. They cross paths with two young men from Rome’s high society, Gianni Guido and Angelo Izzo. Guido is studying architecture, Izzo, medicine, and they seem kind and good-natured. On the evening of September 29, the girls are invited to a villa in Circeo, the home of the men’s friend, Andrea Ghira. Unbeknownst to them, they are about to endure a night of hell. They are cursed, raped, tortured, and beaten up throughout the night and into the next day. Rosaria dies, drowned in the bathroom tub. Donatella pretends to be dead, and they lock her in the car trunk with the lifeless body of her friend. She survives and is able to tell her story, but she will remain scarred forever.
The patio door is now rusted, the Mediterranean vegetation has almost engulfed it, and few know its exact location. That day, the carabinieri noticed a large amount of water flowing from a house, went inside, and found Ghira’s mother and brother washing blood off the floor.
The distance from the small square of San Felice Circeo to via della Vasca Moresca is a mere five kilometers.
It’s a mere fifteen-minute drive. You’ll traverse via del Faro, with its breathtaking views of the sea, then via delle Batterie, enveloped in the thick Mediterranean vegetation of the cape, and finally, a road that concludes with a dirt track. This track, carved out by rangers for fire protection, sees scant traffic in the summer and is utterly deserted at other times.
Nestled amongst the oaks, leafy bushes, grates, and rushes, the silence is almost unsettling. It is here, in one of the Moorish-style villas, Villa Ghira, more concealed than the others, that a horrifying crime took place 45 years ago. Two young Romans from the popular Montagnola district, Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti, aged 19 and 17, were raped and tortured.
Their two-day ordeal of unimaginable violence culminated in Rosaria’s murder and left Donatella with emotional scars so profound that she could never return to a normal life. She was tormented and haunted by this horror until her death fifteen years ago, after a grueling battle with cancer. Since then, this remote corner of Circeo National Park has been linked with the massacre, and the villa, now shrouded in greenery, has been ominously dubbed the ‘Villa of Terror’.
On September 29, 1975, Rosaria and Donatella, perceived by their killers as nothing more than two poor suburban girls to unleash their primal instincts upon, were deceitfully approached in San Felice. Rosaria, a 19-year-old from Agrigento enrolled in an IBM computer course, was close friends with Donatella, a student at a professional institute. They were inseparable, and a week prior, after a movie, they had agreed to visit the home of a boy who introduced himself as Carlo. Unbeknownst to them, Carlo was a member of Rome’s high society, already convicted of violent offenses committed alongside the killers.
Donatella had given him her phone number. A meeting with “Carlo” and two of his friends, Angelo Izzo and Gianni Guido, was arranged. The young people agreed to meet again, but only Izzo and Guido showed up. They were in Eur, near the Il Fungo restaurant, and proposed a trip to Lavinio for a party at Carlo’s house. This proposition marked the beginning of a series of events from which the girls could not escape, and which would forever change the course of Italy, leading to stricter investigation and conviction procedures for sexual violence.
The four of them got into Gianni Guido’s Fiat 127, which sped along the Pontina, a provincial motorway. They drove past the Aprilia, in front of the Ghira factories owned by the father of the third perpetrator of the massacre. Their destination was Circeo, not Lavinio. Izzo, a convicted kidnapper and sexual offender already on parole, and Guido, both fascists who frequent thug bars in Piazza Euclide, possess the keys to a villa on Via della Vasca Moresa. They enter the villa and immediately make advances towards Rosaria and Donatella. Realizing the danger, the women request to go home, but their plea falls on deaf ears.
Guido brandishes a gun, and in a bid to further intimidate the women, both men claim to be members of the Marseillaise gang. They announce the impending arrival of the house owner, Jacques Berenguer, whom they say is their boss. Then, Andrea Ghira, the third man, arrives. Rosaria and Donatella are raped, beaten, tortured, and locked naked in the bathroom without access to food or water. Ultimately, they drown Rosaria by submerging her head in bath water. Donatella, dragged around the villa with a rope around her neck, survives by pretending to be dead. When Guido returns from lunch in Rome, acting as if nothing had happened, they load the two bodies into a Fiat 127 and set off for the capital.
They believe they now have two bodies to dispose of. They seek assistance from their “comrades” and park the car on Via Pola, in the Nomentano district. When Donatella starts to moan and blood seeps from the trunk, a night watchman alerts the authorities. The arriving carabinieri are met with a gruesome scene, which a reporter, who had hurried to the scene sensing a major incident, captures. This image becomes the symbol of the massacre. Guido, upon seeing a crowd surrounding his car, attempts to flee but is promptly arrested. Izzo is also quickly apprehended, while Ghira manages to escape and his whereabouts become unknown.
The carabinieri begin their investigation based on Donatella’s account. Locating the villa proves challenging as there are numerous similar properties in the area. However, the officers’ intuition leads them to a stream flowing from one of the properties. Upon entering, they find Ghira’s mother and brother attempting to clean up the blood-soaked crime scene.
Donatella Colasanti is forced to return to the villa a month later for a re-enactment with judges, carabinieri, lawyers, and forensic experts. This proves to be another ordeal for her. The three murderers are eventually sentenced to life imprisonment. Izzo, who was later granted semi-freedom, kills two more women and is now serving time in Velletri prison, passing his days reading books and eating. Guido was released eleven years ago, despite having made several escape attempts. Ghira, who remained a fugitive, was only identified in 2005 as the man who had died of an overdose eleven years earlier in Melilla, under the alias Massimo Testa de Andres, after being expelled from the Spanish Foreign Legion he had joined.
Even after a second investigation confirmed that the exhumed remains were indeed those of the killer, the case continues to cast a long shadow.
The Moorish villa now stands empty. Its gate is rusted, the Mediterranean vegetation has nearly consumed it, and few people know where it is. The Ghira family no longer owns it. Maria Cecilia Angelini Rota, Andrea Ghira’s mother, sold the villa 25 years after the horrific crime that took place in late September 1975. The property was purchased by an elderly woman from Piemonte, and it has since been transferred to her son, an 80-year-old architect. Officially, the villa, once a scene of horror, is now the architect’s office. However, there is no phone number to reach him, and no one at the Latina Chamber of Commerce, where he is registered, seems to know him. A month ago, the district decided to transform the house that Donatella Colasanti had purchased in Sezze, Latina, into an anti-violence center.
Valeria Teodonio
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From Circeo to Ostia: Pasolini and the 30 Days That Changed Italy.
Giuseppe Frangi
28.10.2015
A gruesome act of violence was perpetrated against two suburban girls. One was killed, the other survived by playing dead. The three culprits, members of Rome’s upper class, were quickly labeled as “fascisti e pariolini” [bourgeois, from the urban district of Parioli – ed]. It seemed the perfect backdrop for a crime that highlighted the divide between the rich and poor, the left and right. But amidst the outcry, a dissenting voice emerged: that of Pier Paolo Pasolini. He saw this incident as a sign of a societal aberration affecting all young Italians, regardless of class. His views sparked a great controversy. Today, 40 years later, these four dramatic weeks, culminating in Pasolini’s tragic death on November 2, have been chronicled in a book by Fabio Pierangeli […]
Fascisti and pariolini
It was a time of intense ideological conflict in Italy. Consequently, the condemnation that followed the next day was nearly unanimous, as everyone saw this brutal incident as a resurgence of neo-fascist violence and terrorism by three young pariolini. Everything seemed to fit perfectly: the two suburban girls, still virgins, had fallen prey to three “monsters” who epitomized the worst of right-wing phallocracy.
The affluence of the families involved, the disdainful manner of the accused, and the sense of invulnerability seemingly guaranteed by a complacent state apparatus combined to complete the picture. It was as if everyone, to varying degrees, had become entwined in a narrative of denial. Then, on October 8, a strikingly discordant article appeared in Corriere della Sera. It was penned by Pier Paolo Pasolini. The title seemed unrelated to the shocking Circeo case: ‘My Accattone on TV after the genocide’. Indeed, his first major film, created in 1962, had been shown on television, prompting Pasolini to reflect on the profound societal shift that had taken place. He recollected, “There wasn’t a moment of the day – in the suburban areas that form a magnificent metropolis of the common people – when a ‘linguistic invention’ wasn’t heard in the streets.”
Pasolini observed that the attitudes of the young, regardless of their societal status, were identical. Both the Pariolini and the borgatari [suburban youths – ed] were tainted by the same brutality.
What was now happening among this urban underclass? “They are still decent kids. But they are no longer pleasant,” Pasolini wrote. “They are sad, neurotic, insecure, filled with petty bourgeois anxieties; they are embarrassed to work; they try to mimic the ‘daddy’s boys,’ the ‘crooks.’ Indeed, today we are witnessing the revenge of the ‘daddy’s boys.’ They are the ones who are setting the trend today.” But the quote that was to ignite controversy was the following: “The reader should compare characters like the neo-fascist Pariolini who committed the horrific massacre in a villa in Circeo with characters from the Tor Pignattara suburbs, for example, who killed a driver by smashing his head against the asphalt: at two different social levels, these characters are identical: but the ‘models’ are the former, these sons of fathers, who for so long – for centuries – were mocked and despised by the suburban boys, who considered them pitiful nobodies. Meanwhile, they took pride in their own identity: their ‘culture,’ which gave them gestures, imitation, words, behavior, knowledge, terms to judge.”
Calvino, Moravia, and Friends
And then all hell broke loose! Pasolini’s position triggered a seismic shift within Italian culture, particularly the left, which had grown accustomed to formulating ideological stances that were also compatible with the interests of big capital. From that October 8, Pasolini entered a tumultuous period, which would later turn out to be the final weeks of his life. A dramatic escalation of postures and attacks also came from his erstwhile friends, such as Calvino and Moravia, as documented in a riveting book by Fabio Pierangeli, a professor at the University of Tor Vergata and a renowned scholar of the Friulian author. The book bears the evocative title: “The Age of Faith is Over”. Indeed, in the days that followed, newspapers, particularly those of the left, launched a considerable attack against Pasolini’s stance on the Circeo incident, often stigmatizing his views with a hint of sarcasm. “Elisabetta Rasy, for instance, was particularly harsh in her critique published in Paese Sera,” Pierangeli notes, “She dismissed Pasolini’s recent articles as pitiful lamentations and meaningless journalistic paradoxes, a step below the Heart [a reference to Spinoza – ed.]. Calvino, on the other hand, voiced his opinion in a commentary on October 8th, and rather surprisingly in the same pages of the Corriere della Sera, he criticized the criminal faction of the neo-fascist right, which was dangerously prevalent in Italy and Europe. In a private letter to Carlo Casola, Calvino expressed his annoyance with writers like Pasolini who, in his view, had become overly fixated on newspapers. “They overstep their bounds and overstate their points,” he wrote. Pierangeli elaborates: “Calvino’s disillusionment with the Circeo events, reflected in numerous articles in progressive newspapers, relates to the rise of fascist violence among youth, particularly in Rome, in a climate of complete tolerance. However, this tolerance is not the false tolerance Pasolini refers to, but rather stems from an environment that enjoys widespread impunity, primarily due to a fascist past that has not been fully eradicated.” As Pierangeli consistently emphasizes, “Calvino started with the same observation of moral inertia, but then narrowed it down to the upper bourgeoisie associated with fascism.” He quotes the Ligurian author’s words: “… the real danger comes from the proliferation of malignant layers in society: there is a segment of the Italian bourgeoisie that lives, thrives, and multiplies without the slightest understanding of what it means to be part of society… To say that only one step separates moral inertia and social irresponsibility from the torture and slaughter of the girls you date one night might sound like a typical moralist overgeneralization, but we have before us the biographies and language of these young people, representative samples – as they say – of the clientele of a bar frequented by young people of the same ilk.”
Pierre Paulo’s Critique
Pasolini took a week to expand upon his interpretation of the Circeo events. He first did this in Il Mondo on October 16th, then again in the Corriere on October 18th, and on the same day in the weekly magazine Epoca, where he advocated for a reexamination of the biographies of the three rapists, as presented by Sandra Bonsanti.
In Epoca, Pasolini was captured in real-time news, highlighting a broader Italian anthropological situation. He began with the observation that at least half, if not more, of young Italians were decent individuals, but were “grey, neurotic, introverted. And unhappiness, as Spinoza says, is ‘a state of inferiority of the human heart’. “The other half may be criminals, products of a failed tolerance, or rather,” Pasolini clarifies, “a false tolerance. This is a uniquely Italian phenomenon, which becomes especially stark in Rome – even tragic for those who must acknowledge that what was once the most beautiful city in the world is now repellent.” “It’s not true, unless we choose to ignore it, that one knife is as good as another,” Pasolini wrote, concluding his piece in Epoca. “The knives of the post-war Neapolitan mafia are very different from the neo-fascist knives of the pariolini or the new sub-proletariat of Rome, and these in turn are very different from the knives of the Puerto Ricans of New York. One could hypothetically choose. And I’m convinced that being stabbed by a neo-fascist pariolino or a Tor Pignattara bum doesn’t make much difference.” On October 19, Pasolini returns to the Corriere. The title remains aloof: ‘My proposals for school and television’. Reflecting on an incident related to the events of Circeo, he reiterates his belief in the fundamental uniformity of young people’s actions, most of whom “ignore the traditional conflict between good and evil and lean towards intolerance, towards the end of faith, and do this effortlessly, almost as a given: whether they are delinquent or good, they are unhappy – unhappiness is not a minor sin, I would argue”. Four days later, from the columns of the Corriere, another old friend, Alberto Moravia, responds. “Pasolini’s discourse seemed more pre-Raphaelite than reactionary to Moravia: profound, captivating, but upon closer inspection, an integral part of the very revolution he opposed,” explains Fabio Pierangeli. “The crime at Circeo is a sadistic crime…” wrote Moravia. “It is sadistic because it is a class crime, that is, a crime committed by those in power against those who are not. Rosaria Lopez was killed primarily because she was from the suburbs. On the other hand, the crime at Circeo is a crime of oppressed people (oppression must be recognized primarily in the planning, that is, in the presence of a retarding element of thoughtful cruelty).”
The Objectified Woman
Pasolini wants to maintain his distance: he does not wish to engage in a theoretical narrative, he is acutely aware of the reality of the events: he writes that he personally knew Rosaria Lopez’s brother, a very anxious young man, a perfect imitator of his sister’s tormentors, in his red racing car. He aspired to be a cameraman. On October 22, it was Dacia Maraini’s turn, Moravia’s then partner, to engage Pasolini in a debate that Pierangeli likens to a boxing match. They are old friends. Furthermore, they share a house with Moravia in Sabaudia, not far from the infamous crime scene in Circeo. The subject is “high tension”: the female body. Pasolini doesn’t mince words, accusing the bourgeois culture of “false tolerance” of commodifying the female body.
“In his view,” explains Pierangeli, “the bourgeoisie have grown used to perceiving women as sensual objects, defined by the norms and codes imposed on them.” “False tolerance within a sham democracy is even more insidious than blatant oppression…” Pasolini asserts in his dialogue with Dacia Maraini. […] His conclusion is unequivocal: “Tolerance is the most brutal facet of counterfeit democracy. I daresay it’s more degrading to experience ‘tolerance’ than outright prohibition, and that tolerance is the harshest form of repression.” The conversation leaves room for one final debate. On October 30, within the pages of Mondo, Pasolini published a “Lutheran Letter to the Italian Calvin”. His closing thoughts bear an eerie premonition. “Indeed, the ‘poor’ from the Roman suburbs and the ‘poor’ immigrants, essentially the working-class youth, can (as the news chillingly reports) commit the same acts that the youth of Parioli do: and with the same mindset that your ‘descriptiveness’ targets… Impunity over the years for urban criminals and especially neo-fascists is no less outrageous than impunity for suburban criminals.” Three days later, on November 2, Pasolini would be murdered by a group of suburban boys. […]
Giuseppe Frangi
Trans. S.S.
