The massacre of the Pillar 31 years later At the commemoration of Andrea Moneta, Mauro Militini and Otello Stefanini, the 3 carabinieri killed by the band of the Savi brothers, the relatives return to ask that full light be shed on the whole affair, principals including
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Massacre Uno Bianca , an archive photo of the site of the attack in Bologna where three carabinieri lost their lives
It has been 31 years since the massacre of the Pilastro, the one that saw the assassination of the carabinieri Andrea Moneta, Mauro Mitilini and Otello Stefanini, murdered on January 4 1991 in a firefight in the homonymous neighborhood of Bologna: the 3 boys died under a rain of 222 bulletsshot by the Savi brothers and their accomplices of the so-called White One Gang.
And on the day of commemoration of that terrible day, the families of the victims return to ask for justice on the events that led to the death of the three young men of the Arma, at the time in their twenties. A justice that, from the cry of Ludovico Mitilini, Mauro’s brother, has never really been done: ” We will fight to the end, as long as we have the strength, to seek this truth .” The relatives have indeed announced a complaintand they went back to ask that full light be shed on the whole story of the Savi brothers, also investigating accomplices and principals. “We do not accept those who answer us by saying that the truth is this and that we must accept it – said Mitilini – the sentences have become final and the investigations have been complex, but there may be new elements. The truth is not absolute. There were many misdirections . At the Pillar, for example, they already had the kerosene to set the car on fire. So it was probably a premeditated and studied ambush , like so many other actions “.
Rosanna Zecchi, president of the association of relatives of the victims of Uno Bianca, echoed: “We want everything to come out: if there is something else or if there is someone else behind it, now it comes out. ‘and nothing, fine: we’ll close it there. Otherwise, it’s time for it to come out, as for the massacre of 2 August “. Also touched by Otello Stefanini’s mother, Anna Maria: last December the woman also lost her husband: “I am accompanied today by my other son because I can’t do it alone. My husband died recently, on December 6, but in reality he had already died from that 4 January 1991 because it was no longer him, the death of his son destroyed him “.
All united in exercising the right to seek principals and accomplices. All united in the complaint that, they say, “will retrace all the dark actions of the gang. Meanwhile, we will continue to fight permits and penalty discounts for those who have terrorized an area of ​​our country with heinous and apparently inexplicable crimes”.
A push towards the reopening of the investigations could “also come from the digitization of the documents on the Banda della Uno Bianca” requested by the association of the victims’ families and launched last October.
Even today, the family members reiterate, “we do not know the whole truth about that massacre. We know only a few material perpetrators of that massacre, as of many other actions by the notorious band of murderers.”
The relatives of Mitilini, Moneta and Stefanini ask to know why the Carabinieri moved to Via Casini, where they were murdered, “while they should have been stationed at the former Romagnoli schools, as required by a detailed order of the Bologna police fixed “. Another mystery “was represented by the disappearance of the patrol service sheet where, among other things, the modalities of the service to be performed were reported”.
Furthermore, the relatives of the victims continue, ” the identity of that mysterious fourth man is still unknownthat several witnesses saw the killers taken, after the massacre, aboard an Alfa 33 “. Finally, the relatives of the three Carabinieri underline,” doubts remain both about the motive and the modalities of the assassination, starting from the engagement until the completion of the massacre “. Finally, the family members point out,” the gang had with them some kerosene with which, immediately afterwards, the car was set on fire to erase the traces. Evidently – they conclude – three young Carabinieri were to die on January 4, 1991. ”
Carabinieri
The Carabinieri Otello Stefanini, Andrea Moneta and Mauro Mitilini victims of the massacre The crimes of the Uno Bianca 103 crimes, 24 murders and 102 wounded : this is the terrible” booty “of the ‘terror throughout Emilia Romagna between 19 June 1987 and 24 May 1994 . Seven years in which the region was put to fire and sword by this gang that moved aboard one of the best-selling and used cars at the time, the Uno Bianca of Fiat, which is therefore more difficult to identify. Five of the six members of the gang were part of the armed forces , a shock for the whole of Italy when the investigators finally managed to identify the criminals.
The gang began committing its crimes in 1987 by turning its early business to robberies and extortion. The murderous turn, however, arrives early, on October 3 of that year, with the killing of the superintendent of the Police Antonio Mosca followed by that of Giampiero Picello, a security guard from Rimini.
From there, a Rossinian crescendo of robberies, violence and murders up to the massacre of the Pillar on January 4, 1991, the most heinous crime of blood claimed by the Banda della Uno Bianca that cost his life in a firefight, which took place in the working-class neighborhood at outskirts of Bologna, to three young carabinieri, Mauro Mitilini, Andrea Moneta and Otello Stefanini, who, it seems, have arrived in the wrong place at the wrong time. The official motive provided by the Savi was not to be identified driving a stolen white Fiat Uno. But one of the theories hypothesized by the investigators and that it has never been possible to prove totally with certainty, of an arms trafficking existing between Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Italian organized crime, in which the Banda della Uno Bianca it would play an intermediary role.
But the gang’s criminal activities do not stop even in the face of the January massacre, on the contrary they continue with the murder of Claudio Bonfiglioli, fifty-year-old gas station attendant, during a robbery and with the assassinations of 2 May 1991 of Licia Ansaloni, owner of an armory and Pietro Capolungo, retired policeman.
The number of victims continues to grow throughout 1991 and stops only in the following year to then resume on February 24, 1993 with the murder of Massimiliano Valenti, a 21-year-old boy who had witnessed a change of car of the gang after a bank robbery. On 7 October Carlo Poli, an auto electrician, was killed. In 1994, thugs carried out nine bank robberies .
The latest victim is Ubaldo Paci, director of the Pesaro Savings Bank, killed on May 24 while opening the branch of the bank where he works. The trials against the killers ended on March 6, 1996 , with the three brothers Roberto, Fabio and Alberto Savi and Marino Occhipinti being sentenced to life. Twenty-eight years in prison for Pietro Gugliotta, which then decreased to eighteen. Luca Vallicelli, a minor member of the gang, is serving a three-year and eight-month sentence; it was also established that the Italian state pay the relatives of the twenty-four victims the total sum of nineteen billion lire.
