Mehmet Ali Ağca is a Turkish hitman, former member of the Grey Wolves. He murdered the leftist journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979 and was imprisoned. He escaped from prison and travelled illegally to Vatican City on 13 May 1981 to assassinate Pope John Paul II. However, after a failed assassination attempt, he was captured and imprisoned by the Italian police.
Gabriele Amorth was an Italian Catholic priest of the Paulines and an exorcist for the Diocese of Rome. Amorth, along with five other priests, founded the International Association of Exorcists.
Emanuela Orlandi was a Vatican teenager who mysteriously disappeared while returning home from music school in Rome on 22 June 1983. The case received worldwide attention due to the public appeal of Pope John Paul II for her release after an unnamed terrorist organisation claimed to be holding the girl in exchange for the liberation of Mehmet Ali Ağca, the Turkish terrorist who, two years before, attempted to assassinate the Pope. However, the subsequent investigation discovered that the allegation of international terrorism was a misdirection, and the real motive of the disappearance remains unknown.
The Banda della Magliana was an Italian criminal organization based in Rome. It was founded in 1975. Given by the media, the name refers to the original neighborhood, the Magliana, of some of its members.
Elsa Martinelli was an Italian actress and fashion model. Described by The Guardian as a "versatile star of Hollywood’s international years whose work spanned romantic comedies, period epics and spaghetti westerns", she went on to star opposite Kirk Douglas, John Wayne, Robert Mitchum, Charlton Heston, and Anthony Quinn, be directed by André De Toth, Vittorio De Sica, Howard Hawks and Orson Welles on both sides of the Atlantic.
Ivano Alberto Fossati is an Italian pop singer from Genoa. He was a member of the progressive rock group Delirium and has worked with Fabrizio De André, Riccardo Tesi, Anna Oxa, Mia Martini, Ornella Vanoni, Shirley Bassey, Francesco De Gregori, Menudo and Mina.
On 13 May 1981, in St. Peter's Square in Vatican City, Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by Mehmet Ali Ağca while he was entering the square. The Pope was struck twice and suffered severe blood loss. Ağca was apprehended immediately and later sentenced to life in prison by an Italian court. The Pope forgave Ağca for the assassination attempt. He was pardoned by Italian president Carlo Azeglio Ciampi at the Pope's request and was deported to Turkey in June 2000. Ağca converted to Roman Catholicism in 2007.
Mauro De Mauro was an Italian investigative journalist. Originally a supporter of Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime, De Mauro eventually became a journalist with the left-leaning newspaper L'Ora in Palermo. He disappeared in September 1970 and his body has never been found. The disappearance and probable death of the "inconvenient journalist", as he became known as a result of his investigative reporting, remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in modern Italian history.
Bruno Contrada is the former police chief of Palermo and deputy director of the civil intelligence service SISDE who was arrested based on revelations of former Sicilian Mafiosi turned pentiti, Gaspare Mutolo and Giuseppe Marchese.
Enrico De Pedis was an Italian gangster and one of the bosses of the Banda della Magliana, an Italian criminal organization based in the city of Rome, particularly active throughout the late 1970s until the early 1990s. His nickname was "Renatino". Unlike other members of his gang, De Pedis possessed a strong entrepreneurial spirit. While other members squandered their earnings, he invested his illicit proceeds.
Rita dalla Chiesa is an Italian television presenter and politician.
The kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro, also referred to in Italy as the Moro case, was a seminal event in Italian political history. On the morning of 16 March 1978, the day on which a new cabinet led by Giulio Andreotti was to have undergone a confidence vote in the Italian Parliament, the car of Aldo Moro, former prime minister and then president of the Christian Democracy party, was assaulted by a group of far-left terrorists known as the Red Brigades in via Fani in Rome. Firing automatic weapons, the terrorists killed Moro's bodyguards — two Carabinieri in Moro's car and three policemen in the following car — and kidnapped him. The events remain a national trauma. Ezio Mauro of La Repubblica described the events as Italy's 9/11. While Italy was not the sole European country to experience extremist terrorism, which also occurred in France, Germany, Ireland, and Spain, the murder of Moro was the apogee of Italy's Years of Lead.
The via D'Amelio bombing was a terrorist attack by the Sicilian Mafia, which took place in Palermo, Sicily, Italy, on 19 July 1992. It killed Paolo Borsellino, the anti-Mafia Italian magistrate, and five members of his police escort: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina.
The Teutonic Cemetery is a burial site in Rome adjacent to St. Peter's Basilica. Burial is reserved for members of the Confraternity of Our Lady of the German Cemetery, which owns the cemetery. It is a place of pilgrimage for many German-speaking pilgrims.
Fabrizio Gifuni is an Italian stage, film and television actor. He won two Silver Ribbons and two David di Donatello Award.
Manlio Vitale is an Italian criminal and high-ranking member of the Banda della Magliana, an Italian criminal organization based in the city of Rome. He is known as "Er Gnappa", which is Romanesco for "short person".
Giovanni Battista Morandini was an Italian prelate of the Catholic Church who spent his career in the diplomatic service of the Holy See. He became an archbishop in 1983 and from then until his retirement in 2008 served terms as Apostolic Nuncio to Rwanda, Guatemala, Korea, Mongolia, and Syria.
The death of Jeanette Bishop and Gabriella Guerin occurred sometime between 29 November 1980, when the two women were last seen in the Italian town of Sarnano, and 27 January 1982, when their remains were found near Lago di Fiastra in the Sibillini Mountains. How Bishop and Guerin met their deaths, what they were doing between their disappearance and the likely date of their deaths a month later, or even why the two ventured up into the mountains in snowy weather, is unknown. Although initially ruled deaths caused by hypothermia, by September 1989 the investigating prosecutor concluded it was a double murder by unknown perpetrators, using unknown means. Over the course of investigations, enquiries expanded to other countries, mostly to the European Union but also to Brazil and the United Kingdom, and encompassed possible connections to art theft, robbery and alleged blackmail plots.
The Circeo massacre was a rape and murder case that occurred in the Italian town of San Felice Circeo, in the Province of Latina in the Lazio region, between September 29 and 30, 1975. The case involved three men who kidnapped and raped two young women, one of whom died.
Andrea Purgatori was an Italian journalist, writer, screenwriter, television presenter and occasional actor.
