Part I - WHO KILLED MATTEI, DE MAURO, AND PASOLINI ?

[disclaimer: this article, originally published by Italian monthly Il Piave is written by controversial international lawyer Giovanni Di Stefano. Miss Welby does not necessarily endorse this original conspiracy theory, but it's fascinating reading nonetheless].


Enrico Mattei (Acqualagna, April 29, 1906 - Bascape', October 27, 1962) was an Italian public administrator. After World War II he was given the task of dismantling the Italian Petroleum Agency Agip, a state enterprise established by the Fascist regime. Instead Mattei enlarged and reorganized it into the National Fuel Trust Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI). Under his direction ENI negotiated important oil concessions in the Middle East as well as a significant trade agreement with the Soviet Union. He introduced the principle whereby the country that owned exploited oil reserves received 75% of the profits. Mattei, who became a powerful figure in Italy, was a left-wing Christian Democrat, and a member of parliament from 1948 to 1953. He died in a plane crash in 1962.

The enquiry into the plane crash is recorded as follows:
Date: 27 OCT 1962
Time: 18:57
Type: Morane Saulnier MS.760B Paris II
Operator: Società Nazionale Metanodotti (SNAM)
Registration: I-SNAP
C/n / msn: 99
First flight:
Crew: Fatalities: 1 / Occupants: 1
Passengers: Fatalities: 2 / Occupants: 2
Total: Fatalities: 3 / Occupants: 3
Airplane damage: Written off
Location: Bascapè (Italy)
Phase: Approach
Nature: Executive
Departure airport: Catania-Fontanarossa Airport (CTA/LICC), Italy
Destination airport: Milano-Linate Airport (LIN/LIML), Italy
Narrative:
The jet crashed in stormy weather while approaching Milan-Linate. The head of Agip Petroli, an Italian oil company, Enrico Mattei was killed in the crash. The inquiries officially declared that it was an accident. Rumours are that the plane may have been sabotaged with an explosive device.

There were three men that day that were killed. Together with Mattei died his pilot Irnerio Bertuzzi and the American Journalist Wiiliam McHale. The inquiries officially declared that it was an accident. The Italian Minister of Defense, Giulio Andreotti, was responsible for the accident investigation. On the orders of the chief investigator evidence was immediately destroyed at the crash site. Flight instruments were put into acid. In 1995 at the exhumation of the human remains of Mattei and Bertuzzi metal debris deformed by an explosion was found in the bones.

When preparing the film Il Caso Mattei in 1970, Francesco Rosi asked the journalist Mauro De Mauro to investigate on the last days of Mattei in Sicily. De Mauro soon obtained an audio-tape of his last speech and spent days studying it. De Mauro disappeared 8 days after his retrieval of the tape, on September 16, 1970, without leaving a trace. His body was never found.

All the Carabinieri and Police investigators who searched for De Mauro, and consequently investigated his presumed kidnapping, were later killed. Among them the general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.

Tommaso Buscetta, the famous mafioso who repented, declared to judge Giovanni Falcone that the De Mauro affair was not a mafia affair. The strange thing is that the confusion created by his disappearance would have "ordinarily" compelled the mafia to get involved, discover those responsible and denounce them, or even worse. Buscetta also suggested that the cause was in De Mauro's investigations on Mattei. Gaetano Iannì, another repented mafioso, had suggested that a special agreement had been achieved between the Cosa Nostra and "some foreigners" for the elimination of Mattei.

Admiral Fulvio Martini, later chief of SISMI (military secret service), declared that Mattei's plane had been shot down.

In 1986, Amintore Fanfani described the accident as a shooting, perhaps the first act of terrorism in Italy.

In 1997 the Public Prosecutor’s Offices in Caltanisetta and Pavia started investigating on Mattei’s death after the declarations of two repented mafiosi, Giovanni Brusca and Salvatore Riggio and the declaration of Gaetano Iannì, head of the Stidda in Gela. Their words seemed to confirm what had been said by another Mafioso, Giuseppe Di Cristina, mafia head in Riesi, killed on 30 May 1995, who said that Mattei had been killed by the Mafia "to do a favour".

The analysis of Mattei’s corpse seemed to confirm the hypothesis of an attack.

A previous partisan of the Catholic groups led by Mattei, Raffaele Morini, had found and given the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Pavia pieces of Mattei’s plane with traces of TNT. Yet, nothing was done.

De Mauro the journalist from the Communist paper L'Ora remains fundemental to who and why Mattei died.


It was 9 o'clock on the evening of September 16, 1970 and De Mauro headed home.

His daughter Franca, due to be married the next day, watched from the window of the family flat as he parked his BMW. She saw him get out of the car, then get into conversation with "two or three men". He then got into their car and disappeared - for ever.

De Mauro, it is suggested was killed by Salvatore Riina who interrogated him and then strangled him. There exist 'verbali' of interrogations from the Italian Public Prosecutors where Riina confirms the story but have been 'sealed with secrecy' on who's orders is yet unclear. Riina say that the body of De Mauro was buried his body at a place called Villagrazia. The corpse has never been found. Riina even drew a map to assist Prosecutors. That also remains under 'seal of secrecy'.

What part in all of this can be apportioned to Pier Paolo Pasolini? Is there any connection between the death/murder of Mattei and De Mauro and Pasolini? Is there a connection?

Pasolini died on November 2, 1975 at the beach of Ostia, near Rome. He was murdered brutally by being run over several times with his own car.

Giuseppe Pelosi, a seventeen year old hustler, was arrested and confessed to murdering Pasolini. On May 7th, 2005, he retracted his confession, claiming that unidentified men had killed Pasolini (he spoke of three strangers, with a southern Italian accent, insulting Pasolini as a "filthy communist"). He gave threats of violence against his family as the reason for his erstwhile confession. The investigation into Pasolini's death was reopened following Pelosi's recantation.

It is somewhat strange that De Mauro's daughter also spoke of "two or three men" who took her father in a car never to be seen again.