"Here's who's trying us!" Piergiorgio Bonora, pointing at a crucifix, in the courtroom "Paolo Borsellino," Tribunal of Bologna, February 13th, 1997, 9:00 am.
"Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo should pay dearly and pay for everything, pornography on the Internet, teenagers' suicides, violent TV, the new drugs, you name it. They are being sacrificed to expiate the 'sins' of a world which reactionaries have always described as 'gone insane' and 'out of control." Such a new kind of McCarthism is thousands of times more sly; it strikes only isolated individuals on a prejudicial basis, it digs inside their soul as if it were Stevanin's field."[1] Luther Blissett, "Hunters, record-keepers and chemical gelders," Zero in condotta, Bologna, September 13 1996.
The whole thing starts in Bologna on January 24th, 1996, when the Carabinieri arrest Marco Dimitri (33), Piergiorgio Bonora (21) and Gennaro Luongo (28), i.e. the top leaders of the Luciferian cult of the Bambini di Satana [Children of Satan]. This action is going to snowball into a big raid against Satanists and "pedophiles." The charge is: "abduction aimed at lechery and sexual violence."
Dimitri & Co. have been accused by Luongo's 16-year-old ex-girlfriend, whose real name cannot be mentioned in the media. From now on she will always be called 'Simonetta.' Simonetta charges Luongo and the others with having chloroformed and raped her during a black mass. In the USA, where everything becomes an acronym, they call it SRA, Satanic Ritual Abuse.
The sixteen-year-old girl, getting over embarassment and the understandable hesitations, collaborated with the magistrature and narrated having been forced to drink a deadly potion which deprived her of any defensive power[...] The inquiries by the carabinieri proved [the potion] to be a mix of water and chloroform [...] She maintains to have awaken from an odd sleep and felt numbed, with her pants stained and her stockings pulled off. But in the first instance she affirms that the violence took place in the head office of the "Children of Satan," in the second she sets it at Villa Spalleggiari [R. Canditi, "The mass is over, go to jail," Il Resto del Carlino, January 24 1996].
Simonetta's story is full of gaps and supported by no evidence. Actually the Carabinieri haven't 'proved' anything about the alleged 'fatal potion,' of which there are no traces, nor have they found any pot. Despite this, and although the defendants firmly claim their innocence, so-called "public opinion" immediately considers them guilty, thanks to the most-read local newspaper, Il Resto del Carlino. This right-wing rag is nothing other than the house organ of the Carabinieri.
On the following day the defendants' lawyers state that Simonetta was conditioned by her family, which had been opposed to her affair with Luongo. According to the lawyers, two months ago she tried to retract her testimony by telephoning the Carabinieri. She wanted to admit that she had made up her story, and 'threatened to tell the whole truth to Il Resto del Carlino.
In the meanwhile, The Carlino starts to bombard the readers with bullshit: On Friday the 1st Canditi writes about some floppy disks which allegedly contain . . .
the names of fifty underage people: some are just twelve [...] Thus, rather than satanists, they were perverts [...] It is possible that many minors have also been used in the "sacrifices," but the circumstances are still to be cleared up [...] Pornographic movies with children in erotic poses, file-cards of a large number of underage neophytes. . . .
Later on, those diskettes will be shown to contain videogames to run on Amiga, therefore incompatible with Dimitri's Mac. As regards the underage members and their 'use' during 'sacrifices,' Dimitri will explain over and over again that the "sexual rituals" consisted of intercourse betweeen 'initiates' of legal age. The under-18-year-olds were only allowed to 'go to the office in via Riva Reno, buy the sweatshirts and the other gadgets produced by the Bambini di Satana Ltd.'
On February the 4th, The Carlino bears the headline: 'Among The Initiates A Well Know Pedophile.' The reporter Nicoletta Rossi writes: 'William Andraghetti, formerly arrested during the anti-pedophile raid, was an initiate of the cult.' No source is cited for this 'scoop,' which calls in question a person who was framed in 1987 and virtually lynched by a violent press campaign [3]. He's not going to be mentioned in the press coverage of this case ever again; it's just one of the many pieces of shit that The Carlino threw in the fan at the beginning of the inquiry.
Dear Sir Luther and Messrs. editors of Zero in condotta, I have read with much interest the article written in your most recent issue, titled "I Carlini di Satana, or: One year of sulphur candies" [2]. I'm William Andraghetti, the pedophile, and since I have been mentioned in the article, I decided to write to you to make some things clear. First of all I would like to congratulate Mr. Luther since I seldom happen to read such an objective and well-balanced article on a topic like satanism, which causes any pressman (Canditi counted in) to turn up his nose and make an outcry. I think that nowadays the categories of people the most mistreated by the media are twofold: satanists and pedophiles.
Then if a satanist is believed to be a pedophile (as in Dimitri's case) or, vice versa, a pedophile is thought to be a satanist (as in my case), the press orgy will be unleashed in all its virulence, muddling up reality and imagination just in order to sell and create sensationalism.
In the article by Nicoletta Rossi that appeared last February 4th ("Among the followers a notorious pedophile") there's nothing plausible! I have known Dimitri but was never a member of the Children of Satan, neither did I participate in their rites[...] I have known Dimitri since 1985 when, still a young man, he attended with me an esoteric centre. Later, in 1987, when I was arrested on the charge of raping minors, our paths parted.
When the penalty was over in 1993, he was to phone me, wanting to have a chat in memory of the old times; he gave me a date in his office where he was operating already as the leader of the Children of Satan. He asked me, it is true, to enter the sect but I don't consider myself a satanist and so I refused. We met just twice more: last time I spoke to Dimitri was in July '94; on that occasion he communicated that he intended to start up a chat-line devoted to satanism. Last time I phoned him was in January '95, I left a message on his answering machine, but he didn't call back.
When I heard about the arrest and the charges of rape of a minor, I nearly laughed since I knew very well that Dimitri is homosexual and that he didn't give a damn about women, and even less would he have raped them. Dimitri is not the violent kind (and few people know he's a vegetarian). Neither do I grant any trust to the story of the three-year-old child who had allegedly undergone abuses: Dimitri is not interested in children. I think that Dimitri got arrested in order to eliminate from Bologna an awkward sect of satanists which, in such a bigoted and provincial town, caused too much scandal. The only way to shut down the Children of Satan's office was to arrest their leader[...] I always asserted in my book Journal of a pedophile that justice will never exist for "deviants," and my trial events proved me right: I was condemned for abuses which never took place and was forced to suffer an ignoble persecution through the media (the same persecution Dimitri is undergoing now). All this leads me to conclude that for some categories of accused -- yesterday the "gang of pedophiles" and today the "gang of satanists" -- there will never be true justice or any tutelage. I would say to Canditi (and his acolytes) that it's simple to cry at monsters and rapists, and fake indignation for these events. It's harder, instead, to look for the truth and respect people still waiting for judgment, (or to be committed for trial), and, before cursing, all of us should examine our consciences keeping in mind that before the definitive verdict the accused MUST be considered innocent [...]
To Dimitri, in case he should read this letter: I make my best greetings and send the wish that his vicissitudes come to the best end, and I'm convinced that the charges brought by Lucia Musti are totally groundless. A big greeting to the editorial staff of Zero in condotta and Luther Blissett [...] An ordinary different man. -- W. Andraghetti, "Letter from a monster," Zero in condotta, Bologna, October 11th, 1996
The defendants' lawyers start to make themselves heard. They denounce
"a disparity between the prosecutor and the defense. The GIP [Judge for Preliminary Investigations] has acquired additional documents on whose grounds she has decided to not release the Children of Satan. We were not aware of those documents, thus we were not allowed to confute them."
The lawyers appeal the GIP's decision to continue the defendants' detention. On Friday the 12th, the Tribunal of Re-hearings decides on their release from prison. Three days later, a headline on The Carlino blares: 'Dimitri's free, I'll Kill Myself.' The reporter Biagio Marsiglia writes that Simonetta has attempted suicide. She was about to throw herself down a bridge in Casalecchio di Reno [near Bologna] but a heroic Romanian truck-driver saved her life. Marsiglia, who waxes so lyric that he doesn't care about the Presumption of Innocence, comments:
The sixteen year old is going to live protected from now on. Someone will be close to her, will follow her and will try to make her forget those strange rites devoted to Satan that, in a November night marked, her forever.
Some people begin to suspect the whole thing to be a scam. The investigations have been entrusted to the Vice-District Attorney Lucia Musti, a protagonist in search of the spotlights. The whole inquiry benefits by the 'advise' of the Gruppo di Ricerca e Informazione sulle Sette [Group for Research and Investigation on Cults]. This group claims to be non-confessional, and yet its office is in via del Monte, just inside the palazzo of the Curia [local ecclesiastic authority]. This 'advise' may actually include pressure from the Curia's ultra-reactonary head, cardinal Giacomo Biffi.
In fact, Dimitri is a scapegoat; hidden powers have been at work since last summer in order to frame him. Before long, thanks to the fervour of the GRIS and some exorcists (yes!), the Children of Satan will be overwhelmed by additional charges, including an SRA on "Federico," a less-than-three-year-old little boy. Simonetta will keep bearing witness, adding more and more grotesque details to her incredible story. Most likely it's the investigators themselves and The Carlino visionary hacks who inspire her accounts.
Back to the attempted suicide: one year later (February 12th, 1997), during an interview on La Repubblica, Musti herself will admit that it was "a bluff [...] due to Simonetta's usual urge to show off [...] It is her way of looking for affection and attention."
The story about "Federico" emerges on February 22th, 1996. On the pages of The Carlino, Canditi mentions:
A three-year-old child [...] dragged into a black mass, during which he's supposed to have been made to lie down in a tiny coffin or a tomb, wherein a skull was. Reality or imagination? The story assumed worrying outlines because the person in whose custody the minor was gravitates around the Children of Satan.
A few days later people will learn that the child's parents ('particularly careful persons who always select the TV programs he can see') have taken him to a priest who, according to Canditi . . .
is said to have given the child a strong blessing in an attempt to "armour" that young soul against the Evil one's attacks.
Who traumatizes who?
Exactly one year later, during the trial, we'll find out that this priest, one Father Clemente, was the first to tell stories of SRAs to Federico's mother, and to link the child's problem to Simonetta's vicissitudes, which he himself and the GRIS have been handling for months. Moreover, Simonetta was exorcized as well, and more than once, by Fathers Clemente and Francois Dermine (a Canadian priest at Diocese of Ancona). Simonetta's parents asked help to the GRIS, which introduced the girl to a psychologist.
Federico's parents start to bear down on the child, showing him the photographs of Dimitri and Bonora published on The Carlino, asking him if those men are the "bad ones" he talks about. Moreover, they make him re-construct the alleged ritual abuse by using Lego toy soldiers, an erroneous procedure. It is possible that the mother, a psychologist herself, is aware of the American literature on ritual abuse 'survivors.' Certainly she ignores the fact that, after the disintegration of the McMartin trial and the acquittal of all the defendants, the validity of that literature and the testimonies on which it was based has been questioned, deconstructed and exposed (see D. Nathan & M. Snedeker, Satan's Silence. Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt, Basic Books, New York 1995).
On February 25th Canditi informs his readers that . . .
The inquiries made by the carabinieri of Medicina [...] proved that the three-year-old child is telling the truth when he says he had been slipped into a coffin or a tomb.
According to Canditi, the same Carabinieri who found chloroform in a non-existent pot (which reminds us of the Mad Hatter's non-birthday party) have replaced judges and experts, and have 'proved' the truth of an 'account' that will never be precisely ascribed to anybody, not even during the trial! During the early sessions of the trial, we'll find out that these Carabinieri of Medicina, whom Canditi praises so much, turned out to be quite bizarre "consultants," i.e. exorcists and demonologists belonging or at least linked to the GRIS: one Father Francesco above all, an alleged 'expert of black masses' of the parish of S. Lucia, Florence (from the testimony of Marshal Cabras, February 19th, 20th and 21st, 1997). Thus Canditi's sentence should be rewritten as: "the Carabinieri have verified that the words put into the child's mouth match the paranoid fantasies of a clique of new Inquisitors."
Anyway, the case of Federico is not yet considered the "second segment" of the inquiry into the Children of Satan. Canditi himself, in the above-quoted article, writes:
This step of the inquiry about black masses does not involve Marco Dimitri [...] He has nothing to do with this dirty trick.
Little by little, we find out that "the person to whom the child was entrusted" was his baby sitter, who is also his 14-year-old female cousin. On March 1st, Candite writes:
According to the carabinieri and the psychologist [the rite] is not a fruit of fantasy. The reason: a child of that age is not capable of inventing detailed settings, recognizing people at first sight and accurately describing occult rites, unless he'd taken part in them.
If one thinks of what happened in the US, this is a foolish assertion.
From bad to worse: in the following days, The Carlino keeps behaving like that, first using the term 'analysis' inopportunely (actually Federico has never been properly analysed), then insisting on the fact that 'the little boy describes [...] scenes that he couldn't have dreamed nor made up, because such scenes perfectly match the reality of facts.' Of course Canditi cannot know this, unless he attended the alleged ritual himself! In the meanwhile, Simonetta repeatedly changes the date of the alleged rape. On March 4th Canditi lavishes some precious bits of objective journalism on his readers:
Dimitri looks like Calimero [4], so puny and so black. He cuts his wrists in jail and swallows bottles of tranquillizer to draw attention upon himself. The only thing he doesn't do (at least it isn't reported) is appeal to his Satan for protection from "persecuting" magistrates and cynical and heartless pressmen[...] A demoniac world made of dirty pigs rather than of Darkness worshippers.
Three months later, the net is tightened. On June 9th, Dimitri, Bonora and Luongo are arrested for the second time. The charges: 'participation in the havoc of a corpse,' 'abduction of an underage person aimed at rape' and 'profanation of graves.' Federico, writes The Carlino,
it is alleged, is not the only child "sacrificed"on the altar of the Children of Satan. [The rite is reported to have taken place] in the presence of some twenty or thirty people [...] Once inside one wing of Villa Ghigi... and in a wrecked weapon factory in Budrio [the children used] the skeleton of a woman that, during the black mass, was given the name of "Margerita." [At the time of the arrest] Bonora was close to an iguana that in the satanists' hearts took the place of the tarantula confiscated last January, piercing his skin to put another ring on.
This time the detention of the three defendants will prove endless and exhausting.
June 10th, The Carlino, under the headline 'My Battle Against Satan,' Biagio Marsiglia interviews Lucia Musti. Check this out:
The devil's eyes. She goes to sleep chasing them away, she awakes defying them. She can feel them on her the whole day, but doesn't fear them. Because she fights them [...] She opposes to the devil's eyes her eyes, those of a woman who wears the robe [...] Today she'll go in jail along with the investigating magistrate, Grazia Nart, for the ritual interrogation. Two women against the devil's eyes.
No need of a comment. In the interview, Musti compares her inquiry to that of the White Uno [2]:
This inquiry is in some ways more difficult than that on the Savi brothers, more delicate of that against the "Fifth Mafia."[5] There there were delinquents, assassins...but here we are discovering things much more horrible.[...] The satanists' criminality isn't that much different from that of the mafia.
Once he's finished with the interview, Marsiglia drops a bomb with a certain understatement:
Testifying against Dimitri will also be the sixteen-year-old girl who in last January caused the inquiry to start. She's the one [...] being under the effect of alcohol and drugs, who allegedly held the feet of the child brought by the little baby-sitter cousin to the rendez-vous with the Evil One.
The 'poor victim,' the chloroformed girl, has changed her status and position. Now she's a 'repentant.'[6] On the following day, Nicoletta Rossi provides further details: Simonetta was not 'simply a curious outsider and the victim of a group rape'; she 'wanted to become a priestess of Satan and was training for that.' Rossi also confirms that Federico's parents have taken their son to an exorcist two times, 'even before any link to the Dimitri case,' because 'he looked possessed'[!]
Luther Blissett doesn't begin to get interested in these events 'till July 1996. I think I must explain the reasons for this slowness of reflexes. In Bologna the trans-national collective pseudonym "Luther Blissett" is adopted by a large number of people coming from the "underground" "counterculture" and/or the "ultra-left" scene (squats, community radios etc.). Il Resto del Carlino has often been the target of LB's actions; these were media pranks that would expose the reporters' racism, sexism and professional misery. We would use the competing newspapers in order to claim authorship of such hoaxes.
Despite the attention we usually pay to the local news, when Dimitri was framed we underestimated the importance of the scam: we considered Dimitri nothing more than a charlatanish headbanger. An acquaintance of ours, who's also friends with Piergiorgio Bonora, exhorts us to take care of the case. We start to gather information, and realize this thing is much bigger than we expected.
Dimitri founded the Children of Satan Corporation Ltd. because he hoped he would make some money out of gadgets, T-shirts and 'esoteric advices.' He became a victim of his own promotional activities (being hosted on tv talk-shows, posing before the press during black masses etc.) when he bumped into a clerical pressure group looking for a folk devil to lynch. Besides this, Dimitri and Bonora have the double misfortune of being a gay couple (which is a further reason for the obstinacy of their foes) but not a politically correct one (which means that most homosexual groups don't want to handle the case). As to Gennaro Luongo, ill luck had it that his young lover was a neuropathic ice-cream vendor who falsely claimed to be eighteen; Simonetta's mother did all she could in order to sabotage their relationship, until Luongo got tired and broke away. Simonetta's vengeance came in the form of the chloroform-and-rape story.
Just as in Salem, Massechusetts, the witch hunt originated in the rancour of an Abigal who'd been seduced and abandoned. That rancour was readily channeled by a clique of priests, hacks and careerist magistrates. This was extremely easy given the climate of panic and suspicions that existed as a result of the arrest of Marc Dutroux, the "monster of Marcinelle."
Later on, the psychological malaise of a little kid was misunderstood by his parents, staunch Catholics who first went to Father Clemente, then directly to the GRIS office. The case was immediately mislinked to Simonetta's testimony. We'll find out that she heard about Federico from the mouths of Prosecutor Musti and the investigating authorities. First she said she didn't know anything, then, converted by a light from heaven on her way to Salem, she confessed her participation in the alleged sexual ceremony. In the following months, she will vomit forth a running stream of incredible details, including the ritual assassination of an African immigrant and a Roma ("gypsy") child. It goes without saying that the inquisitors will never find a single corpse. Moreover, Simonetta will involve people at random, e.g. the mother of Federico's baby-sitter/cousin (all charges being dropped at the Preliminary Hearing, October 28th) and, later on, Marquis Ippolito Bevilacqua Ariosti:
I'm Ippolito Bevilacqua Ariosti. I'm fifty; I work in farming and estate trading. I'm a practicing Catholic. A girl whom I have never known accuses me of having raped minors, pushed drugs and taken part in satanic rituals with one Marco Dimitri, whom I only saw on tv [...] The girl also says that we made human sacrifices, stabbing 21 times a non-European in the basement of my country residence, Palazzo de' Rossi. I came to know this the other day, reading Il Resto del Carlino, which cites me as indicted for homicide . It is not true [...] When I read that I'm suspected on the basis of those ignoble statements, I was astonished... I think I have the right to have the press inform without slandering my name, and to have the justices investigate, verifying the facts and not allowing absurd calumnies. [P.Cascella, "The Marquis' rage: 'I'm not a satanist,'" La Repubblica, Bologna, January 24th, 1997.]
We decide to take the field. How? Luther Blissett doubts that traditional "counter-information" (based upon the ascertainment of "the Truth") is very effective. On the reverse, s/he wants to push things to their limit till the usual interpretations of facts are overturned and disintegrated. It is necessary to venture into the inner depths of the system of simulation, to overload and divert paranoias, to make their game ("disinformation") more paradoxical, to pass on to the media bounty killers the most incorrect information (i.e. accounts of absurd conspiracies, unbearably ambiguous evidence etc.). Make the Absolute Weapon out of the system's inner logic, media homeopathy: we will outlive the intoxication (moral panic) by increasing the dose of venom (conspiracy psychosis). This can immunize us and allow us to expose the absurdity of their stunts.
Besides passing in review all the articles published in the local press since the arrest and publishing the results, we plan an "old-fashioned" campaign of solidarity and a series of long-term and short-term hoaxes, both on the local and national levels. Through an informal survey, we get to know that in Viterbo (Latium) some multi-use name bearers have had more or less the same idea, although their local context and their reasons were different. Since February 1996, Blissett's been cheating the local press (especially the Corriere di Viterbo) by spreading foolish rumors and fake news about black masses and similar things. S/he's even invented a sort of anti-Satanist underground group called Committee for the Safeguard of Morality, CoSaMo, in the name of which s/he's started to tip off the papers about the Evil One and his presence in the Etruscan countryside. No hack ever checks the facts, and such distorted information regularly ends up on the frontpages. It is the prelude to a maxi-prank that will have repercussions all over the country and will be sensationally revealed by LB one year later (see Appendix 2). We join the Viterbese brothers and sisters, and begin our homeopathic cure.
We happen to write for Zero in condotta [ZIC], a fortnightly journal edited by Valerio Monteventi, who is a city hall counselor (he ran as an independent candidate supported by the Refounded Communist Party), as well as a former 1977-style ultra-leftist (and an ex-con), a former Green Party member, and an old-time enemy of law-and-order justice. Therefore, it's from the pages of ZIC that we announce our first action:
I found by chance a human skull and some bones (very old stuff, which came from some college laboratory or avant-garde theatre). I put them in an old rucksack that I later deposited in the left-behind luggage office at the Bologna train station, enclosing this message:
Left luggage office. Item: human skull and bones stolen from the famous rite before their arrival. It was intended for the child. More things between the Appennin and the low Padany than your chronicles can contain. There's also a Viterbo trail. By this message we also warn the public about our presence in town. 'And the devil, who deceived them, was thrown into the lake of burning sulphur, where the beast and the false prophet had been thrown: they will be tormented day and night for ever and ever' (Revelation 20, 10). Signed: Cosamo.
We also enclosed in the rucksack an article from the Corriere di Viterbo of May 14th, 1996, of which I report the headline and subtitles:
'HUNTERS OF "SATANISTS"
After the retrieval of a "spell of death" in the pinewood of Valle Spina, there comes an alleged Committee for the Safeguard of Morality.
"We almost captured a group of worshippers of the occult who were practising the rite of evil death." In the city centre reappeared the number 666, indicating the "Beast of Apocalypse," and swastikas.
(Several months later, Luther Blissett tips off the Viterbo press about a completely fictional satanic revival, spreads around remnants of weird ceremonies, invents opinion movements, and the papers publish all this WITHOUT ANY VERIFICATION!). Then I posted the ticket to the Carlino, to the kind attention of the worst hack, along with kind of a kidnappers' message made out of paper headlines: "Collect the bag at the station. It's about the Children of Satan. Important." While I write I still don't know if the reporter has picked up the parcel and if the swindle has reached its peak (the so-called punch-line). It's not so important anyway. But if everybody decided to bust the bounty killers' balls, if the press were contacted by an army of resolute mythomaniacs, all the speculation about "satanism" would be exposed as a joke, everything would lose credibility, and the pushers of indignation would be ridiculed once and for all. Come on, hurry up: all this silence can't go on! [L. Blissett, "A skull for the Carlino," Zero in Condotta, no.19, Bologna, July 12th, 1996, p.23.]
Some are surprised. They ask: "Why the hell did you announce the prank before pulling it? Now the Carlino hacks will know and won't be cheated!" You sure? The following piece appeared on the Carlino frontpage on Saturday, August 3rd 1996:
Enter the "Hunters of Satan"
A mysterious committee let the Carlino find a skull, bones and letters. The gloomy bundle was arranged in a rucksack. Are we dealing with the remnants stolen from Marco Dimitri's sect?
Report by Biagio Marsiglia
A mysterious group, sworn enemy of the Evil One's acolytes, kind of a team of "Satan Hunters": their cry of battle is a quote from the book of Revelation, a promise of total war against the likes of Marco Dimitri, Piergiorgio Bonora e Gennaro Luongo, the Bolognese satanists ended in cuffs with the charge of rape of minor [...] Now it will be the magistrature, and particularly the investigating magistrate Lucia Musti, who will handle the "hunters of Satan," be they real or fake. The same magistrate who demanded the arrest of the three young members of the "Children of Satan," who, according to a first reconstruction of the facts, are alleged to have organized and held a satanic rite involving a child only two-and-a-half years old. They slipped him into a coffin, close to a corpse, and finally raped him with a pencil. It is the same rite referred to by the authors of the anonymous letter that put the Carlino on the trail of the gloomy bundle. The missive, with the address printed by computer, was posted in Bologna on the 3rd of july, just after someone had taken the trouble of going to the station's left luggage office, leaving the rucksack in custody. A simple action. It's sufficient to pay five thousand lire; they give you a coupon and you go away. Sometimes the personnel of the big halls where the luggage and parcels are bundled open them and check the contents, sometimes they don't. It's evident that the rucksack (which was seized yesterday by the Attorney) had not been opened. It remained there for a month, until, for some reason, the envelope got to its destination (the crime news reporter) and was picked up. Cost of the operation was 295 thousand lire [approximately $160], because, after the 2nd day of deposit, the fee passes from five to ten thousand lire. This mysterious "Committee for the protection of morals," staging its first coup in Emilia-Romagna, left traces in Viterbo.