Personal Terror Political Terror

Chapter 7

[From "La Gazzetta Libera"]

All the Ear Monster’s Victims

were warehouse workers. Coincidence?

-----------------------------------------------

Did the victims know each other?

Could their former colleagues also be at risk?

Carla Garibaldi

Sadly, we know there are now five victims of the Ear Monster, all killed with a sharp ice pick planted in the brain through the ear.

We recall that their names were Maria Capuò Tron, Giovanna Peritti Verdani, Margherita Piccozza Ferini, Alessandro Cipolla and Mosca Scrofagnocca.

While the identity and psychological profile of the killer unfortunately remain unknown, a new elementl emerged yesterday from our research in the archives of the Turin Registry Office. As Police Headquarters were already aware, all the victims as well as Peritti and Scrofagnocca had been warehouse workers for years. Capuò Tron had stopped working after her marriage, which was confirmed by comparisons with her successive identity cards, which show that she is a housewife. Ferini Piccozza, also according to the documents, had left work only several years after her marriage, perhaps because her husband, later a bank executive, was still at the beginning of his career and one salary would not have been enough. Cipolla had left the warehouse job only when he retired.

As for the other two victims, Scrofagnocca was still working at the time of her death, at a warehouse for bathroom fittings, while the widow Verdani, who had been retired for about a year at the time of her death, had left her job as a warehouse worker much earlier when she married a trader and had then worked with him.

Although it may only be a suspicion, we would like to ask the investigators some questions:

Having established that all the victims had been warehouse workers, had they worked in the same company at some time in their lives?

Was this company, for all five, the factory making shower doors, which closed down some time ago and where, as Police Headquarters are already aware, the widow Verdani and Scrofagnocca had worked?

If this is the common thread that the killer has followed, could other old co-workers of the victims be in danger? That seems to be a vital question.

With regard to the satanic matrix of crimes hypothesized by Deputy Police Commissioner Pumpo, could the same victims have had anything to do with that environment in any way, in the past? If so, would it be somehow linked to the company in which they worked? And in this case, could the owners not have been aware of it?

carlgari@gazzetta.it

Chapter 8

"I read your colleague's piece," Vittorio had said to me, "and I was a little perplexed."

"Why did she take credit for what was discovered at the Registry Office?"

"No, no, you know I told you myself to ask her to do that. I meant that, at the end of the article, she ventured a little too much: even if she doesn't express herself clearly, it almost seems as if she is insinuating that the owners of the company were demonists: she could get herself sued for moral damage, you know?"

"She’s not afraid of that, she’s insured like all journalists are, myself included: with our job, isn't hard to get yourself a lawsuit, you know?"

"Yes, but doing your best to get one..."

The Deputy Public Prosecutor of the Republic, Marcello Trentinotti, perhaps prompted by Carla's article, had urged Deputy Police Commissioner Pumpo, and he urged Sordi, to get hold of the results of the checks they’d started at the Employment Office as soon as possible. In the meantime, he had asked a registrar to gather all the data relating to the shower factory, Coniugi Corona & Figlio⁹ , from the archives of the Chamber of Commerce.

It turned out that not only two but all five of the victims had been employees of that company and, for some time, had worked together.

The company had been a family business that had ceased operations in the mid-1980s. Mother and son, Luigia and Attilio Corona, had been owners after their respective husband and father had died of a stroke in the late 1970s.

While the woman had been dead for some time, her son, a fifty-one-year-old man on a disability pension, an architect, had been tracked down and had been summoned to Prosecutor Trentinotti’s office, to be heard as a person of interest. The appointment had been scheduled for October 18 at 10 a.m.

Attilio Corona had arrived on time that morning.

A long conversation with Dr. Trentinotti had followed, recorded by a registrar.

Thanks to her contacts in Court, Carla had heard about the interview and another of her articles had appeared the following day.

Chapter 9

[From "La Gazzetta Libera"]

Did the Ear Monster

know his victims?

---------------------------------------------------

They had all worked in the same company

Carla Garibaldi

Investigators have verified and accepted the hypothesis that the Ear Monster had been on friendly terms with his future victims, when working at the same place. From the archives of the Employment Office it appears that the victims were warehouse workers at Coniugi Corona & Figlio s.n.c., a small family company that manufactured and distributed shower stall doors. It had ceased operations in 1985, due to the illness of the owners, a mother and son.

While it appears that the woman died some time ago her son, Attilio Corona, an architecture graduate not enrolled in the register of architects, has been summoned by Magistrate Dr Marcello Trentinotti to be heard as a person of interest, and he was interviewed yesterday morning.

Dr. Corona is a person of medium height with a slim physique. He arrived dressed in an elegant double-breasted brown suit and silk tie of the same color on a cream shirt, remnants of a well-to-do past, since he claimed to live very modestly, his only income the invalidity pension granted to him following a stroke at the beginning of 1985 not long before he retired from business, not yet forty years old. He seems, however, to have overcome that brain injury well.

He told the magistrate that after the stroke his mother had liquidated the compan; she was elderly at that point and had some memory problems, so was therefore unable to continue running the company by herself.

The architect pointed out that his mother had unfortunately mismanaged the closure of Corona and Son and for this reason the two of them had been left almost in poverty, she with the artisan pension and he with the modest invalid pension, and the studio apartment in which he still lives. He added that not long after the closure, the devastating Alzheimer's disease which must have already appeared at the time of the company's liquidation, had been revealed in all its severity. Fortunately, Corona had returned to fairly good health in the meantime and had been able to assist his mother until she died in 1987 from pneumonia that had become lethal due the woman's chronic brain disease despite prompt hospitalization.

Dr. Corona had shown to be very lucid throughout the conversation with the magistrate, and at his request had then recalled and described the figures of the Ear Monsters’ five victims, all his former employees in the raw materials or the sales warehouse. He basically stated that none of them were noted for their diligence. When asked specifically by Dr. Trentinotti, he replied that he did not know whether they had enemies inside the company, adding of his own initiative that they could have had some outside of it in the environment of the extreme right, since they had been communist militants, something he had realized at the time when he had overheard their conversations.

When asked by the magistrate whether he had perhaps become perplexed of late, knowing that someone was killing his former employees, he replied that he was not aware of it because he did not read newspapers for economic reasons, and did not own a television set, because he did not like television and in any case did not want to pay the licence fee. He explained, without hesitation, that since his mother died and, with her, her pension, he had been very poor, so he was careful about how he spent his money.

Unfortunately, according to rumors at the Court, it does not seem that Attilio Corona’s deposition will be useful to the investigation regarding the Monster.

carlgari@gazzetta.it

Chapter 10

Vittorio thought it could be useful to have a conversation with Attilio Corona so he could study the case of the Ear Monster more thoroughly, so he had taken steps to get the architect's address. Obviously he had looked for him first of all in the telephone directory, but Corona must not have had a landline phone and so his name was not listed. On the other hand, Vittorio had not been able to get any information at Police Headquarters, as the privacy law in force since 1997 did not allow the investigators, and in this particular case Sordi to whom Vittorio had turned, to provide the personal details of witnesses. The Commissioner would certainly have made an exception for Vittorio who was, after all, his de facto collaborator, but Deputy Police Commissioner Pumpo had recently reminded employees of the privacy rules in a peremptory circular, so that when my friend had phoned Evaristo asking him for Corona’s address, the Commissioner had preferred not to reply.

It was Carla Garibaldi who had found the architect’s residence through, I imagine, an investigation agency which she sometimes used, and she told me. I had then immediately phoned Vittorio. In payment he had invited me to dinner at the usual restaurant.

That evening, between the first and second courses, he had told me: "Attilio Corona’s attic is located about three kilometers from here, in the parish of San Taddeo, where that Don Giulio Colamonti is parish priest the one ..."

"... the one Carla wrote about in her article on demonism."

"Yes sir, you have a good memory, he’s exactly that priest who had a nervous breakdown, to say the least, because of being attacked by those satanists."

"The demonic sects pop up again, somehow."

"Indeed. But until proven otherwise, I don’t think Don Colamonti has anything to do with those people any longer. I think he’s been a parish priest for decades and that's all. One more thing: I phoned him a couple of hours ago, and introduced myself as police commissioner, but didn’t say that I am now retired. I asked if I could see him; he accepted. I’ll try to find out what he knows about his parishioner Corona, then I’ll try to speak to him with his help."

Vittorio still had a decent step, despite being well over eighty-one, and the next morning he had walked to the meeting.

As he would later tell me, the priest had become suspicious when he found a man of obvious retirement age in front of him, and had asked him: "Are you Commissioner D’Aiazzo?" emphasizing the word commissioner and not inviting him to sit down despite three ottomans lining one of the walls of the quadrangular foyer, on the ground floor, where he had let him in.

"Yes, to be precise I am an emeritus commissioner, meaning retired, but I am still working as a police consultant."

"Ah, I see."

"As I told you on the phone, I’ve been sent to get information about Dr. Attilio Corona, your parishioner, and possibly be introduced to him after that."

"Which executive in the Police Headquarters do you report to?"

"To Deputy Commissioner Sordi."

"I see. Just a moment please, and in the meantime sit down, if you like."

Vittorio, who was rather tired from the walk, had accepted the invitation. He had realized that the other intended to verify his identity with Police Headquarters, and hoped that Sordi was in the office, regretting that he had not notified him beforehand.

The parish priest had returned about ten minutes later and had sat down smiling next to my friend. Evidently Evaristo, or someone in his office, had supported Vittorio's thesis. The priest had not said anything about it, but had reported that he had called Attilio Corona on his mobile phone suggesting that he come and talk directly to the commissioner, since he lived nearby: he must have considered it preferable to be directly involved in the conversation to be able to intervene as arbitrator if necessary, considering that they were guests in his house.

In the meantime, perhaps just to pass the required minutes but seeming a little indiscreet to Vittorio, Don Colamonti had told him that he himself had given Corona the mobile phone, and had selected it from among surplus in liquidation at a nearby shop, now obsolete because of its considerable size. He added that he also paid for the recharges, since the architect was a member of the Pastoral Council and St. Vincent de Paul and phone contacts came in handy sometimes,. The parish priest had then started speaking trivially about the weather and, shortly afterwards, the doorbell had rung.

As expected, it was Attilio Corona.

My friend had stood up and Don Giulio had made the introductions. Vittorio was a little surprised at the architect's vigorous handshake and had thought that the past stroke must be essentially a tjng of the past, even though Corona still had a permanent rictus at the left side of his mouth, testimony of the cerebral damage.

Don Giulio had commenced: "Now, Commissioner D'Aiazzo, you can question our friend Attilio personally, but if you don't mind, only in my presence."

"Of course, Reverend. As I told you I also came here to be introduced to the architect, and I thank you for making it easier."

The parish priest had nodded his approval and invited the two to sit down, then he had moved a few meters away, standing within earshot: "Please you can both speak freely."

"Listen, architect..."

"... I prefer just doctor, Commissioner D'Aiazzo: I was never enrolled in the register, because it would not have been of any use for my business activity."

"I understand. Look, Dr. Corona, the question might seem a little personal to you, but it may concern our research: you seem strong enough, but it appears you never worked again after the stroke, although you live rather... forgive me... modestly."

Silence.

"Pardon me again, but how come you hadn’t thought of working freelance with your degree, when you returned to good health? Maybe even just as an assistant in a technical studio, you know, to make ends meet?"

"I couldn't have."

"Yes, Dr. D'Aiazzo, it’s like this," Don Colamonti had interrupted, perhaps fearing who knows what suspicions towards his parishioner that he must feel was a friend and protégé. He had turned to Corona: "May I speak, Attilio?"

The other had nodded yes.

The parish priest had continued: "The stroke left after-effects even if they are not obvious, and this was exactly why Attilio obtained the disability pension. Even today he can lose consciousness without warning. It can happen in two ways, as I have seen myself: he either simply faints, with the risk of bruising himself if there is no one beside him to stop him falling to the floor, or he can remain in the state of estrangement for a certain length of time, even though he is still in his feet and continuing to interact with the world."

"Meaning he doesn’t lose consciousness, but isn’t present to himself."

"Yes, and having no memory of it later, as if he had fallen into a trance. Perhaps these are the worst cases, because he could hurt himself even more, even be killed, for example, if he ended up under a car or a tram because he was in the street."

"What do the doctors say?"

"No cure," the interested party had spoken again.

Vittorio had asked him: "After you come back to yourself, don't you remember even a little something, I don’t know, even just a flash of images or some sounds?"

"After I return from the rapture, as I call it, I don't remember anything at all. You understand that it would be impossible for me to keep a job. I tried, you know? after my mother died, I got a job with a surveyor, but... well, it was a nightmare. I resigned, so as not to embarrass the principal and his colleagues. Apart from these very personal things, Commissioner D’Aiazzo" – he had emphasized very personal as, for a moment, his eyes had turned rather ugly – "I don’t know how much use it can be for you Police people, talking to me about the crimes of that serial killer: I have already told the Prosecutor what I know about the victims. Anyway, I'm willing to answer you, but you ask me precisely": he had spoken in a confident tone, like the man accustomed to giving orders that he must have been when he was in business.

"How were your relationships with the staff?"

"They were not satisfactory. As I have already told the magistrate, the staff were neglectful, even though we did our lawful duty to the full."

"Those five people killed by the Monster were just neglectful, or insubordinate or... even something worse? We know that they were years of fierce protest in the workplace."

"Look, commissioner, maybe I’ll tell you something about my family first, so you can understand better."

"Excellent family!" the parish priest had not restrained himself.

"Thank you, Don Giulio. Well, commissioner, my father was an orphan of an craftsman father who died in an accident at work, and had had to start working at the age of twelve as an apprentice and then as a bricklayer with an uncle, a small artisan builder. But he wanted to improve and, gritting his teeth, had studied as a surveyor at an evening school. Despite the obstacles, he graduated at the age of nineteen. Then he got a municipal job by winning a competition. He had to leave it almost immediately, though, because he had been drafted into the military. The war had started and he served in Sicily in one of the coastal battalions, as a complement second lieutenant. In July 1943, during the Anglo-American landing, he was taken prisoner with his whole regiment and relegated to a camp in Texas. He had been repatriated only at the end of the war, and had resumed his job in the Municipality of Turin as was his right.

It was in early 1947 that my father met my mother, during an evening at the home of mutual friends. Mom said it was love at first sight between dad and her, and they decided to marry shortly after. Meanwhile, my father had changed jobs, hired as technical director by the small company that would become our family business. My paternal grandfather was dead by then: in the early days of the war, he was gunned down in the street by the pilot of one of those French sniper fighters that fascist propaganda mockingly called Goofy, but which did quite a lot of harm to innocent civilians. My maternal grandmother was also killed in the war, during the great bombardment of Turin on the night between 12 and 13 July 1943, when my mother had just turned twenty. Only my maternal grandfather, a bank manager, had survived the conflict, but he died of a heart attack the year after my parents married and my mother had inherited a fair amount of assets from him: it was 1947.

"Two years later, I had just been born, the owner of the company where Dad worked decided to sell it and, thanks to mom's capital and bank loans, my parents had taken over. Serious people, totally dedicated to work and incapable of squandering, they had deservedly made a good fortune, repaying the loans and then investing in the company, creating jobs and, little by little, putting money into some apartments as well.

"They had always worked hard and would have deserved praise and never, never, attacks from employees. They kept to the rules and paid them on time, unlike certain competitors. Instead, by 1976 the company had been attacked by the staff who were indifferent to my parent’s continuous sacrifices. Obviously they went against me as well, even more actually because I had been given everything on the so-called silver platter,"

"It was an injustice, Attilio," Don Giulio had sympathized with him, movoing close to him and putting his right hand on his left shoulder; so Vittorio had noticed that the priest was not left-handed.

My friend had asked the architect, "When, exactly, did you join the business?"

"At the end of 1975, I was twenty-six. I had lived the best part of my life up to then, until the time, I mean, after graduating in architecture and doing my military service, I was made a part of my parents’ business. With the worsening of social protest in general, the attacks had become hard in our business as well and, worse, they had weighed on us even further after we hired two very negative elements almost simultaneously: Maria Capuò, the dwarf as she was called among us because she was no taller than five feet five, and Giovanna Peritti, the Pasionaria di Mirafiori as she herself boasted of being called by her fellow party members.

They had soon become the ringleaders of the protesters in our vulnerable little family business. Because of these systematic attacks from the staff, the morale of we three owners became increasingly despondent. At the height of the protest within the business, the distress my mother and I were experiencing got worse, a lot worse because my father had died from a stroke which was indirectly provoked, I’m sure, by that Giovanna Peritti: the day before his death, as she had told us shortly afterwards, Dad had given her an order and without even hearing to him to the end had insulted him, saying: 'You old fool, what do you understand being the fascist that you are?!' and gave him a shove. Since he was rather old, it had knocked him to the ground. There had been no witnesses, of course, we were in the office; the woman was smart and had got away with it. With no witnesses it would have been useless to report her, even harmful, and not having reported her it was impossible to send her away, because of the Workers' Statute."

"So you had a lot of employees, then."

"No, commissioner, but we did have more than fifteen, unfortunately. With that number the Statute required us to provide the so-called just cause to be able to dismiss anyone: even family businesses like ours."

"How many staff did you have, exactly?"

"Eighteen, at that time: it was never a large company. It was my mother’s innocence that had taken us over the limit of fifteen workers. In 1976, not knowing the law or informing my father and me, my mother had hired an apprentice worker, a good boy what’s more called Piero, and three individuals who would soon turn out to be subversives, Maria Capuò, Giovanna Peritti and Ruggero Rigoletti, all at the same time and without askimg for references on them. So mother, poor woman, had irresponsibly taken our staff from fourteen to eighteen workers. Then that Rigoletti, after creating all his great disasters, had quit, and... oh, yes! years later I would find out that he had become a member of the Red Brigade and that he had been arrested and convicted, and I believe he is still in prison..."

"... hmm..."

"... that's right; but apart from that, the staff numbers did indeed decrease after his resignation, but since there were still unfortunately seventeen, and too many, the Statute remained in force; and it also established employees’ rights to internal company organization, which meant continual confrontations between us and the trade union committee."

"Who was on the committee?"

"They were actually the five killed by the Monster; no, wait, first there was that Rigoletti, not Alessandro Cipolla who had taken over from him when the other had resigned."

Don Colamonti had intervened, with a worried tone and expression: "Attilio, are all these things are really useful?"

"Because, maybe..."

"... well, yes. You're a good man, but you run the risk of having people unfairly think badly of you." The parish priest had addressed Vittorio: "I am Attilio’s confessor, and I assure you that he is a very good person and that he does not hold grudges against anyone".

"I don't doubt it, Reverend," my friend had said ignoring it, and had turned to the former entrepreneur: "Earlier you spoke about your father who died from a stroke..."

"Yes, that the day after the confrontation with Giovanna Peritti that he had suffered, he had died of a stroke. My mother and I were left alone to respond to the violence of our homegrown rebels. I was very depressed by then, my mother’s nerves were shaken almost to hysteria; and I think that's what led the poor woman to Alz... because mom was later affected by Alzheimer's disease."

"We know that."

"I think mom, like me, became ill because of those troublemakers. It was a shocking psychological situation because the business was now in financial difficulties, which would have required the staff’s full cooperation, if only to try to achieve a balanced budget, whereas those people were making the gallows for us ...

Don Colamonti coughs insistantly.

"... yes, yes, Don Giulio, you’re right, but someone who, like me, has never hurt his neighbour must not fear the truth."

"Hmm..." was all that had come from Don Colamonti, but with an expression very similar to a mask from a Greek tragedy.

"Commissioner," Corona had continued as if, on the contrary, the priest had smiled in approval "those people inflicted us with any action that could damage us, as long as they didn’t run the risk of paying for it. For example, they secretly ruined goods ready for shipment, or slandered us with customers and suppliers, and the dwarf was a specialist in this, or they deliberately arrived late for work every second day, all of them in agreement, both the two ringleaders and their followers, meaning almost everyone. Then, with futile excuses there were sporadic internal strikes, whixh were sudden and even for just a few hours, but of enormous damage especially when there were urgent orders to be fulfilled: theywanted us to lose customers.

"In the end, those troublemakers verbally abused the few colleagues who were not working against us and with pushes and shoves as well, until they humbled them into obedience, and arrived at physically assaulting one of them, Piero. Poor thing, that good young man’s surname was Mèrdon, as I pronounce it and as he would always introduce himself, with the accent on the vowel e, but his colleagues called him, sneering, Merdòn, with an emphasis on the o¹⁰ . His companions in the orphanage where he had grown up had already insulted him that way: he vented his feelings about it once with my father and since he liked the boy, he took his side, because Piero was also studying a higher education course in the evening after work, just as he had done. That young man was perhaps the only one who really was not our enemy, the best of our employees, and I remember him with pleasure: there is, thank goodness, some child of the light after all among many children of the darkness. "

Vittorio had commented: "Once he was of major age he could have asked to change his surname at the registry office; and it's strange that his parents hadn't already done it."

"They must have been poor ignorant people, certaily the family was of poor social extraction, as Piero himself had once confided bitterly to my father: his father had been a common labourer often unemployed, his mom, just think! was the caretaker of a public toilet and because of the surname she had acquired by marriage, was subjected to bad jokes by her neighbors, in a casa di ringhiera¹¹ at Porta Palazzo, you know? uneducated people. Piero had also vnted his feelings about this too with my father, telling him they said things about her like: 'La Merdòn does honor to her name, she works in the crappers!' – 'Let's hope for her sake that she doesn’t fall inside, otherwise if they flush, goodbye Merdòn': these were things that the child had heard directly, and suffered terribly because of it. I think he wanted to get ahead by studying because of that as well.

"Even more unfortunately, he had been orphaned by both his parents very young, at the age of eleven, when a bus hit them as they were crossing Corso Regina Margherita arm in arm, near their house. It wasn’t the driver’s fault though, as they were not on the pedestrian crossing, so there had not even been any compensation to their son. The child had simply been admitted to an orphanage. When he finished eighth grade it was the mid-1970s. As was the custom, the people in charge had looked for work for him so he could maintain himself in the institution as he had to stay there until he reached the major age, which had recently been lowered from twenty-one to eighteen years. They had found a job for him as an apprentice laborer: with the eighth-grade diploma, he was allowed to start work after the age of fourteen rather than after sixteen as was the rule, with special authorization from the Employment Office. That was so as not to leave the smartest young people who did not continue school, doing nothing for two years, as idleness could do him harm.

"The young man loved culture and wanted to get ahead, so he would gladly have continued his studies full-time if the orphanage had allowed him to, but it was not foreseen by the regulations. So thanks to the salary, only part of which he had to give the orphanage, the director who had guardianship over him approved Piero’s enrolment at an evening school in a course for primary school teachers which in those years was still only four years. Apart from that, perhaps because he was accustomed to the strict discipline of the college, the young man was polite and well-behaved towards us and, as I said, always arrived on time at work, also because he had absolutely no subversive ideas at all: he had told us he was a demoliberal like his director. I think that is also why he was unpopular with our revolutionaries and, I imagine, also because he continued to study with the prospect of being promoted. Sometimes it is mere envy behind the revolutionary ideal, Mr. Police Commissioner. In return, and I sensed it from certain looks he gave those colleagues, he had a strong dislike for them as well, if he did not actually detest them,"