Primavalle Massacre. The two sons of Mario Mattei, a member of the Italian Social Movement, were burned alive by burning gasoline leaked under their door by Lollo, Clano, and Grillo, three Potere Operaio militants. The three, convicted in 1987, managed to escape to Angola and then to Brazil (a country without extradition to Italy), where they pursued journalistic and political activities until the statute of limitations expired in January 2005. The victims were 22-year-old Virgilio and 8-year-old Stefano. Several newspapers (including Il Messaggero) and intellectuals (including Franca Rame, Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, and Alberto Moravia) sided with the three arrested men, asserting their innocence and calling for their release, as well as organizing fundraisers for them. Rame wrote in a letter to Lollo, “I felt pain and humiliation in seeing people lie […] knowing you were the protagonist of that drama written by a terrible author. […] You will receive money from your comrades.” The first-instance trial concluded on June 15, 1975, with the acquittal of all three defendants due to insufficient evidence. In the second-instance trial, however, the Court of Appeal overturned the sentence because one of the judges suffered from “neurasthenic syndrome of the depressive type.” Lollo, once released, fled to Brazil with logistical and financial assistance from Potere Operaio; the appeal sentence, in turn, was overturned by the Court of Cassation, which forwarded the case to a different section of the Court of Appeal, which found the three terrorists guilty and sentenced them to 18 years in prison. The appeal sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court of Cassation on October 13, 1987, but the sentence was subsequently declared void due to the statute of limitations. In an interview with the Corriere della Sera, Lollo admitted the guilt of all three terrorists, declaring that three other members of the Tanas Brigade, Paolo Gaeta, Elisabetta Lecco, and Diana Perrone (daughter of the publisher of Il Messaggero), participated in the massacre. A week later, Grillo also admitted his guilt in the Primavalle massacre. That same year, the Rome Prosecutor’s Office reopened the case, which was ultimately dismissed in 2011.
