Colleferro a year later: on their skin

This article is published in number 36 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until 7 September 2021

To find a moment that is for them, just for him and his friend, every Sunday morning Franco leaves the house and goes to the cemetery.. With him he has a bouquet of white flowers, always the same ones. In front of the tomb, he lights a cigarette and places his hand on Willy’s photo. He contemplates his smile, one last puff, then walks away.

For twelve months, Franco has been walking that road, home to the cemetery and back. What he no longer does is another, a ten-minute drive through the curves, which from their village – Paliano, on the outskirts of Rome, a world to divide them – leads to Colleferro. Where the clubs remain open even after midnight and where all the local kids go. Like so many other Willy Monteiro Duarte teammates, Franco has never covered those fourteen kilometers “because it is no longer the same without him, it hurts too much.” It hurts too much when they tell you that your best friend, 21, is gone, beaten to death by a group of exalted thugs. “It’s inexplicable, it’s like feeling something being ripped off.”

So, the last time Franco traveled the road to Colleferro was on that damned 6 September last year, even if he didn’t even get there. “While driving, I decided to go back and at the first roundabout I turned around. The next morning I had a rafting excursion and I didn’t want to be late ». That his friend was gone, Franco learned with a voice message that woke him up in the middle of the night. Willy is dead. «Gabriele sent it to me, who had stayed in Colleferro until late. I honestly took it lightly, I thought it was a way of saying that maybe that evening he had drunk too much. Things that happen”. But Willy was gone, really. “I understood what happened a few hours later. When the first phone calls came. And there I died too. I was home alone, my parents had gone to the beach. I have not understood anything anymore ».

What happened that night and the pain that erupted after, Franco and the boys of Paliano – Maria Giulia, Leonardo, Benedetta, Agnese, Mattia, Vanessa, Nicholas – if I wrote it on them. For a week, since the night she took Willy away from him, they stayed together day and night without ever saying goodbye. Close neighbors, close enough to make suffering seem more bearable, something to be crushed under the embrace of a friend, who becomes a brother in loss. «We couldn’t get away», says Maria Giulia, curly hair, big green eyes, the writing «MeriGiuli» with a red halo on I, on the ankle. “It’s the tattoo I dedicated to Willy. He used to call me that and it came spontaneously to write it on me, thinking of him ».

As the Sunday sun gets hotter, Willy’s friends arrive in the little square of Paliano one after the other. Someone brought the T-shirt with the words “Hello Willy”, the one worn for the first time during the torchlight procession organized a few days after 6 September. We start walking through the streets of the village, we arrive in front of the mural created by the artist Ozmo and commissioned by Vanity Fair. «Those are his eyes. When I saw it that day of the inauguration, I could no longer move from here », Franco tells us, recalling the scar that in June ruined another mural dedicated to his friend, in the streets of Pescara.

A Colleferro, the small square filled with flowers, banners and souvenirs for Willy seems semi-abandoned, but there is still everything that was brought a year ago. The scarf of Rome, a chef’s hat, the flag of Peace together with that of Cape Verde, the country of origin of Willy’s family. And then again the soft toys, the candles now extinguished and covered with dust, the poems written on the laminated sheets. Two guys kiss on a bench. Behind, the barracks. In a bar a few hundred meters away they seem to have removed what happened “to that poor boy”. Nobody mentions Willy, perhaps because it hurts too much, “but also because we don’t want to be associated with those who killed him.” The brothers Gabriele and Marco Bianchi, detained in the Rebibbia prison and accused of aggravated voluntary murder together with Marco Pincarelli. The fourth accused, Francesco Belleggia is under house arrest. The trial, which began in July, before the Frosinone Court of Assizes is underway for all. A lady calls them «the twins», she doesn’t want to talk about it but she says one thing: «This violent climate is also the fault of politics. Slogans. In these areas there have always been right-wing fringes, even extreme ones, it is useless to deny it ». The most recent events also tell it, such as the request of the former municipal councilor of the Lega in Colleferro, Andrea Santucci, to return to name the Piazzale dei Partisiani in Roma Ostiense after Hitler.

«What happened to Willy could have happened to any of usSnaps Nicholas, while he is sitting with the others in the park dedicated to Willy, in Paliano. “And the worst thing is that only after his death did light come to light on the complaints already filed against those people. Why not first? You do a lot to create your own life, to give your best. Then you find yourself at the mercy of people like that. If we do something we immediately come to look for us at home, while others remain undisturbed. That evening I was in Colleferro in the company of Willy, I only went home shortly before. That evening had nothing different from the others ».

A few meters from the park is the house where Willy’s family lives. His car is parked outside. “He was obsessed with his White Point,” smiles Leonardo. “He had it all personalized, very loud stereo, blue lights,” continues Franco. “If you go into his room there is a shelf completely dedicated to car cleaning. When he had his day off, he sometimes even dusted the engine. You knew he was arriving in the square because when he turned on the radio in front of his house he could hear all over Paliano. Then you saw him coming down the slope ». The Punto Bianca continues to move through the streets of Paliano, «the mother Lucia or her sister Milena use it. The first time I saw her pass, my heart sank », continues Benedetta, who when she talks about Willy lights up, gives a half smile and doesn’t hesitate to say that she misses everything about him. “This year has flown but none of us have yet accepted his death. It is not possible. For me he went on a distant journey. And one day it will come back».

Anger is absent from Willy’s friends’ tales. All in their twenties, university students, summer workers. “You think so much about losing a friend that it is impossible to be angry with someone. It is so big, that void, that it fills everything, ”adds Maria Giulia, as she says that in a box she has enclosed everything that Willy reminds her of: a T-shirt, some newspapers, photos. For a while he was afraid. “The first few months immediately after Willy’s death we were anxious to be alone. We always went out in groups. We never left Paliano, this park. We used to go home even a little earlier in the evening ».

Franco raises the sleeve of his shirt and shows an inscription on his arm: Wish You Were Here. “It’s the Pink Floyd song, but for me it’s mostly the song that makes me imagine Willy nearby. The day before the torchlight procession, I heard her go on the radio many times. And I decided to tattoo the title ». Then he takes that look, the one he shares with Willy’s other friends, that unites them, that lights up when you know each other as a child and become an adult together. “We have shared twenty years of life. Willy left us a great legacy ”, says his best friend as he looks at the photos that show them together:“ The awareness of having to be happy with what we have, to live it to the fullest. He gave the right weight to things, he never quarreled. Now for us the best thing is to be together. And remember Willy every time we meet. Even if it hurts, because he is not with us ».

Photo: Stefano Schirato

The cover of Vanity Fair of 21 September 2020, dedicated to Willy Monteiro Duarte, which portrays the mural created for us by Ozmo in the square in Paliano, the boy’s town.

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