Paolo Borsellino thirty years later, a massacre still without truth

It was a Sunday, July 19, 1992the day the judge was killed Paolo Borsellino and five escort agents: Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina and Claudio Traina. The only survivor was the agent Antonino Vullo. At the moment of the explosion he was parking one of the cars of the escort, which had arrived with Borsellino in via D’Amelio, in Palermo, where the judge had gone to visit his mother. It had been less than months sinceattack on Giovanni Falcone in Capaci. Paolo Borsellino knew he was the next target, even more clearly than he already knew from the 1980s that he was in the sights of the mafia.

If the dynamics and instigators of the Capaci massacre are known, many mysteries remain on the one in via D’Amelio, also due to misdirections, which ended up in trial.

The day of the massacre

The massacre in via D’Amelio took place on Sunday 19 July 1992. Whoever placed the TNT in the car that blew up with a remote control knew that Sunday was the day when the magistrate went to visit his mother, who lived in via Mariano D’Amelio in Palermo, road considered dangerous by the escorts, but for which the authorization for the parking ban had never arrived. Usually in the afternoon. And in the afternoon there was the massacre.

The explosion

It was 16.58 when a stolen Fiat 126 blew up. It contained about 90 kilograms of explosives such as Semtex-H, PETN, TNT and T4 combined. The command was activated remotely as soon as Borsellino and the escort agents got out of the cars.

So he told it the surviving agent Antonino Vullo: «The judge and my colleagues had already got out of the cars, I was maneuvering, I was parking the car that was at the head of the procession. I heard no noise, nothing suspicious, absolutely nothing. Suddenly it was hell. I saw a big blaze, I felt the armored car jolt. The shock wave knocked me off the seat. I don’t know how I got out of the car. Around me there were shreds of human flesh scattered all over the place … ».

The victims

Antonino Vullo woke up in hospital, in very serious conditions, but alive. Not so the magistrate and five other officers of the escort: Agostino Catalano, Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, Claudio Traina and Emanuela Loi who was the first woman to be part of an escort and the first woman of the State Police to fall into service. .

The street

It was a war scene that presented itself to the first responders. There were dozens of cars destroyed by flames, people screaming and half-destroyed buildings. A bomb had gone off, as if in a conflict. The scene of the massacre was not immediately protected and delimited. Paolo Borsellino’s red diary disappeared and it is still one of the open mysteries about a massacre that has few truths.

The red agenda

Borsellino never left the red diary, according to the stories of friends and relatives, especially in the weeks before his death. The diary was not in the magistrate’s bag at the site of the explosion, while the other diary he used was intact, and was never found. In the bag returned to the family was everything except that red notebook.

This is what the eldest of Borsellino’s children, Lucia, said: “On the day of his death, I saw my father put in his bag, among other things, the red diary from which he never separated.” This added his brother Manfredi: «After Giovanni Falcone’s death he used it continuously. And not to write down personal facts. It was certainly a way to mark important business events and things. If it hadn’t been lost, the investigation into his death would certainly have taken another direction. ‘

Processes and misdirections

Paolo Borsellino had said it before he died: “They will kill me, maybe it will be mafia to do it materially but others will have wanted my death.” Thirty years and dozens of trial hearings have passed without reaching a truth in what has been called the most serious misdirection in republican history. There was the Borsellino uno in 1994, bis, ter, quater and a trial, still pending in the second instance, against the last super-fledgling of Cosa Nostra: the boss Matteo Messina Denaro.

Many questions remained open, not so much on the role of the mafia in the execution of the massacre, but on the responsibilities outside the Cosa Nostra, on the fate of the red agenda, on the authors of the misdirection of the investigations. Less than a week ago the charges against two of the policemen, accused of having polluted the investigation into the massacre, and acquitted a third agent, were declared terminated.

In the first trial, the material perpetrators of the massacre were sentenced. Vincenzo Scarantino, a smuggler who had accused himself, the boss Salvatore Profeta, Giuseppe Orofino, owner of the workshop where the 126 used as a car bomb was stuffed with TNT, and Pietro Scotto. Life imprisonment for Prophet, 9 years for Orfino, 18 for Scarantino and acquittal for Scotto the final sentences.

The bis trial ended on March 18, 2004 with 13 life sentences for i top management of the Cosa Nostra: Totò Riina, Salvatore Biondino, Pietro Aglieri, Giuseppe Graviano, Carlo Greco, Gaetano Scotto, Francesco Tagliavia, Cosimo Vernengo, Giuseppe La Mattina, Natale Gambino, Lorenzo Tinnirello, Giuseppe Urso and Gaetano Murana. The words of the repentant Gaspare Spatuzza led to the suspension of the sentences for Prophet, Scotto, Vernengo, Gambino, La Mattina, Urso and Murana, unjustly accused. Their sentences were overturned.

In the Purse ter, in 2006, were sentenced to life to Bernardo Provenzano, Pippo Calò, Michelangelo La Barbera, Raffaele and Domenico Ganci, Francesco and Giuseppe Madonia, Giuseppe and Salvatore Montalto, Filippo Graviano, Cristoforo Cannella, the two Salvatore Biondo, Giuseppe Farinella, Salvatore Buscemi, Nitto Santapaola, Mariano Agate, Benedetto Spera. The two collaborators of justice Antonino Giuffrè and Stefano Ganci were sentenced to 20 and 26 years in prison. Three repentants were sentenced: Salvatore Cancemi, Giovanni Brusca and Giovanbattista Ferrante.

The Wallet quaterwhich ended in 2021, saw the life imprisonment sentences for the massacre of the two mafia bosses Salvatore Madonia and Vittorio Tutino and the three false repentants Calogero Pulci, 10, Francesco Andriotta, 9 years and 6 months, and Vincenzo Scarantino, prescription charges.

In the last process, the one on the misdirection, the accusation was of slander, aggravated by having favored the mafia. The men who investigated were on trial: Mario Bo, Fabrizio Mattei and Michele Ribaudo. The third was acquitted, the aggravating circumstance fell and slander was prescribed for the first two. The culprits, beyond the mafia, have never been identified.

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