3 September 1982

On September 3, 1982, mafia killed General Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa, his wife, Emanuela Setti Carraro, and the police officer Domenico Russo. Dalla Chiesa was born in the province of Cuneo in 1920 and he had joined the Carabinieri forces in the Forties, during the war. After the Italian armistice of September 8^th, 1943, he became a member of the Resistance and, in the post-war period, his career in the law enforcement was launched. After two university degrees (one in Law and one in Political Science) and after holding important offices across the country, he became General in 1973. In 1982, the Government appointed him Prefetto (a local officer that depends from the Interior Ministry) in Palermo, Sicily, to fight the Sicilian mafia and its web of support and complicity, but he did not have enough time for this: his office only lasted a few months, that were enough to convince the heads of the criminal organization to plan the attack of Via Isidoro Carini, in Palermo, in which he lost his life. After the appointment, the General had lamented the lack of powers to carry out the mission he had been assigned, despite his precise requests. The judges condemned, as the instigators of the crime, Mafia bosses Riina, Provenzano, Greco, Brusca, Calò and Geraci. In 2002, the Court of Appeal of Palermo declared Vincenzo Galatolo, Nino Madonia, Francesco Paolo Anzelmo and Calogero Ganci guilty of the practical execution of the killing, but the judges also recognized, in the verdict, that there still were «grey areas» concerning both the circumstances in which Dalla Chiesa had been sent to Sicily, «alone and without means», and the «co-existence of interests -even inside the institutions- in the elimination of the danger represented […] by the competence of the General».