Born in Foggia in 1921, a deputy police commissioner in Rome in 1943-44, Mauro De Mauro, after the Second World War moved to Palermo where he devoted himself to journalism revealing himself as an excellent reporter for several newspapers before finally arriving at L’Ora. In 1962 he had covered the tragic end of Eni’s president, Enrico Mattei, and in September 1970 he was again dealing with the case on behalf of the director Francesco Rosi for his film The Mattei Affair which was released two years later. On Wednesday 16th September 1970, at 9 pm, De Mauro was about to return to his home in via delle Magnolie, a residential area of Palermo. His daughter Franca saw him talking to some men, then getting back into his BMW and leaving. The car was found but there was no trace of De Mauro. Years later, some mafiosi turned state witnesses said that the journalist was killed by order of the Cosa Nostra. The case is not yet closed. It is believed, in fact, that the murder was carried out to block De Mauro’s investigation into the death of Mattei. Yet another theory points to a hypothetical coup by the “black prince” Junio Valerio Borhese whom De Mauro regarded as the commander of the Decima Mas (special Italian Navy forces).
(from Remembrance Day of journalists killed by Mafia and terrorism, 2008)
(Update by Dario Barà – 3 May 2020)
In over 50 years it has not been possible to find either his body, or to ascertain on the judicial level those responsible for his disappearance in Palermo on September 16th 1970. It remains a profound mystery. Numerous investigations and trials have identified a role of Cosa Nostra but failed to attribute the responsibility to the Mafia boss Totò Riina or to other Mafia members. Some light has been shone on the context at least on a journalistic level. Among the various investigative tracks, the most trodden one concerns the investigation that the journalist was conducting on the tragic death of ENI president Enrico Mattei in a plane crash in 1962. The other track, equally followed, but without success, leads to the possible revelations that the journalist could have made about the Borghese Coup which was attempted two months later. The trial history speaks of misdirection and “tampered” evidence and evokes a scenario in which organized crime, obscure powers, secret services and dubious individualsmove behind the scenes. This is the timeline:
- 2005 – The investigation into the kidnapping and murder of the journalist Mauro De Mauro ends.
- 2006 – The first degree trial begins in Palermo whose only defendant was the Corleonese boss Totò Riina.
- 2011 – In June 2011, the Court of Palermo acquits Totò Riina, accused of being the instigator of the murder of the journalist from L’Ora. According to the prosecutor of the time, Antonio Ingroia, what led to the kidnapping and murder of De Mauro was an intertwining of interests between the Mafia and other “external entities” in order to stop the journalist’s investigative activity: deviant freemasonry, “cliques in Rome”, secret services, investigative apparatuse and the world of finance. The prosecutors had asked for a life sentence for Riina. The Court, however, after hearing several plea-bargain collaborators and witnesses, including Massimo Ciancimino, who claimed that Mauro De Mauro was killed for what he had discovered on the death of Eni President, Enrico Mattei, acquitted Totò Riina because the evidence collected was insufficient (some had been stolen or tampered with) and it sent the documents to the Public Prosecutor so that he could proceed for false testimony intended to mislead investigators. “De Mauro – the Court stated – had come too close to discovering the truth about the sabotage of Enrico Mattei’s plane, a hypothesis of which De Mauro had always been convinced and which, if proved, would have had devastating impact on the precarious general political equilibrium in a country gripped by subversive ferment and an asphyxiated political framework, unable to respond to the needs for societal renewal and in some parts tempted by ambitions for authoritarian changes “.
- 2012 – In November 2012, the Palermo Prosecutor’s Office presented an appeal against the acquittal of the boss Totò Riina on charges of having the journalist kidnapped and killed.
- 2013 – In April 2013 the appeal process begins.
- 2014 – In January 2014 the Palermo Court of Appeal confirmed the acquittal sentence against Riina, the only defendant in the trial. Contradictory evidence, lack of clarity of the elements collected, conflicting statements by collaborators were the reasons for the acquittal of the Sicilian Mafia boss. The Court, however, in the judgement writes that the involvement of Cosa Nostra in the De Mauro crime is certain and traces the murder back to the group headed by the boss Stefano Bontate, identifying the probable motive in the discovery by the journalist of important news about the death of the Eni president Enrico Mattei.
- 2015 – In June 2015, accepting the request of the General Prosecutor, the Supreme Court definitively confirmed Riina’s acquittal for the De Mauro murder for “not having committed the deed”. According to the Court, the only certainty is that it was the Mafia that killed the journalist but there remain “insuperable” doubts “on the identification of the perpetrators of the murder” and on its “tangible origins”.
