Campobasso – There's a dark thread that links two of the darkest pages in Italian history, separated by decades but united by a seemingly ironic geographical fate.
In the countryside of Ferrazzano, a small town in the province of Campobasso, the Carabinieri tracked down Salvatore Ocone, 58, the worker from Paupisi , in the province of Benevento, accused of having stoned his wife, Elisabetta Polcino, 49, to death.
After the crime, the man fled, taking his two children with him. The tragic outcome: one of the children was found dead, the other in critical condition. A tale of bloodshed and family madness that shook the Sannio region is now enriched by a macabre detail: the place of his capture, Ferrazzano, is the same theater where, exactly twenty years ago, Angelo Izzo, the "Monster of Circeo," returned to kill.
The ghost of Circeo
The reference is inevitable. Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Circeo massacre, one of the most brutal crimes in Italian criminal history. It was 1975 when Izzo, along with Gianni Guido and Andrea Ghira, kidnapped and tortured two young women, Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti: the former was murdered, the latter miraculously survived.
A case that marked Italy in the 1970s, a symbol of the male-dominated violence and cultural degradation of an era.
And it was in Ferrazzano, on April 28, 2005, that Izzo—already sentenced to life in prison and incredibly on semi-liberty—committed a new double crime: the killing of Maria Carmela Linciano and her daughter Valentina Maiorano, the wife and daughter, respectively, of a former member of the Sacra Corona Unita he had met in prison. Two lives shattered for money, for revenge, for the unquenched criminal fury of a man who had never stopped being a murderer.
Ocone and Izzo: different follies, same cursed place
The parallel between Ocone and Izzo is not judicial but narrative, almost symbolic. Two distant stories, certainly: on the one hand, a family femicide, born of blind rage, of domestic dynamics that turn into tragedy; on the other, the ruthless violence of a serial criminal, deeply rooted in the darkness of the Years of Lead.
Yet fate has decreed that the two names should intersect in the geography of Ferrazzano, a town now burdened by a burdensome memory: a place of captures and crimes, a setting that lends itself to becoming a symbol of an Italy unable to free itself from the ghost of its own monsters.
Femicide and domestic violence emergency
The Ocone case is part of the dramatic context of gender violence, which, as data confirms, continues to plague Italy. Every week, court reports reveal women killed by their husbands, partners, or ex-partners. According to statistics from the Ministry of the Interior, over 100 women are murdered in Italy each year, mostly within family or romantic contexts.
The femicide of Paupisi, with its horrifying outcome for the children involved, thus becomes yet another piece of a silent massacre, which affects cities and small towns, without geographical distinction.
A fifty-year-long black thread
From Rosaria Lopez to Elisabetta Polcino, from the house in Circeo to the countryside of Paupisi and Ferrazzano, a single dark thread runs: that of violence against women, of male brutality, of the fragility of institutions in preventing and containing predicted tragedies.
And while Salvatore Ocone now awaits the court's verdict, Ferrazzano's name is back in the news. Not for the memory of Angelo Izzo, nor for the anniversary of the Circeo festival, but for a new bloody episode that brings back, in a different form, the same old pain: that of women who, even today, are victims of a violence that seems to know no end.
The comparison is far-fetched, as these are completely different stories, and the fact that they are located in the same place is merely a coincidence. It also seems reductive to try to find a common denominator in gender violence, because the story that began in Paupisi is far more complex and horrifying. In fact, in this case, not only a woman and her wife were killed, but also a teenage son of just fifteen, and one truly hopes that his slightly older sister doesn't suffer the same fate! Thus, in the Paupisi events, three of the most horrific crimes coexist: not only femicide, but also so-called "familicide," which in turn includes infanticide, understood in the broader sense of the murder of one's own children.
I don't understand how it's possible that in a country like Italy there are so many femicides. Violence against women must never be tolerated, and institutions should do more to protect victims.
Yes, I agree with you. It's sad to see how history repeats itself and we don't learn from the past. Let's hope that one day these tragedies stop happening and that there is more safety for women.