Pasolini, un delitto italiano (1995)

On the night between November 1 and 2, 1975, the Carabinieri in Ostia stop and arrest a young man driving an Alfa Romeo 2000 GT Veloce at reckless speed. He is Giuseppe Pelosi, 17, already known to law enforcement and nicknamed “Pino the Frog,” who is accused of killing the celebrated director, writer, and poet Pier Paolo Pasolini, since the car in which he was found belongs to the intellectual. All of Italy mourns the death of the 53-year-old Pasolini, including his friends: actor Ninetto Davoli, writer Alberto Moravia, and director Sergio Citti. Meanwhile, Pino Pelosi gives a statement: he says that he was with Pasolini in the director’s car that night and that they had oral sex. Later, according to Pelosi’s account, he got out of the car to look around, and Pasolini came after him, wanting to have sex. Pelosi supposedly refused to oblige him and fought back, whereupon Pasolini allegedly struck him repeatedly with a stick. At some point, Pino supposedly retaliated by hitting him with a wooden sign, fracturing his skull and several ribs. Pelosi then supposedly drove off in the car and accidentally killed Pasolini by running him over; before getting into the car, Pelosi claims, he washed his bloodstained hands at a fountain. This account would prove false, because when Pelosi was arrested his hands were not wet, and the car’s steering wheel showed no traces of either blood or water. Another significant detail emerges when investigators from the prosecutor’s office recover Pasolini’s car: a sweater was found inside it that belonged neither to the poet nor to the young man. The investigation is not properly conducted, whether because of the prosecutor’s office members’ incompetence or by their design. Matters go so far that the blood evidence on the roof of the Alfa Romeo is washed away by rain after the car is left out in the open during a downpour. Inspector Pigna, assigned to handle the investigation, wants to look further into the case. He therefore asks his superior for permission to question the defendant’s usual associates and some residents of Idroscalo, and also to carry out a raid on the male-prostitution scene around Piazza dei Cinquecento. The official, however, refuses permission, sharply criticizing Pigna for tending to complicate the reconstruction of a murder which, in his view, should simply be dismissed as a typical case of a homosexual encounter ending tragically. Meanwhile, other members of the prosecutor’s office suspect that one of Pino Pelosi’s friends was involved. The residents of the Ostia seafront do not want to give statements, either out of fear or because they consider homosexuality abhorrent and wholly reprehensible. Many of them believe that Pasolini “was asking for it” that night—that is, that he himself caused his death. In the days that follow, since everything suggests that the defendant, Pino Pelosi, might be acquitted at trial on the grounds of “immaturity,” the director’s family’s lawyers commission the respected forensic doctor Faustino Durante to conduct a second forensic examination of Pasolini’s body, as well as further analyses of his car. This brings new details to light, and the family’s expert, refuting false reports circulated by television news and newspapers, concludes that the condition of the corpse is so grave that the prosecution’s theory that the defendant was the sole person responsible for the murder must be rejected. Instead, the evidence points to the more credible possibility that unknown accomplices were involved. On the advice of a friend in prison, the defendant changes lawyers. His new lawyer devotes himself wholeheartedly to proving his innocence, portraying the minor as perfectly immature. The trial takes place, with Dr. Alfredo Carlo Moro presiding over the court. Pelosi, wholly inept and inexperienced—or trying to appear that way on his lawyer’s advice—denies acting with unknown accomplices and repeats that he behaved violently toward Pasolini on the night of November 2, 1975. Meanwhile, Trepalle, apparently a customer at the gambling den regularly frequented by Pelosi and his friends but in fact a police officer infiltrating the neo-fascist circles in Rome’s outlying districts, manages to provide the names of some young men who boast of having been involved in Pasolini’s murder: “Braciola,” “Calabrone,” and Johnny, nicknamed “the Gypsy.” In Trepalle’s view, they may have been Pino’s accomplices in the November 2 murder. When “Braciola” goes with his younger brother to meet a convicted criminal from outside Rome to arrange a robbery, he brazenly admits to having taken part in the killing. But the meeting turns out to be a police trap, and the two brothers are arrested. However, once taken to the police station, the young men deny everything, explaining that they lied out of vanity, which leaves the police unable to continue the investigation for lack of evidence. Meanwhile, photographs are printed of the new autopsy of Pasolini’s body, since the originals had been tampered with or made to disappear. During the final part of the trial, Dr. Durante, firmly convinced that Pasolini was killed by several people and not by Pelosi alone, shows the photographs of the body to the Juvenile Court. Drawing on the autopsy findings and the analysis of the victim’s car, the family’s expert points out inconsistencies in some details of Pelosi’s statements, then reconstructs the most plausible version of what happened on the night of November 2. After meeting Pino near Termini Station, inviting him into his car, and treating him to dinner at a trattoria, Pasolini drives him to the Ostia seafront. There, the director takes off his glasses, and the two have oral sex; Pasolini does not put his glasses back on afterward. In this new reconstruction, the victim is dragged forcibly out of the car and beaten severely by Pino’s accomplices while Pino watches without getting his hands dirty. Pasolini then tries to escape, pressing his shirt against the head wound he has suffered, but his attackers catch up with him and brutally beat him with the wooden board later found at the scene. Despite the violence he has suffered, the writer is still alive. One of the attackers then deliberately runs him over in the victim’s car, crushing his chest and causing cardiac arrest. The deliberate nature of the act is said to be shown by the angle of the tire marks on Pasolini’s body. The blood traces on the roof of the Alfa Romeo could therefore have been left by one of Pelosi’s accomplices, since Pelosi’s hands were clean, although Pasolini’s blood had spattered onto his shirt and trousers. As for the wound on Pino’s forehead, it was not caused by blows from limbs or blunt objects, as he claimed the victim had inflicted. Rather, while fleeing from the police, Pelosi braked sharply and hit his head on the sun visor, leaving traces of his blood there. Pasolini’s family waives its claim for compensation, and on the morning of April 26, 1976, Pelosi is convicted at first instance of “intentional homicide in complicity with persons unknown” and sentenced to nine years in prison. A short time later, the Pasolini family’s lawyer realizes that the Office of the Attorney General has prevented the case from being reopened to establish more accurately whether the unknown persons were present that night and who they were, since the suspects had been released because of the evasiveness of their statements and the lack of evidence. The lawyer’s authorization to intervene in the case is then revoked, and all the case materials, including objects and equipment found at the scene of Pasolini’s murder, are sealed in a box and archived forever.