The Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office
has opened a new investigation into the murder of filmmaker Pier
Paolo Pasolini, who was brutally killed in the seaside Rome
district of Ostia on the night between November 1 and 2, 1975.
The case has been reopened after a lawyer, Stefano Maccioni,
filed a petition saying that recently discovered archive footage
and other evidence shows that the rent boy who initially took
the rap was not alone on the night of the murder.
The death of the 53-year-old iconic poet, novelist, director and
leftist political commentator remains a mystery.
A 17-year-old, Pino Pelosi, confessed to murdering Pasolini the
day after his death and was found guilty in 1976, but several
years later retracted his confession, saying he was pressured
into making it.
Pelosi was released on parole in 1983 and died of cancer aged 58
in 2017.
The initial ruling said Pelosi was not alone when Pasolini was
killed but a subsequent decision by an appeals court upholding
the conviction did not confirm the role of any accomplices and
that is sentence was later ratified by the supreme Court of
Cassation.
“We trust that the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Rome will
finally be able to provide the answers we have been seeking for
far too many years,” said Maccioni, who previously represented
one of the victim’s cousins, Guido Mazzon, and is now working on
behalf of the Lazio Journalists Guild, filmmaker David Grieco,
and writer Giovanni Giovannetti.
“At the same time, we urge all those who have chosen to remain
silent about what they knowe until now, to come forward and
speak”.
Previous petitions to reopen the investigation filed in 2016 and
2023 were rejected by the Prosecutor’s Office.
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