C‘it’s something incredible, something monstrously incredible in the absurd death of Marco Vanninitwenty years old, who could have been saved and was instead left to die at his girlfriend’s house, surrounded by her family.
Accidentally hit by a bullet fired in the bathroom by Viola’s father (but the dynamics of the “accident” have never been fully clarified), Marco remains in agony for almost two hours, while around him the Ciontoli family – his girlfriend, his brother, his parents – wastes time, delays, pretends, and when he finally calls for help he minimizes and carefully avoids talking about the shot.
Francesca Di Stefano, journalist and author, and Giulio Golia, correspondent of the Hyenashave followed the case for years and now they tell it in a book just published (Marco’s last night. Truth and lies about the Vannini casePiemme) which reads like a close investigation, like the tribute of affection and memory to an innocent boy, like the implacable denunciation of indifference and the inability to recognize a mistake.
Aldo Cazzullo (photo by Carlo Furgeri Gilbert).
If Antonio Ciontoli, a naval petty officer, had immediately called for help and confessed to having shot, Marco would still be alive: «Marco could have lived. He could have told this story himself. He could have sat in front of a camera and said: “I once risked my life because of a mistake. But someone had the courage to save me.” But no.”
“Marco’s last night. Truth and lies about the Vannini case” by Francesca Di Stefano and Giulio Golia (Piemme).
Di Stefano and Golia reconstruct the events of that night with a work of rereading the testimonies which displays before the reader an impressive series of contradictions, inconsistencies, gross lies.
The whole family works to diminish the father’s responsibility and to erase their own, and only after various trials will Antonio Ciontoli be sentenced to fourteen years and all his family members to nine years. We will never know the whole truth about that night, but we know that Marco could have been saved.
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All articles by Aldo Cazzullo.