ITALY: The Man Who Knew Too Much

One of the world’s most tantalizing murder mysteries last week received a belated public airing.

It began in Rome one day in June 1924, when an old woman sitting in a doorway and a little boy playing in the street saw a grey Fiat sedan pull up to a curb. Five men jumped out, grabbed Socialist Deputy Giacomo Matteotti, leader of the opposition to Benito Mussolini. They wrestled him into the car. It raced away. That was the last that was seen of Matteotti until his body, stabbed 36 times, beaten, partly burned, was found a few days later in a Roman ditch.

All over the world, Socialists, Liberals, Communists pointed a finger at Mussolini and cried: “Murderer!”

The hubbub in Italy was tremendous. If Mussolini’s complicity in the murder had been proved, he would have been driven from the Government. Nobody did prove it. Cried Mussolini: “Only an enemy who for long nights had thought of something diabolical against me could have committed this crime.”

He arrested five alleged assassins, headed by Amerigo Dumini, a boastful, U.S.-born gangster and Fascist. He forced other suspects into hiding. Among them: Filippelli, editor of Rome’s only Fascist newspaper, Cornere Italiano.

The Ghost Walks. The crisis passed.

Mussolini was saved. But somehow the world never forgot the crime. From time to time Matteotti’s ghost, started up to haunt Mussolini. From time to time people involved in the murder talked. But they never really told anything. Nevertheless there was a perennial rumor that the Corriere Italiano’s editor Filippelli (who has since dropped out of sight) had written a full confession. Only one photostated copy of the confession existed.

In Rome last week able New York Timesman Herbert L. Matthews somehow procured (he would not say where) and published Filippelli’s 20-year-old photostat. The confession had been paraphrased in part in George Seldes’ Sawdust Caesar. Matthews reported the full text.

The Ghost Talks. Filippelli confessed:

“Dumini [the actual murderer of Matteotti] is very well known to the President of the [Fascist] Council, Honorable Mussolini.

“Dumini 1) had carried out an assault on Misuri [Deputy Alfred Misuri], 2) had worked in France, 3) had recently assaulted Forni [Deputy Cesare Forni] in a station at Milan with Mussolini’s knowledge and connivance. . . .

“Monday, June 9, 1924, Dumini asked me for a car for three or four days. He told me it would be used by some of his friends and that I would be doing something which would give pleasure to Rossi [Fascist Press Chief] and Marinelli [then Economic Secretary of the Fascist party]. . . . I agreed that Dumini should use a car that I hired.

“I knew nothing more until Tuesday evening around midnight. . . .

Something in a Newspaper. “Dumini entered my office with something rolled up in a newspaper [believed to have been Matteotti’s bloody clothing] and asked me to find him a place where he could keep the automobile during the night.” Filippelli became suspicious. It dawned on him that Gangster Dumini had used his car to commit a political murder. Filippelli was shocked and panicky. He did not yet know who the victim was.

“Wednesday morning Rossi . . . sought me . . . told me 1) that Dumini notified him he had used my car; 2) that the affair was grave; 3) that President Honorable Mussolini knew everything; 4) that he, Rossi, and Marinelli had given the orders following agreements with the Honorable; 5) that it was necessary at all costs to keep things quiet otherwise Mussolini himself would be overthrown. . . .”

Later Filippelli “learned among other things . . . 1) that the victim of the Dumini assault was the Honorable Matteotti; 2) that the order to suppress him came from the Cheka of the National Fascist party whose material executioners were Dumini and others known—even for this very specific last function—to Mussolini himself; 3) that they [the assassins] spoke with Mussolini during Wednesday; 4) that actually Mussolini had received letters and passport of Honorable Matteotti as proof of his disappearance.” He was told, ” ‘It is a question of state. The regime is in peril’ . . . Power and state were endangered for Mussolini. What should I do? Any word or gesture of mine could compromise Mussolini, personally, so momentarily I kept quiet. . . .

“Professor Carlo Bazzi [Republican councillor and journalist close to Mussolini] . . . knows everything. He knows also because he was present at my dramatic conversations at Rossi’s house in which I asked the moral liberation of my person, guilty of having believed in Mussolini. . . .”

Open Secret. Weirdest point in Timesman Matthews’ story was his assertion that he has “unimpeachable information” that most of Rome’s leading politicos, Socialists, Liberals and Communists, knew of Filippelli’s confession from the very beginning, but said nothing. Their reasons for silence ranged from the Liberals’ desire to keep the aged conservative Giovanni Giolitti from succeeding Mussolini, to the Communists’ desire not to endanger Russian-Italian relations. (Mussolini had just recognized the Soviet Government.)

But nothing in the dark report quite matches the moment when Mussolini, knowing that Matteotti had been murdered at his orders, went to Matteotti’s wife, protested that he hoped she would soon find her husband. Said Herbert Matthews: “We can see now that of all ignoble things Mussolini did in his career this was the basest.”