La neve nel cuore

The snow in the heart

Come on, come on,

let’s watch the snow

till we’re buried in it.

Matsuo Basho

(1644 – 1694)

On 29 September 1975 Rosaria Lopez and Donatella Colasanti were drugged, raped and tortured by three torturers (Andrea Ghira, Angelo Izzo and Giovanni Guido) at Villa Moresca, the summer residence of Ghira. Rosaria died after a day and a half of torture, drowned in the bathtub. Donatella, in order to survive pretended to be dead and fought until the last day of her life for justice. Ghira was never arrested, fled to Spain under an assumed name and enlisted in the Spanish legion. Guido, after escaping from prison over and over again, served his sentence until 2009. Izzo, after several escapes obtained the semi-liberty of which he took advantage to commit a double murder. He is currently serving two life sentences in Campobasso prison.

This horror will go down in history as the Circeo Massacre.

"This", the judges will say "is the crime of the strongest on the weakest, of the male on the female, of the rich on the poor, of the young of Parioli on that of the townships".

How is it possible that a human being is able to experience all this wickedness together? How is it possible to have such frost in the heart? What does it mean to live with such an experience? Can you learn to let go at least enough to

survive? But there are those who never forget, never. And there are walls where time seems frozen, as if the clock had stopped turning since that day, September 29, 1975.

It’s just this icy weather that I try to scratch on my tiptoe, trying to retrace all these years, giving voice to the victims, in the most delicate way possible. Trying to "block" images, notes and photographs that remind us that in addition to inhuman wickedness, there is someone who thanks God every day for being alive, never forgetting to have the duty to be happy.

La neve nel cuore was edited by Yogurt Magazine and the book will be out soon.