An interview with our parents to discover how people around Mattei's family lived the event
The night between April 15th and 16th 1973, at 3:20 am, in a building in Bernardo da Bibbiena street a fire broke out. Afterwards it was discovered to be an attempted murder organized by six extremists of the Partito Operaio, in order to threaten Mario Mattei, an ex-dustman, militant of the Salò Republic and secretary of MSI (Movimento Sociale Italiano, aka Italian Socialist Movement). There were two victims, Stefano and Virgilio Mattei, respectively 8 and 22 years old, both of which were Mario Mattei's sons.
During an attempt to threaten Mattei, the terrorists set fire to the apartment's door by pouring five liters of petrol. Mario Mattei lived with his wife and six children, four of which were able to escape: the two youngest, Antonella and Gianpaolo left through the front door when the flames where already spreading inside, while Lucia , 15 , jumped from the window with her father and was caught by him as she fell. The last one to jump was Silvia, 19, who reached the ground from the kitchen window and got away with a couple broken ribs.
The other two sons, Virgilio, 22 and MSI militant in the paramilitary corps of National Volunteers, and Stefano, the youngest, died burnt alive while trying to reach the window. A few seconds before passing out Virgilio was seen at the sill screaming for help with his brother behind him.
In front of Mattei's house a crowd reunited after 50 years from the fact to remember the massacre
The commemorative plaque on the building in via Bernardo da Bibbiena where the tragedy took place
The investigations focused on the extra-parliamentary left and Potere Operaio's militants were investigated. The defendants, Achille Lollo, Manlio Grillo and Marino Clavo, were first released due to lack of evidence. They were later sentenced, although for less serious crimes (arson and manslaughter) than that of massacre originally contested, to 18 years of imprisonment.
The first acquittal allowed the defendants to flee abroad, eventually obtaining that the sentence imposed was declared time-barred. Lollo took refuge in Brazil before the final verdict of the Cassation and his sentence was declared extinguished on 12 October 2003. In 2005, in an interview, he admitted to have carried out, with others, a demonstrative attack with a homemade bomb that did not explode, aimed to Mario Mattei, but always maintained that he had not set fire to the house with petrol. Six years later he returned to Italy and explained that the action was carried out by a group of six people in all (including himself) and that the action was intended to be exclusively demonstrative.
Virgilio Mattei at the window seeking help
Report journal with the news of the fire
Mattei's funeral procession
46 years after the event, the green area in in the neighborhood has been dedicated to Stefano and Virgilio Mattei
We also have a testimony of a classmate of Stefano(we didn't write the name because se wants to stay anonime):
“I was born and raised and still live in the Primavalle district. This was considered a "hard" neighborhood especially in my childhood and adolescence years or the 70s. It is known that throughout Italy, especially in Rome, these were the years of terrorism when the political rivalries between right and left were so strong that it was really difficult and dangerous to leave the house. Growing up here in Primavalle meant being at the center of turmoil and political clashes almost daily. I was in elementary school when the Primavalle fire occurred, where Stefano and Virgilio Mettei died. Stefano was my classmate and a neighbor of mine... I was little but I remember everything: the smoke... the cries of the Mattei family... a daughter who threw herself off the balcony… the people of the neighborhood who told the other children to throw themselves down, that they would have caught them… but Stefano and Virgilio didn't and they died in that atrocious way amidst the cries of their parents and the people of the neighborhood… I remember the siren of the fire brigade, the ambulance and the police…
The burnt door of that house stayed that way for a long time and every time I passed by it I shivered. Not to mention the return to class where flowers had been placed on Stefano's desk in his memory. I remember that we had a very strict teacher, who used a wooden wand to hit us on the hands if we spoke, as was the custom in those years. He never mentioned the fact of the stake, as if it were something we couldn't talk about... perhaps out of a kind of respect for that innocent child, but those flowers on his desk reminded us of him every day."