Fire of Primavalle, on April 16, 1973, the tragic death of the Mattei brothers

It is April 16, 1973. It is 3:20 am on Monday when, in the Roman district of Primavalle, in via Bernardo di Bibbiena number 33, lot 15, staircase D, third floor, a group of young people from Potere Operaio leaves in front of the door of a apartment a petrol can with a hand-crafted primer. They activate the fuse and run away. A few seconds and then the explosion, very powerful. Read also The door is engulfed in flames, which in a few minutes spread to the whole house. It is the apartment of a former garbage man, Mario Mattei, who was 48 at the time, secretary of the ‘Giarabub’ section of the MSI, Italian Social Movement, in via Svampa. He has six children: when he notices the fire, he throws himself off a balcony. His wife Anna and two youngest children, 9-year-old Antonella and 3-year-old Giampaolo, manage to escape from the front door when the fire begins to spread. Lucia, 15 years old, thanks to her father, descends into the balcony on the second floor and throws herself from there, caught on the fly by Mattei already on the ground despite the burns on her body. Silvia, 19, throws herself from the kitchen veranda: she hits her head on the railing of the second floor, her back on the gas pipe, is held back for a few moments by the clothes lines and then ends up on the sidewalk of the courtyard with the fracture of two ribs and three vertebrae. The other two children, Virgil of 22, a militant from Missino of the National Volunteers, and his 8-year-old brother Stefano, however, are unable to throw themselves out of the window to escape the flames. Trapped, they manage to get out and try to ask for help. Some photos of the time portray Virgil just as, completely blackened and with his face already devastated by flames, he tries to shout for help. They die burnt alive within minutes. The firefighters find them charred and embraced near the window that they had not managed to climb over. Achille Lollo, who died yesterday in Trevignano Romano, is sentenced with Marino Clavio and Manlio Grillo to 18 years of imprisonment for the massacre of Primavalle. the three having avoided arrest by fleeing abroad: Clavo and Grillo before the trial and Lollo after the first degree, when, pending the appeal, he is released.

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