Simone Pianetti – anarchist and mass murderer

1914 killer still officially 'on the run'

Simone Pianetti remains officially
'on the run' - after 112 years

Notorious gunman Simone Pianetti, who has been regarded as a hero by some Italian and American anarchists, was born on this day in 1858 in Camerata Cornello in the province of Bergamo in Lombardy.

In July 1914, Pianetti went out with his rifle one day and shot and killed seven people living in his local area who he believed had wronged him. He then went on the run and, after firing at some Carabinieri officers who tried to arrest him, escaped into the mountains above Bergamo.

A search was carried out by more than 200 officers, from the Polizia di Stato, the Carabinieri and an infantry regiment, to try to capture him, but Pianetti managed to stay hidden in the mountains near the villages of Olmo al Brembo and Cassiglio.

Despite a 'Wanted' poster being published and circulated by the local Prefetto, offering a 5,000 lire reward, Pianetti was never caught and his body was never found.

It is known that when he was young, Pianetti had fired his rifle at his father without injuring him, after an argument over a legacy. He was not charged with any offence as a result and with the agreement of the local head of the Carabinieri, he left Italy and went to the USA.

Years later, he returned to Italy, his journey being paid for by his father, and he went back to live in Camerata Cornello, where he married and fathered seven children.

He opened a small restaurant where customers were also allowed to dance, but because the local parish priest and other church officials did not approve of the dancing at his restaurant, he was eventually forced to close it by the local municipal authorities.

He then opened an electric powered mill, but this also turned out to be an unsuccessful business venture. His reputation was blackened by his enemies and as a result he lost all his money and became impoverished.

As the only person in the area who did not attend church, Pianetti grew to believe that everyone hated him, which led to his murderous rampage in 1914.

A reward of 5,000 lire was offered
if Pianetti could be tracked down

On the morning of 13 July, Pianetti went out with his rifle and a list of the seven people who he believed had contributed towards his business failures and his poverty by either closing him down, or cheating him. 

His victims were the local doctor, Domenico Morali, the manager of the municipality, Abramo Giudici, and his daughter, Valeria, Giovanni Ghilardi, a shoemaker, Stefano Filippo, a priest, Giovanni Giupponi, a layman, and Caterina Milesi, a farmer.

It is thought his actions in 1914 may have been inspired by those of Gavrilo Princip, a Serbian student, who had assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife the previous month, the famous killings that set off the events that led to the start of World War I.

Pianetti was known to have survived in hiding in the mountains for some time and it is not known when, or where, he eventually died. It is thought that it may have been in 1952 in Milan, but this has never been proved. 

There were reported sightings of him in the Bergamo mountains, as well as in America and Venezuela. 

Some of the local people began to see the fugitive Pianetti as a liberator, and wrote on walls, praising him, with slogans such as ‘Long Live Pianetti, we need one in every town’. 

It is thought people helped him stay hidden from the authorities by giving him food and some residents were later sentenced to terms of imprisonment by the authorities for helping him.

Pianetti hailed from the village of Camerata 
Cornello in the Val Brembana area of Lombardy

In his absence, Pianetti was sentenced to life imprisonment, which was accompanied by five years in continuous solitary confinement.

Many theories have been put forward about how he escaped justice. Some people claim to have met him years later in either Switzerland or America, and there is a theory that in his old age he returned from America and lived with his son, Nino, in Milan, until he died in 1952.

In later years, Pianetti’s personality came to be admired by some Italian and American anarchists because of his actions against what was perceived to be the bigotry of those in authority in Italy in the religious establishment and society of his time.

He is remembered in towns in the Brembana Valley as a sort of avenger, often referred to as a righter of wrongs, and a kind of elusive hero opposed to the people in authority. The “romantic” aspect of the story prevails, leaving aside the tragic and criminal side, and the threat of “doing like Pianetti”, (in the Bergamo dialect fà de Pianetti ) is still used.

Pianetti’s death has never been recorded and the case against him has never been dropped, so he is now officially on the run aged 168.

The hamlet of Cornello dei Tasso, near Camerata
Cornello, is one of Lombardy's most beautiful villages

Travel tip:

Camerata Cornello, where Pianetti was born, is a small municipality in the province of Bergamo in Lombardy about 20km (12 miles) north of the city of Bergamo, in the upper part of the Brembana Valley, with a population of around 550 residents. It is one of the oldest towns in the valley and the first written information about it dates back to the year 1000. It is thought that the first permanent settlements in this area date back to the time of the barbarian invasions, when local populations fled to remote places to escape raids. In the Middle Ages part of fiefdom of the Visconti family, it grew in importance thanks to trade brought by the Via Mercatorum. Its thriving market made it a rival to neighbouring Zogno and San Giovanni Bianco.  In the 13th century the town was the birthplace of several members of the Tasso family, of which the poets Bernardo and Torquato are the most famous. The nearby hamlet of Cornello dei Tasso is among the best preserved and most picturesque in Lombardy.

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The Grand Hotel at San Pellegrino is one of the
best known landmarks in the Val Brembana

Travel tip:

The Val Brembana - Brembana Valley - stretches along the River Brembo, from the outskirts of Bergamo into the Orobic Alps. Its landscape is characterised by steep, forested slopes giving way to alpine meadows, with fast-moving rivers coursing through narrow gorges and stone villages clinging to the hillsides above the towns of the valley, the most famous of which is San Pellegrino Terme, the birthplace of San Pellegrino mineral water, also known for its Grand Hotel and Casino, built in the architectural style known as Stile Liberty, the Italian take on Art Nouveau. Val Brembana’s cuisine is hearty, alpine, and draws heavily on local ingredients, particularly its cheeses, including Branzi, made in the village of the same name, Formai de Mut, Averara and Valtorta. Venison and wild boar can be found on menus, inevitably accompanied by polenta, an alpine comfort food made from buckwheat flour, often with local cheese stirred in. 

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More reading:

Carmine Crocco, the bandit seen by peasants as Italy’s ‘Robin Hood’

Giuseppe Musolino, the vengeful killer who became an unlikely folk hero

Gino Lucetti, the anarchist who tried to kill Mussolini

Also on this day:

1497: The Bonfire of the Vanities

1622: The birth of Vittorio della Rovere, Grand Duchess of Tuscany

1878: The death of Pope Pius IX

1909: The birth of cavalry officer Amedeo Guillet

1941: The birth of pop singer Little Tony

1952: The birth of rock star Vasco Rossi

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Michele Giuttari – crime writer and police officer

Cop-turned-novelist with inside knowledge of police investigations

Michele Giuttari's novels draw on his experience
as a high-ranking Italian police officer

Michele Giuttari, who headed the police in Florence and used his experience working on investigations into Mafia activities and dangerous criminals to become a successful crime writer, was born on this day in 1950 in Novara di Sicilia, a village in the province of Messina in Sicily.

After studying for a degree in Jurisprudence at the University of Messina, Giuttari qualified as a lawyer. He joined the Polizia di Stato as a commissario in 1978 and later rose through the ranks to take charge of the Florentine police between 1995 and 2003.

Giuttari first served in Calabria, where he held positions in the Squadra Mobile of Reggio Calabria and Cosenza. He then joined the Anti-Mafia investigation department and served first in Naples and then in Florence, where he became head of the Judicial Investigation section, and succeeded in jailing several key Mafia figures.

During his time in command of the Squadra Mobile in Florence, Giuttari was responsible for reopening the Monster of Florence case and proving that the so-called monster was not simply a lone serial killer but was, in fact, a group of killers.

After retiring from serving in the Polizia di Stato, Giuttari started crime writing and has now written a series of novels featuring his character, Commissario Michele Ferrara, the latest, entitled Sangue sul Chianti (Blood on Chianti), having been published in 2021.

Seven novels in the Ferrara series have been published in English, the first of which - entitled A Florentine Death - will fascinate readers who are interested in learning about the methods or seeing into the minds of the Italian police. The book had been published in Italy under the title Scarabeo.

Michele Giuttari has made many appearances on
television in Italy to talk about his life and work

The hero, Commissario Ferrara - the equivalent of Chief Superintendent in the English police - is the head of the Squadra Mobile in Florence, about which Giuttari can write with authority. He can describe what really happens in  murder investigations, interviewing suspects, and organising armed police operations.

As well as providing an authentic account of police procedure in a multiple murder investigation, Giuttari delivers a cleverly plotted mystery that becomes increasingly more gripping as it reaches its dramatic conclusion.

A Death in Tuscany, the second Commissario Ferrara novel published in English, is also fascinating because it offers even more glimpses behind the scenes of an Italian police station and gives the readers the feeling that they are on the inside of a major police investigation.

In this novel, the reader finds out more about the man behind the job title and about his earlier life in Sicily.

Ferrara finds he is up against the Mafia as well as ruthless drugs bosses, and even his own Commissioner, who is enraged both by his unorthodox behaviour during the investigation and because he has fallen foul of the Carabinieri, pressures Giuttari himself has obviously experienced at times during his career.

The Death of a Mafia Don
is available in English  

The next in the series - The Death of a Mafia Don - starts with a bomb exploding near Commissario Ferrara’s car in the centre of Florence, leaving the head of the Squadra Mobile injured. There is an urgent need to find out who was responsible to prevent further atrocities, but with Ferrara  unconscious and in hospital, his loyal colleagues are forced to start the investigation without him.

This is a fast moving novel about terrorism and Mafia activity in Italy seen from the perspective of the security forces. It shows the way the police and the Carabinieri often work together and there is a realistic portrait of Florence as the backdrop for the action.

Former policeman Giuttari has now achieved international success with his crime novels, which have been published in more than 100 countries, and he has won several literary awards, including the Fenice Europa for La Loggia degli Innocenti and the Camaiore Letteratura Gialla for Il Basilisco.

In a film made about the Monster of Florence murders, the character of Giuttari was played by the actor Giorgio Colangeli.

A typical street in historic
Novara di Sicilia

Travel tip:

Situated about 70km (43 miles) southwest of Messina in the northeastern corner of Sicily, Michele Guittari’s beautiful home village of Novara di Sicilia is rich in history and traditions. Built on a hillside at the point where the Nebrodi mountains meet the Peloritani range, it was founded and inhabited by Greeks, then by Romans and Arabs and later conquered by the Normans. The remains of a Norman castle can be found near the Chiesa di San Giorgio. In the village’s historic centre, the Duomo di Santa Maria Assunta, built in the 16th century, has a sandstone façade typical of the area, with a wide staircase leading to an essentially Renaissance interior. Just 5km (3.5 miles) from the centre of the village is the Abbazia di Santa Maria, which dates back to the 12th century and is said to be the best example of a Cistercian building in Sicily. 

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The Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta - Cosenza's
duomo - lies at the heart of the mediaeval city

Travel tip:

Calabria is a part of Italy which did not traditionally attract large numbers of overseas tourists but is becoming more popular thanks to beautiful coastal towns and villages such as Tropea, San Nicola Arcella and Pizzo, while the inland city of Cosenza - where Michele Giuttari once worked - has been described as epitomising the “unkempt charm of southern Italy” with a history that can be traced back to the third century, when there was a settlement called Consentia, the capital of the Brutti tribe. Over subsequent years, the area was captured by the Visigoths, the Lombards, the Saracens, the Normans and the Spanish before the Risorgimento and unification saw it become part of the new Italy.  At the heart of the mediaeval old city, with its network of steep, narrow streets, is a cathedral originally built in the 11th century and modified many times subsequently.  The old town also boasts the 13th century Castello Svevo, built on the site of a Saracen fortification, which hosted the wedding of Louis III of Naples and Margaret of Savoy,  but which the Bourbons used as a prison.

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Also on this day:

1576: The birth of Cardinal and art collector Scipione Borghese

1878: The birth of conductor Tullio Serafin

1886: The birth of vaudeville star Guido Deiro 

1922: The birth of actor Vittorio Gassman

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