Marcella Di Levrano was killed for rebelling against the Sacra Corona Unita: only now has she been recognized as a victim of the mafia. Her name is among the 1069 marked in Milan on the Day of Remembrance and Commitment of Libera

Marisa Fiorani is 82 years old, her daughter Marcella was killed in 1990: she was 26 years old

A week earlier I dreamed of her: Marcella fell from the balcony and then she was there, on the ground. The dream distressed me: perhaps this is why when the telephone rang, that evening of April 5, 1990, I immediately understood what had happened ». Marisa Fiorani is 82 today and a good part of her has dedicated it to the search for the truth. Somehow, of dignity.

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«I already lived in Milan, I had left Puglia and with Marcella we said to each other 'as soon as I find a house, you will come to me'. And instead. I took the night train: I spent the hours believing her dead of an overdose. In Brindisi they immediately took me to the cemetery. I would have liked to see her face, they wouldn't let me. That day I recognized my daughter by the scar she had on her foot. The stone they had used to kill her had not only hit her on the head, but also on her face and several times, to disfigure her ». The death that the “code of honour” of the United Sacra Corona (SCU) reserves for traitors .

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WORKING YEARS – Marcella Di Levrano was 26 years old, a five-year-old girl, Sara, and troubled days behind her: the need to get the dose at any cost, the acquaintance of young bosses, finally the choice to collaborate with the institutions and the revenge that was reserved. Last November, 32 years after her murder, Marcella was recognized as an innocent victim of the mafia and on March 21, her name will once again be among the 1,069 marked on Remembrance and Commitment Day. This is the story of a mother-courage and the courage of a daughter long unacknowledged.

Mesagne, province of Brindisi, 1980s. «I would start from before, from me and from the choice to part with a violent man. In Puglia, in 1968, without a qualification and with a peasant family who lives it as a shame. But I want a different future for me and my three daughters. I find work as a worker in a town in the province and I leave. After a few years, however, the establishment closes: I am forced to return to Mesagne and there begins the tragedy of Marcella. At 16 she starts taking drugs, I ask everyone for help, I leave the country again, I hope that I can save her. Nothing. Then, she gets pregnant: Marcella is 20 years old, there she transforms, she no longer uses substances. She seems happy but after a while she goes back to hanging out with those people. Like any drug addict she is willing to do anything, she is an object in the hands of the mafiosi. At that time I didn't understand how she couldn't get out of it: I paid for my ignorance.'

Does Marcella start collaborating there? “First something else happens, the only intervention by the state. They take the little girl away from her and give her to her older sister. Marcella is desperate without her daughter, then she finds an unknown force: on June 24, 1987, of her own free will, she goes to the Lecce police headquarters ».

Does it turn on, does it come in? «He comes in and says: I'll tell you everything, but I won't sign anything, they would kill me. He doesn't know that they will record everything: 'unbeknownst to him' is written in the papers. However, he collaborates: names and surnames, murders, the organization of trafficking. A decisive testimony for the first maxi-trial of the Sacra Corona Unita which will begin in November 1990. When they deposit the transcript of the recordings, the bosses understand that it must be eliminated immediately. After ten days Marcella is already in that wood where they will find her».

The long journey to the truth begins. «The file is archived two years later: no trial, nor guilty parties, despite the fact that already in the maxi-trial the repentants name the material executor, the three instigators, the reason why she was killed. I was a nobody and my daughter just one less clan-related drug addict. 'Go further, forget' they said, but I never wanted to go further and today I owe everything to the meeting with Libera ( the association founded by don Ciotti , ed) and with his lawyers. The first application presented to have Marcella recognized as a victim of the mafia dates back to 2004: rejected after five years, as was the second. Until the investigation is reopened and the filing request presented by magistrate Alberto Santacatterina'.

A turning point? «It is the end of 2019, the prosecutor writes that Marcella's death is 'without a shadow of a doubt' due to her 'totally disinterested' collaboration and that the fact that she was 'next' to the bosses increases the value of her choice of rebellion. These are the papers that made it possible to present the third instance and to see it accepted».

How do you feel about killers? «Years ago, in the Mesagne cemetery, I went to my daughter and then to the grave of another girl I knew: Eugenio Carbone, the killer who had raged with that boulder, had recently been buried nearby. My first instinct was to kick, then I looked at the photo. I had imagined a man of a certain age, a face that betrayed his wickedness and instead he was a little boy. I often went back to looking at that photo, who knows what life his had been like and I only felt compassion ».

Is this what has been driving her to spend years with Libera in schools, in prisons? You even collected the golden Ambrogino in memory of Lea Garofalo. «The story of Ambrogino was born from something else: I followed all the hearings in the trial of his murderers, I felt the story so similar to that of Marcella. Every day I brought breakfast to Denise, Lea's daughter, to the lawyer Rando, also to the escort. Denise was 18 years old, she was like a niece to me, even though I only met her once. Every now and then a card, Christmas greetings. She was and is under protection: when Milan wanted to reward her mother, it was Denise who asked me to go in her place ».

Then there is the agenda in which Marcella wrote down everything, she contributed to the recognition as a victim. “She was found during the house searches. I didn't know it existed, they only returned it after filing. Manuela loved to write since she was a child: a game that has become a habit. Here she is, look… »

Photographs by Renato Zero, verses from his songs, withered leaves, the diary of an ordinary girl, then a page:
«My son will be like me, he will be able to suffer and be happy at the same time, I will teach him to face things like his mother did, to have the same ideals, to fight to love, and to know how to suffer. Only in this way will I never die, only my body will die' .

Source: oggi.it