Crime Immemorial

It was the afternoon of April 9th, 1953 in Rome, Italy. The mother and sister of twenty-one-year-old Wilma Montesi invited her along to the movies, but Wilma declined, not particularly wanting to see the film in question. Wilma was quite a beautiful young woman, and had aspirations of her own to be an actress; she had even starred in a few films in minor roles. She told her family members that she was simply going for a walk, but subsequent developments suggested she might have had a different agenda.

Wilma left the house around five-thirty that evening, curiously not taking any of her personal documents or a treasured piece of jewelry she always wore. Witnesses reported seeing a woman fitting Wilma’s description on a train bound from Rome to Ostia, and a salesman near a beach in Ostia stated that she bought a postcard from him, which she said was for her boyfriend. She was engaged to a policeman from Potenza, and the couple planned to marry at Christmas.

Later that night, after Wilma’s mother and sister returned from the movies, they found it unusual that Wilma had failed to come home for dinner, and as the night wore on, they began to worry, eventually reporting her disappearance to police.

More than twenty-four hours later, on the morning of Saturday, April 11th, a laborer named Fortunato Bettini was having breakfast on the beach at Torvaianica when he noticed a young woman lying on the shore, her head partially submerged in the water. Upon investigation, it was determined to be the dead body of Wilma Montesi.

Although Wilma was found without her shoes, stockings, garters, or skirt, there did not appear to be any evidence of violence to the body, and she had not been raped; in fact, forensic examination determined that she was still a virgin. According to the pathologist’s report, there were also no traces of alcohol or drugs in her system.

But if she hadn’t been murdered, investigators wondered, then how did her body end up on a beach more than twelve miles from where she was allegedly last seen?

The coroner theorized that Wilma had perhaps committed suicide, or had been the victim of an unfortunate accident. He speculated that because she was known to suffer from heel pain which she often relieved by soaking her feet in water, that perhaps she had gone down to the shoreline in Ostia to submerge her feet, had passed out for whatever reason, and had accidentally been swept out into the waves and drowned. It was then plausible, he determined, that her body had followed the currents and washed up on the beach in Torvaianica.

It seemed to be an open and shut case, albeit a somewhat strange one; Wilma’s death was ruled an accident, and little more was thought about it, at least until May 4th.

On that day, the newspaper Roma published a story in which they asserted that Wilma Montesi had been murdered and that the authorities were covering it up. Several other papers soon took up the cause, and subsequently, an article published in Vie Nuove magazine alleged that a man named Piero Piccioni, a jazz musician and son of the Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Attilio Piccioni, had turned in Wilma’s missing clothing to police.

Piero Piccioni vehemently denied the story, and sued both the writer of the piece and the editor of the magazine. Journalist Marco Sforza, who had leaked the accusations against Piccioni, agreed to retract his statements, though he refused to give up his source for the information. The lawsuit was dropped, and the political scandal eventually cooled off, but the odd death of Wilma Montesi would generate even more salacious headlines later that year.

In October of 1953, the case was back in the news once again, and the allegations had become even more scandalous. Journalist Silvano Muto published a new piece about the case in which he claimed that an actress named Andriana Concetta Bisaccia had been present at a drug-fueled orgy at which several members of Rome’s political and social elite, including Piero Piccioni, had been enthusiastic participants. The actress further claimed that Wilma Montesi had died of an overdose at the party and been unceremoniously dumped on the beach where her body was found.

A furious Piero Piccioni sued Silvano Muto as well, and during the course of the ensuing investigation, actress Andriana Bisaccia disavowed everything in the article as categorically false. However, shortly afterward, another actress named Maria Augusta Moneta Caglio Bessier d’Istria came forward, stating that not only was everything in the original article true, but that Wilma Montesi had actually been the mistress of the man at whose home the orgy in question had been held.

The controversy would rage on for the rest of the year and into the next one, eventually leading to ruined careers and sullied reputations, but never fully resolving itself into a definitive answer of whether Wilma Montesi had been killed while leading a supposed secret life of debauchery and vice.

The case heated back up again after the investigation into her death was reopened in March of 1954. Because of the accusations against Piero Piccioni and the alleged ex-lover of Wilma Montesi, Ugo Montagna, that had been brought by actress Maria d’Istria, both men were eventually arrested, despite their protestations that the whole thing was a frame-up organized by their political rivals. In the ensuing chaos, Attilio Piccioni was forced to resign from his post as Deputy Prime Minister, and the superintendent of police in Rome was taken into custody as well, charged with being complicit in the cover-up.

Though Piero Piccioni was subsequently charged with manslaughter as well as various drug offenses, and Ugo Montagna with being an accessory after the fact for allegedly helping to dispose of the body, the family of Wilma Montesi was actually very vocal in their support for the two men, and in their staunch belief that Wilma’s death had simply been an accident. They testified that Wilma had not been the type of girl to get involved in copious drug use or orgies, even if she wasn’t quite as squeaky clean as they would have liked to think.

Evidently, the courts agreed with the Montesis, because both Piero Piccioni and Ugo Montagna were eventually acquitted of all charges. Speculation still surrounded the case, however, and even though the death of Wilma Montesi is still officially considered an accident, doubts continue to swirl, and the possibility remains that a powerful member of the political elite might have gotten away with a terrible crime.