The press involvement The accident theory was considered reliable by the police, who closed the case. However, newspapers were sceptical. On 4 May, the Naples monarchist newspaper
Roma, suggested the hypothesis of a plot to cover up the real killers, probably some powerful personalities from politics; the hypothesis was presented in the article "Why are the police silent on the death of Wilma Montesi?", by journalist Riccardo Giannini, who had a large following. This hypothesis was shared by prestigious national newspapers such as
Corriere della Sera and
Paese Sera, and by small gossip magazines such as
Attualità, but the main actor was the
Messaggero reporter Fabrizio Menghini, who had followed the case from the outset. The idea, however, was echoed by almost all local and national newspapers. On 24 May 1953, an article by Marco Cesarini Sforza, published in the communist magazine
Vie Nuove, had much resonance: one of the characters appearing in the investigation and allegedly linked to politics, so far known as "the blond", was identified as
Piero Piccioni. Piccioni was a film score composer, the lover of
Alida Valli and the son of
Attilio Piccioni, Deputy Prime Minister, Foreign Minister and a major exponent of the
Christian Democrats. The name of "blond" had been attributed to the young Piccioni by
Paese Sera: an article published on 5 May told how the young man had brought to the police station the missing garments of the murdered girl. Identification with Piero Piccioni was a fact known to all journalists, but no one had ever revealed the identity to the general public. In early May,
Il merlo giallo published a cartoon satire in which a garter belt, held in the beak of a pigeon ("Piccione" in Italian), was brought to the police station, a clear reference to the politician and crime. The news caused uproar because it was published shortly before the
1953 general election.
Piero Piccioni and political scandal Piero Piccioni sued the journalist and the editor of
Vie Nuove, Fidia Gambetti for defamation. Sforza was subjected to a harsh interrogation. The
Italian Communist Party (PCI), the owner of the newspaper and sole "political" beneficiary of the scandal, refused to recognize the work of the journalist, who was accused of "
sensationalism" and threatened with dismissal. Even under interrogation, Cesarini Sforza never directly quoted the name of the source from which officially the news came, saying only that it came from "the faithful environments of
De Gasperi." Even the journalist's father, a professor of philosophy at
Sapienza University of Rome, suggested to his son to recant, as well as the lawyer
Francesco Carnelutti, who had taken the side of the plaintiff on behalf of Piccioni. The lawyer of Marco Cesarini Sforza,
Giuseppe Sotgiu (former president of the provincial administration of Rome and member of the PCI) made an agreement with his colleague, and on May 31 Cesarini Sforza recanted his statements. He poured 50,000 Lire to charity to "House of fraternal friendship for freed from prison," and in exchange, Piccioni dropped the charge. Although, for the moment, the scandal for the Christian Democrats was excluded, the Piccioni name had been mentioned and later would return to prominence. Meanwhile, during the summer, the case disappeared from the news pages. ==In film==