Why I’m sure the Mafiosi who hanged myfather from Blackfriars Bridge are still at large ... in London
‘God’s banker’ Roberto Calvi, the chilling conclusion of his son’s £15m investigation
saying that it would ‘provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage’.
Calvi also had close links to the Mafia, the Neapolitan Camorra – a Mafia-like criminal organisation based in Naples – and the Masonic lodge P2. The latter was described by Calvi’s former Banco Ambrosiano mentor, Sicilian Michele Sindona, as a ‘state within a state’ because of its powerful members, including former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Carlo refused to accept the 1982 inquest’s suicide verdict. He hired one of Britain’s best-known barristers, George Carman QC, to represent the family at a second hearing, which recorded an open verdict. Still not satisfied, he demanded that his father’s body was exhumed.
Carlo then commissioned the independent forensic report, which concluded in October 2002 that his father had been murdered as the injuries to his neck were inconsistent with hanging, there was no trace of rust and paint on his shoes from the scaffolding and he had not touched the bricks in his pockets.
In 2005, Vittor and Carboni were accused of killing Calvi. But the duo and three others – Mafia financier Pippo Calò, businessman Ernesto Diotallevi and Carboni’s girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig – were acquitted 20 months later.
Another name linked to Calvi’s murder was Mafia ‘supergrass’ Francesco Di Carlo, known as ‘Frankie the Strangler’.
According to Di Carlo, the killers were Vincenzo Casillo and Sergio Vaccari of the Naples Camorra.
‘Calvi was naming names,’ said Di Carlo. ‘No one had any trust in him any more. He owed a lot of money. His friends had all distanced themselves. Everyone wanted to get rid of him. I was in Rome and received a phone call from a friend in Sicily telling me that a certain highranking Mafia member had just been killed.
‘I will never forget the date because of this: it was June 16, 1982 – two days before Calvi was murdered. The friend told me that Pippo Calò was trying to get hold of me
‘Mafia said the problem had been taken care of’
because he needed me to do something for him,’ Di Carlo claims.
‘When I finally spoke to Pippo, he told me not to worry, that the problem had been taken care of.
‘That’s a code we use in the Cosa Nostra. We never talk about killing someone. We say they have been taken care of.’
Carlo Calvi believes that the supergrass is telling the truth. He agrees with Di Carlo that his father’s killers were Casillo – the second-in-command of the Camorra, who was murdered by a car bomb in Rome in 1983 – and his sidekick Vaccari, who was stabbed to death three months after Calvi’s murder.
Vaccari was also a former tenant of Calvi’s last known home, the rented flat at Chelsea Cloisters.
Carlo points out that both his father and Casillo had business cards belonging to Alvaro Giardili, a Camorra associate, in their possession when they died.
‘I’m not suggesting Alvaro Giardili was involved, but he definitely connects to some of the individuals involved in the case,’ Carlo said. ‘When my father died, he had Giardili’s business card in his wallet.
‘One of the first people to ring us when we returned to the house after my father died was Giardili. In gen- eral, I consider Di Carlo a reliable witness. But I am more interested in what he has to say about the social network of the Italian underground in London during the Eighties.’
It is that underground movement that Carlo is now hoping will be exposed – even if his own safety is jeopardised.
Calling for a third inquest, he said: ‘The police have already admitted it was murder but I would like to see the case reviewed in open court and the remaining defendants in their jurisdiction pursued.
‘When I lived in Italy I had bodyguards but now I have to rely on my own judgment and instinct.
‘There have been instances when I have been concerned for my safety but I try not to be confrontational and protect myself.
‘If the worst happens, I am not the only person who has this information. I will not rest until I find out the truth about my father’s death.’