The story of Enzo Portaccio, a police legend. Killers, the Red Brigades, fugitives, and the security detail for heads of state. The area between Porta Venezia and the Central Police Station was home to “illegal brothels.”
“Ever since I retired, I’ve been dreaming about the cases I worked on. No, these aren’t half-conscious thoughts that pop into my head when I’m half-asleep—I’m talking about actual dreams. Then there are certain cases that lie dormant and suddenly resurface, stirring up the exact same anger I felt back then. All it takes is a mention—like the one you just made—and I see the crime scene all over again.”
The case in question is that ofValentina Masneri, the fashion designer murdered in 1975, and—in chronological order—theseventh unsolved murder in Milan during the 1960s and 1970sfor which a serial killer is suspected. Enzo Portaccio, born in 1938 in Taviano, Salento, is a police icon; a public servant who rose to the rank ofofficial at the Quirinaleand laterbecame head of security for President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, and formerlydirector of Interpol; a reserved man, who even today remains the keeper of “secrets over which I am bound to silence.”
Back in1975, Portaccio headed the first of five sections of the Mobile Squad, which dealt with drugs, prostitution, and homicides. He entered the apartment ofValentina, 25, who was married to a photographer. The crime scene. March 18. Mid-afternoon. At 5:55 p.m., the fashion designer had a flight from Linate to Germany. Someone murdered her first. Or perhaps a woman.“The living room carpet was soaked inpoor Valentina’sblood. On that carpet,the imprint of a woman’s heel. A four-centimeter heel, very wide; a heel, we surmised, belonging to an elderly woman. I don’t mean to sound like I’m making excuses, but with the resources available back then, there was very little we could do. Intuition drove the investigation. And, mind you, it wasn’t a rushed or sloppy investigation. Suffice it to say that the magistrate was Dr. Emilio Alessandrini. So we focused on that hypothetical female figure. No elderly people lived in the building, so the hypothesis of a neighbor who had heard the commotion, entered, saw the lifeless body, and fled in shock, trampling through the pools of blood, was ruled out. No, the shoe belonged to someone from outside the apartment building on Via Settala.”
Many detectives have their own Black Dahlia—the nickname of Elizabeth Ann Short, the young victim of one of the most high-profile and iconic (unsolved) crimes in the history of crime fiction; a story that has inspired films and books, such as those by the master James Ellroy. Dr. Portaccio: Is Valentina your Black Dahlia? “That was an extraordinary period for the Milanese investigators. Truly. In one year, we seized more drugs than the total amount seized by all of Italy’s narcotics squads combined.One of the hubs of drug trafficking was the area that included Valentina’s building. Hashish, heroin, cocaine. Turkish and Syrian criminals. Corso Buenos Aires was the main route for buying doses. Furthermore, the area between Porta Venezia and Central Station was home to clandestine brothels. Student and worker hostels “hid” rooms for sexual encounters. One, very famous, was just a few meters from the murder building, but Valentina had nothing to do with that world, nothing… As for that fingerprint—I assure you, the image flashes before my eyes—it wastoo distinct to seem accidental.” What if the killer dressed up as a woman? A suggestion? An absurdity? An unexpected deviation from theserial killerscenario? The newspapers talked about fingerprints in the bathroom and pursued the lead of a men’s jacket button… “I remember the heel. Period. But the heel led nowhere.”
The samePorta Venezia/Central Stationarea was the scene of two other murders (in 1970, Adele Margherita Dossena, who ran a boarding house, and in 1971, Salvina Rota, a shop clerk by day and a prostitute by night), as well as the place where a third victim, Olimpia Drusin, who worked as a prostitute on Via Lazzaretto and was murdered in 1963. Furthermore, on nearby Via Vitruvio, Simonetta Ferrero used to frequent a film club. A crime—the only one of the eight covered bythe Corriere’sreporting since early January—on which all sections of the Mobile Squad worked, without distinction. But that year, 1971,Portacciowas not in Milan. He arrived in 1974, only to leave the city in 1982, following a firefight with terrorists and the discovery, in the Red Brigades’ hideouts, of obsessive dossiers documenting his every move, in preparation for an ambush. He went to Rome and began another chapter of his career, which saw him operating in 44 countries, hunting down fugitives, at a time when bilateral extradition agreements were still lacking.
“If Cesare Battisti was put on a plane and repatriated, some of the credit goes to the agreements between Bolivia and Italy that I worked so hard to secure… But never mind, I don’t like talking about myself. I’ll just tell you this: as an official at the Quirinale, I had built a good relationship with President Cossiga. One day he took me aside and asked why, unlike almost everyone else, I had never asked for anything. I replied that I’d always preferred to do things on my own, without asking for help… If Valentina’s murder had happened today, I’m certain we would have solved it, thanks to technology and the ability to examine every detail of the crime scene, thanks to the police’s specialized units. I am the age I am, but I hold out hope that the person responsible for that massacre can be found. Because the anger of not having caught the killer will never go away. I swear it to you.”