Murder In Matera

by Helene Stapinski

  The city’s last major earthquake had been in 1980, so much of the architecture looked like it belonged in a drab office park in suburban America. Tall, featureless, boxy buildings were everywhere, eyesores compared to the charming medieval towns nearby.

  Giuseppe put us in touch with someone he knew who worked in one of the new government buildings. He pointed us in the right direction. Imma had studied at the university here for a little while, so she was familiar with a few neighborhoods. After a few stops and what seemed like several miles walking up and down the steep hills of Potenza, we arrived at the state archive. My bunions were killing me.

  We had to place all our belongings in a locker when we arrived. The building was very modern, even more modern than the archive in Matera, larger and more upscale, with polished wooden desks and wooden, cushioned chairs, tall ceilings and windows, and a shining tile floor. Framed posters covered the walls and glass cases displayed ancient texts. There didn’t seem to be a speck of dust and the air was much cooler than in the stuffy archive in Matera.

  It was nearly empty, with only one other person there doing research at one of the wooden desks. She shushed us when we spoke too loudly. The file clerks and librarians were dressed in long white lab coats and seemed especially official, more like scientists than librarians.

  Imma told the clerk that we were searching for information on the Santa Croce prison. The lab-coated woman disappeared and emerged moments later with a cart full of large blueprints. Santa Croce—Holy Cross—was located on Strada Fuori near Porta San Luca.

  Strada Fuori translated as Way Out. And this place was way the hell out there, at the very edge of town, surrounded by farmlands owned by Nicola Doti and someone named Decanto. According to the architectural drawings, a prison yard was surrounded by a series of cells. When we asked if the prison was still there, the clerk shrugged.

  We headed out toward the historic district, one of the only places where old buildings were left standing and where the prison was supposed to have been. We found Via Pretoria, the Fifth Avenue of Potenza, with its fancy designer shops and Apple Store, where Imma had dropped off her waterlogged phone earlier this month. The neighborhood was quite beautiful and looked like a small town in France, houses made of large stones, with distressed wooden shutters and ornate metal balconies.

  We found the street where the prison should have been, and the Porta San Luca—which was one of the three ancient gates into the walled city. Though the wall was long gone, the tall arched entryway was still standing. Down the block was a stone medieval tower—Torre Guevara—built by the Lombards in the ninth century as part of the city’s battlements, the only part left standing. On the same property was a closed three-story school from the 1960s or ’70s, judging by the architecture. The ugly beige school was boarded up and covered in graffiti. “I told my therapist about you,” read one line in Magic Marker. Another read, “What does the fox say?”

  Most of the buildings and the surrounding property were closed off by a high iron fence. But through the bars you could see that the expansive space around the tower was covered in concrete, with clumps of grass, Queen Anne’s lace and dandelions popping through. The property overlooked the lush, green countryside and was indeed the place where the prison had once been. It had been demolished sometime in the 1950s to make room for this school, which had itself closed in the last decade or so. The place was deserted. A sadness and seediness permeated the neighborhood and the spot, as if the awful things that had happened in the prison still somehow lingered.

  We headed over to Piazza Prefeturra, where the courthouse—the Palazzo di Giustizia—was located, just a few blocks away in a much livelier, happy neighborhood. The courthouse was an orange three-story historic building with arched doorways, a center balcony, and windows topped with triangular Greek lintels. Though it was officially closed for renovation, I walked right in and pretended I belonged there, strolling past the few workers in the hallways, who greeted me with a simple “Buongiorno.”

  Old doors and entryways were plastered over, the skeletons of the original stone walls showing through in some places. From most windows, you could see the medieval church next door, which was practically pressed up against the courthouse.

  The church was called San Francesco, naturally.

  I thought of Francesco walking up these same worn, marble courthouse stairs I was climbing now, pausing for a moment, his hands in his rusty bagno cuffs, his body leaning against the smooth, wide wooden banister. I wondered if he stared out at the church that bore his name, saying a prayer under his breath to his patron saint that he did not get sentenced to a lifetime in prison. Or to death.

  The church had a tall pointed tower, orange terra-cotta roof tiles, and a large circular window over its Romanesque rounded portal. It dated back to 1274 and held several treasures, including a faded fresco of San Francesco from the school of Giotto. It was said to be the first portrait of San Francesco in Southern Italy.

  San Francesco was dressed in a friar’s robe cinched with a rope, with a bald head ringed by a fringe of orange hair. His eyes were narrow as if he were concentrating and his chin was covered in an orange beard, a book under his left arm and his right hand raised. If you looked closely, you could see the stigmata wounds on his hand. He was wearing a golden halo. The painting was tucked away in a corner, near a Madonna and Child, and unless you were looking for it, it was nearly impossible to find. It was a hidden treasure that I’m sure my great-great-grandfather never glimpsed.

  According to legend, the church was actually founded by San Francesco, Italy’s national saint, who was passing through Potenza and laid the first stone for the building while on his way to Jerusalem.

  The Franciscans owned and ran the church for centuries. The door, made from olive wood, was intricately carved with both saints and demons, including a devil rising up in an attempt to drag San Francesco down to hell. Griffins and gargoyles were everywhere. And I thought of Francesco, our Francesco, passing here day after day on his way from the prison a few blocks away, and staring at that terrible, beautiful door each time, his and his brother-in-law’s fate growing closer and closer with each visit.

  Chapter 31

  RECOIL

  FRANCESCO AND LEONARDANTONIO HAD TWO DEFENSE LAWYERS who were the most celebrated lawyers of their day in Basilicata. Their names were Nicola Branca and Giovanni de Bonis.

  When I asked how that was possible, how such poor farmers would end up with such fantastic lawyers, Professor Tataranno shrugged, took a drag from his cigarette, and said that many successful lawyers, like now, did pro bono work for those who couldn’t afford a decent attorney. Especially if it was a high-profile case.

  We had given Tataranno an electronic copy of the criminal file to help us decipher what was inside. Some things I could read for myself, like the basic plot of the murder and the list of jurors and alternates who were chosen for the case.

  The twelve jurors were not exactly Francesco’s peers: no farmers or day laborers, no stable hands or blacksmiths. No women, of course. Twelve men were chosen from a pool of business owners, lawyers, doctors, land surveyors, veterinarians, pharmacists, and notaries—respectable citizens from as far away as Bella, Laurenzana, Maratea, and Lavello, towns all closer to Potenza than to Bernalda. None of the men were from Bernalda, Pisticci, Matera, or Ferrandina, to avoid a conflict of interest. Their accents were different than Francesco’s, as were their customs and even some of the food they ate.

  The subtle intricacies of the case I left up to Professor Tataranno. We visited him at his home in Bernalda on Via Karl Marx, which was fitting, since Tataranno had belonged to the Communist Party. His house was in the more modern part of town, his living room and dining room as neat as his memory. We sat at his long, polished dining room table and discussed what he had found.

  Francesco had no property, according to the case documents. He had once been in the army, like all young men in Italy from 1865 on, but had been discharged. This was t
he first time he was ever arrested.

  Miraldi, the bricklayer and third man involved in the crime, was not charged with murder, but with being an accomplice to the robbery. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

  Two witnesses, Donato Mentessano and Bernardino Chiruzzi, testified that Camardo had attacked Francesco and Leonardantonio first, and that only after he tried to reload his shotgun did they run toward him to attack him. Francesco said that he never even hit the boy, that Camardo’s gun backfired and he hit himself in the head. When he got to him, Camardo was already on the ground, bleeding.

  An autopsy revealed that Camardo died from being hit in the head with a hard object. The defense argued during the trial that Camardo was not beaten to death, as was charged, but that the gun had recoiled. Since he was so young and inexperienced, he had been holding it wrong, on his neck rather than his shoulder. When it recoiled it slipped and hit the back of his skull, the fatal blow.

  Tataranno said one of his teachers taught him to shoot one of those shotguns when he was young. It was entirely plausible, he said, that if you didn’t hold it correctly you could really hurt yourself. With his cigarette still between his fingers he pretended to hold a shotgun up to his eye, lifting his right shoulder to show where the butt of the gun should be placed. With his other hand, he showed how the gun could have slipped off and hit the back of the boy’s head. “The defense’s claim was not so outrageous,” he said, sticking his bottom lip out, the imaginary gun gone, both his palms turned up, cigarette still burning.

  I was skeptical. Maybe Camardo died from a combination of hitting himself in the head with his own gun and a few blows from my great-great-grandfather. Francesco wasn’t getting off the hook that easily.

  Chapter 32

  SONG OF THE PRISONER

  ONLY FRANCESCO WAS CHARGED WITH MURDER. LEONARDANTONIO was downgraded to simple robbery of the pears and served a short sentence at Santa Croce.

  For Francesco, the entire process took five years. That happened to be an especially quick turnaround for Italy, where cases could take up to twenty years to wend through the system. But it was a long five years for Francesco inside that dungeon of a prison, that hellhole on the edge of Potenza, waiting every day for another earthquake to strike this godforsaken city and either crush him with falling stones or crack the place wide open and set him free.

  He learned the “Song of the Prisoner”—“Canto di Carcerato”—from the others, some of whom had been there for decades. It was a slow dirge of a folk song that was all too popular in Southern Italy. It had many different versions, but was usually sung high and wavering like an Arabic song. Like the rap of its day, it was a defiant shout-out to a society that didn’t prize its strong, young men, a country that didn’t give them the opportunities they needed to succeed, which had pushed them to become criminals simply to survive. And it never had a happy ending.

  The dark, midnight air tolls

  And the birds sleep in silence

  Midnight in the cell tolls

  And he wakes up to the sound of the bell

  And God in heaven have mercy on me

  I am closed in this cell

  And I pray to you

  . . . The warden stares at me and asks

  Young, handsome man,

  What is your sentence?

  I was innocent

  And was condemned to life

  My life a disaster

  The pains I have suffered

  Francesco’s lawyers came to him one day after he’d been locked in Santa Croce for three years with terrible news: his son, his Rocco, had died. Maybe Francesco punched the wall over and over again until his knuckles bled and the guards escorted him, sobbing, back to his tiny cell. He hadn’t even gotten to say a final farewell. He wondered if his son would have even remembered him. His only son. His only child. He was gone. He would never see the boy again.

  He had a feeling when he had said goodbye to him in Bernalda that he would never see him again. But Francesco assumed he himself would be the one to die, not Rocco. With those hours and days and weeks and months in his lonely cell, Francesco thought of Rocco. Agonized over Rocco. About how Rocco would still be alive had he not gone to prison. He would give his life for Rocco’s, be hung for this stupid murder just so Rocco could live. It was payback, he knew, for killing that boy, Antonio Camardo, God’s way of punishing him for the murder. Rocco dying was much worse than any penalty the court could hand down.

  Francesco heard rumors that now that Rocco was gone, Vita might be moving to Pisticci, for work reasons, but he didn’t know for sure. Maybe her parents had grown tired of her crying, for her missing husband and now her missing son, and sent her off to the masseria.

  Neither Francesco nor Vita could read or write. So there were no letters back and forth with news in them. No “I love you” or “I miss you terribly” or “I’ll wait for you.” And the telephone—the magical device, invented by a fellow Italian, that could transmit the voices of your loved ones over long distances—had only just been patented two months before Francesco’s final sentence. There were no telephones yet at Santa Croce.

  FRANCESCO STOOD IN THAT VERY SAME COURTHOUSE I HAD VISITED, when his sentence was handed down on March 16, 1877. He was much skinnier than that ride five years earlier on the way to Potenza. Dark circles half-mooned beneath his eyes; his skin was pale and mottled from a lack of sunlight. He was dressed in a new cheap black suit that his celebrated lawyers had bought for him. Those lawyers stood by him, at his side at the wide, wooden courthouse table, dressed in black robes over their more expensive suits, silver tassels on their shoulders. The medieval church of San Francesco stood tall outside the courtroom window, casting shade on the courthouse walls.

  The courtroom was crowded—not with the relatives of those involved, for they were too poor to travel to Potenza, but with lawyers and reporters curious to hear the final judgment in this high-profile case. Even if she had somehow found the money to come to court, the victim’s mother, Carmina, would never have been able to attend the sentencing of her son’s killer: she had died a little over a year ago in January at the age of forty-eight. No cause is listed on her death certificate, but watching her son get killed was surely more than her heart could bear.

  The judge, dressed in his long black robe with gold tassels on the shoulders, his frilly white dickey and small white bow tie, and cylindrical black hat, asked the jury if it had reached a final verdict.

  The foreman rose. He was a business owner named Donato Schiró, from the town of Ripacandida, near the dead volcano of Mount Vulture, where the soil was rich and good for growing grapes. The town was known for its Great Forest of cedars and oaks, where brigands would often take shelter when hiding from the law. Schiró looked at the judge, then over at Francesco.

  Francesco stared out the window at the church and said a final prayer to his patron saint. Please, please, San Francesco. Let me go. Please, I have suffered enough. Please, God. Send me back to my family in Bernalda. Back to my Vita. Back to my life.

  And so Donato Schiró delivered the jury’s verdict: Francesco Vena, guilty of manslaughter in the death of Antonio Camardo.

  Not innocent. But not guilty of murder, either. Manslaughter was a lesser charge. It meant Francesco had unintentionally killed Camardo in a moment of passion. There would be no life sentence. No death penalty. But no freedom just yet. It was a purgatory, an in-between state that Francesco would have to endure.

  Francesco was sentenced to six years in prison. Since he had already served five years while awaiting trial, he would be scheduled for release in one year, in late 1878.

  But there was a hitch. Camardo’s family members were suing Francesco in civil court for damages and expenses related to the killing. Seven people, including Camardo’s father, Donato, his grandfather, and his mother, Carmina, while still alive, had filed the suit.

  Francesco wouldn’t be able to pay his damages and expenses, because he was a poor farmer, so he would have t
o pay off his debt by staying longer in prison. And that meant more than six years.

  I ROLLED THESE DATES OVER IN MY HEAD AND THOUGHT ABOUT everything I knew about Francesco and his sons. Rocco was born in 1872, just before the murder; he died four years later. Valente, his second son, was born in 1877. Valente’s brother, Leonardo, my great-grandfather, was born in February 1879. Domenico, who would have been the fourth son, was stillborn in 1881. His birth certificate—like Valente’s and Leonardo’s—said that Francesco was far from the town and could not be present for the birth.

  The puzzle pieces were jigsawing themselves together in my head. A full picture finally presenting itself.

  Francesco was not there for the birth of Valente or Leonardo or even Domenico. He was away but he was not working the farm.

  He was in prison.

  “Was Francesco in prison the whole time, from the time he was arrested?” I asked Professor Tataranno.

  “Oh yes. No doubt,” he said, tilting his head to the side.

  “Did they have conjugal visits back then?”

  Tataranno laughed out loud. “No, no, no,” he answered. “Santa Croce was not a country club or even a hard-labor camp in the countryside. We’re talking about a maximum-security, overcrowded dungeon.” He counted out on his fingers, “With no heat, no lights, and no bathrooms.”

  Prisoners wore striped uniforms, he said, which were covered in filth. “Many of them committed suicide rather than live day after day in Santa Croce. It was notorious. A living hell, and once you were locked away, you weren’t let out at all until your sentence was over. If you made it that long.”