A twenty year old student was killed all‘University of Palermo in 1935, But nobody has ever known. There is no article that talks about it, there is no plaque that remembers this femicide in the building where the faculty of jurisprudence is located today. Nothing.
Maria Concetta Zerilli, Cetti as friends called her, a second year student of letters, was found on the morning of September 17, 90 years ago, inside the Armoria della Coorte University, today an archive in the back of the Faculty of via Maqueda. Three pistol strokes had killed her. Next to the young woman was another corpse, that of a black shirt man and boots.
“The police hastened to say that it was a case of murder murder. And the regime imposed the censorship on the entire affair to the newspapers,” he says Salvo Palazzolo: the correspondent of the Republic who ended up under escort for his articles on the released bosses is the author of the investigation novel that finally reveals the story of Cetti Zerilli: it is titled ‘Love in this city ‘just published by Rizzoli.
The book also retraces the complaints of the father of the young killed young man, who did not resign himself to the official version, and the investigations of a courageous chronicler, Nino Marino del Giornale di Siciliathat the student’s murder could never write, but subsequently entrusted this story to a young colleague, Aurelio Bruno, then became dean of the black and judicial reporters in Palermo.
“It was Bruno who told me about Maria Concetta Zerilli, twenty years ago – explains Salvo Palazzolo – At the time, however, I had not been able to find anything, that femicide seemed not to exist”.
But why was such a striking murder hidden? The young man’s father claimed that his daughter’s real killer was another, he also presented one complaint to Mussolini But ended up in prison during the visit of the Duce in Sicily, in 1937. explains Palazzolo again: “Aurelio Bruno told me that in Palermo an authoritative exponent of the fascist party came to Palermo to definitively cover the Zerilli case”.
‘Love in this city is a novel that enters the maze of the regime in Palermo: Salvo Palazzolo has found the investigation into the state archive on the state archive Two corpses of the Universityso discovering that even an honest investigating judge had tried to seek the truth about the death of Cetti Zerilli, but he had not been allowed to go on in the investigation: important evidence disappeared, while some policemen missed the investigations through false witnesses.
“Not everything has disappeared – says Palazzolo – I found the letters seized in Cetti Zerilli, I am a beautiful story of Palermo. A 20 -year -old student wanted to live his life in freedom, but the fascist regime has canceled his own name after he was killed. Now, the moment has come that Palermo remembers this emblematic story, which also speaks of censorship and freedom, passionate “.