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killer’sname.” She catches me off-guard. This is the last thing I was expecting. I start to think I’ve really put my foot in it, that maybe I have no right, but the silence between us grows heavy and I can’t hold back now.
    â€œThe boy that pulled the trigger is named Mario Ferrandi, from Milan. He was twenty-one years old at the time.”
    She interrupts me right away. “Is he still in jail?”
    â€œNo, but I don’t know where he lives. I only know that he used to work for a big drug rehabilitation center in Bologna.”
    She’s pensive, chews her lips. We walk for a little while, then I start to tell her what I found in the 236 pages that the investigating magistrate, Guido Salvini, wrote about Ferrandi and twenty-four other defendants in his sentence of September 15, 1990. I try to make her see that the judiciary did an excellent job in uncovering every detail of her father’s death, that at least one of the government’s bodies had done its duty.
    There were two trials. At the first, which ended in 1982, three minors—none of whom was directly responsible for the death of Antonio Custra—were convicted. They were three high school students who had participated actively in the riot. One of them, Walter Grecchi, was sentenced to fourteen years for aiding and abetting a homicide, but objectively speaking his crime was to have thrown a Molotov cocktail. He served three and a half years. While awaiting trial on appeal, he fled to France, where he still lives. His name is on the list of people wanted for extradition that the Italian Ministry of Justice has submitted to the French government on two different occasions. His mother begged for him to be pardoned and allowed to return to Italy, but she died without any hope of seeing her dream fulfilled. Antonia remarks, “I remember her writing to us, too. And to think that others who threw Molotovs are in Parliament or serving as government ministers.” For a moment, we almost laugh.
    I show her the famous picture of a boy in a black ski mask crouching and firing a .22-caliber Beretta.
    â€œIs that Ferrandi?”
    â€œNo, it’s Giuseppe Memeo. He’s not the one who killed your father. Here he’s only eighteen. It was the first time he’d held a gun. But in 1979 he shot and killed a jeweler and a secret service agent. The jeweler’s teenage son was wounded in the shoot-out, leaving him partially paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair.
    â€œAt the moment the picture was taken, the boys were fleeing and your father had already been shot. It’s the final scene. They’re in front of 59 Via De Amicis, where there’s a big copy shop. If you look at the photo carefully, on the opposite side of the street, partly hidden by a tree, you can see another photographer, Antonio Conti. He kept the pictures he took that day hidden inside a book in his bedroom for twelve years. Those pictures were ultimately the key to solving the murder. On October 31, 1989, while the world was changing and the Berlin Wall was about to crumble, Judge Salvini, on a hunch, ordered a search of Conti’s home. Thirty negatives from that afternoon were found, providing a trove of additional evidence.
    â€œUsing pictures shot by three different photographers, the investigators were able to piece together fifteen sequences that pinpointed each person and his actions. You can see the youths with weapons—one carrying a pistol, another a rifle, a few with Molotovs—advancing toward the third police battalion of the Celere division, which formed a line halfway down the street. Molotovs are thrown, followed by gunshots. Memeo is the first to shoot. The others follow his lead. One guy runs ahead of the pack, staying on the sidewalk to the right and taking cover behind cars. He makes it to within 100–130 feet of the police. He’s wearing a light-colored ski mask with a pom-pom and low-cut boots. On the