We forgot about the Marrazzo scandal too soon
Exterior at night, Rome, extreme northern suburbs, Due Ponti area. Smoke comes out of a cellar. It’s the beginning of a fire. Cut to a tenant who, leaning out of the balcony, calls the firefighters on his cell phone. Cut to the firefighters who, after entering the hovel from which the smoke is coming, hear the sound of running water running from the bathroom sink. They enter and find a laptop left soaking in the sink. Then another firefighter can be heard yelling from the small bedroom, “Come here!” Cut to a still, soot-stained body lying on a bed. It’s a corpse. The body of Brenda, a 32 year old transsexual, prostitute. Fade to black.
A crime podcast story
This is how yet another crime TV series set in Rome could begin. Or, a more modest podcast. And instead, Brenda’s story, as well as everything that happened before and after her death, has remained shrouded in total silence since that fateful November 20, 2009. The day of her death. More likely, than his killing. And to make things even more disturbing, it was the death, just eight days before, of Gianguerino “Rino” Cafasso, a professional pusher, who had relationships with Brenda herself and other transsexuals, including those who frequented the then President of the Lazio Region Piero Marrazzo. Cafasso was found dead in a sordid hotel on Salaria, having died of an overdose after snorting heroin “disguised” as cocaine, purchased from a North African drug dealer, while he was in the company of Jennifer, also a transsexual.
This story has some compelling elements. Starting from that night of 3 July 2009, during which four carabinieri – who later turned out to be “infidels” – broke into an apartment in via Gradoli – a well-known street of spies, secret services, and where the hideout of the Brigades was located Redheads who kidnapped Aldo Moro, for one – to film Marrazzo in the company of the transsexual prostitute Natalie. Footage that one of the four then tried to sell for one hundred thousand euros to national newspapers. So much so that the video ended up in the hands of the then director of the weekly “Chi” Alfonso Signorini, who refused to purchase it, but informed his publisher and then prime minister, as well as leader of Forza Italia, Silvio Berlusconi. And the latter, perhaps thinking of doing a pious work, informed Marrazzo himself.
Marrazzo disappears from the radar
Almost as if it were a plot from a Coen Brothers film. From the sordid apartment in via Gradoli, going up the entire social chain of the political-institutional-mass media life of our beautiful country, the video of Marrazzo in the company of a trans prostitute reaches the prime minister. And from there, it becomes the news that, from ear to ear, first in one political party, then in the other, is whispered. Then the matter comes to the attention of the person concerned, “There is a video that portrays you half naked, with a trans and some cocaine on a table.” Game over. The party calls and invites you to resign from the race for re-election as president of the Lazio Region. You ended up forced to take shelter for a month in a convent in Cassino (it must have been the same one that later hosted Minister Sangiuliano for much less serious events, you know). From then on Marrazzo would not speak again for a long time. He will appear again on Rai as a correspondent from Jerusalem.
And we said the Coen Brothers, because stories, even the most tragic ones, can become comical at times. Take, for example, the film “Fargo”, the story of a brutal crime and other subsequent chain crimes. Ultimately it’s a drama. But told like a tragicomedy. And this story of the Marrazzo scandal can also, if appropriately treated, become a great national-popular tragicomic fresco. Ultimately, this story had and continues to have all the trappings of a great popular novel, of a great journalistic investigation, of a compelling news story in the style of “Who has seen it?” or “Fourth degree” (if you want to move from Rai to Mediaset), it could become a popular TV series for one of the numerous streaming platforms. And instead? Instead silence. No one has ever tried to really understand anything about it. The subject is still hot today. It has too many streams that touch countless intertwined realities. Conflicts of interest that prohibit discussion. Because it is a story that touches politics, which in turn has connections with journalism, which has connections with the Italian radio-television duopoly, in a suffocating and asphyxiated circle of Roman and Milanese salons in which it is decided what is mainstream and what , however, must be forgotten.
Everything vanished
In fact, beyond the conviction of the four corrupt carabinieri – in November 2018 (the time of Italian justice) – nothing more was ever known about who killed first Cafasso and then Brenda. If behind the initiative to blackmail the then president of the Lazio Region and aspirant for an encore there were only four unfaithful carabinieri, or was there a broader direction. If Marrazzo himself had touched some threads that – as president of an important institution – he shouldn’t have touched. After fifteen years, he writes a book about his life (Story without heroes”, ed. Marsilio). He writes it with his three daughters, who suffered so much at the time and perhaps still suffer from the events. Legitimate. Wanting to retrace this story too, among others in his life. But it will be and always is a biased story. While, in all these years, there has been no telling of the truth about a disturbing story that has caused deaths along the way and which has never found a real and clear key to understanding. As often happens in our country, when politics mixes with information and institutions, we remain silent. It is removed. You try to delete. And Marrazzo’s words published in a recent interview with Corriere remain just a little out of place: “If I had frequented a female prostitute, the impact would have been enormously smaller.” Probable, but then there’s more: Brenda wouldn’t have died. She, more than anyone else, is destined to remain a minor character in this story. Always forgotten. Today, as then.