Blood on the Altar by Tobias Jones

Author:Tobias Jones [Jones, Tobias]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography, Europe, History, Italy, Murder, Organized Crime, Serial Killers, True Crime
ISBN: 9780571274956
Google: HQP1A1xcZXoC
Amazon: B0076ML73O
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2012-02-28T00:00:00+00:00

As the official investigation was stalling, another man began helping the Claps family. Marco Gallo was a private investigator, someone who had just set up his own detective agency in Salerno. Gallo’s ‘security and investigations’ firm mainly worked for companies concerned about confidentiality and financial security. Gallo himself was charismatic and had film-star good looks: he was young, tall and tanned, like a cross between Bruce Willis and Roberto Saviano, the author of Gomorra. He was also idealistic: he had studied theology and was a devout Catholic, albeit one who was often scathing about the Catholic Church. He offered to work for the Claps family pro bono, and they, by now at their wits’ end and suspecting that the official investigation would never make any headway, gratefully accepted. Little did Gallo know, when he made the offer, that he would work for the family for over a decade.

Gallo began investigating all the protagonists in the case. He did extensive research into the Restivo family, into Don Mimì, into all the minor characters who had, over the years, led the investigation astray. He suspected, like the Claps family, that Danilo must have killed Elisa and hypothesised that her body might be found in the garden of a juvenile seminary in Viale Marconi. The location itself was suggestive: it was at the exit of the escalator that was under construction close to the Restivo household back in 1993. It was also where Restivo’s father’s National Library had been housed. It was an area that Danilo would have known very well and, in January 2000, Gallo sought permission to conduct some excavations. After a few days, he discovered what looked like a femur. Gallo alerted Luciano and Gildo to the discovery and took the bone to an acquaintance for further tests. There was a possibility, the expert said, that the bone was human.

However, the investigator and the Claps family now had a dilemma. They had independently conducted their own research and, now that a possible piece of evidence had emerged, they knew that they had to hand it to the authorities. No one trusted the Potenza Questura any more: they had been shown to be completely incompetent, if not actually corrupt. So Gildo decided to take the bone to Sabatino Riccio, a man who had previously been extremely courteous and diligent in his investigations, but who had now been transferred hundreds of miles to the north, to Forlì. Gallo duly gave Gildo the bone, wrapped in cellophane. It was a strange object: Gildo didn’t know whether he was holding in his hand the last, earthly remains of his sister or if this was, again, just another red herring. He didn’t know whether to hope it was her or not, whether to hope for certainty or to hope, against all odds, that she was still alive.

Gildo phoned Riccio, who invited them to Forlì. He drove through the night with Luciano and their lawyer, arriving in the town at sunrise. When they told Riccio, however, about the bone in their possession, he became anxious.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.