Aldo Semerari(1923-1982)

Aldo Semerari was an Italian criminologist, anthropologist and psychiatrist. He was also a neo-fascist, who was suspected of complicity in the terror attack that killed 85 people at Bologna railway station in 1980. Semerari was born in Martina Franca, Apulia. He studied medicine at the University of Padua, specializing in psychiatry. During the 1970s he was Professor of Criminal Anthropology at the University of Rome, La Sapienza, and a director of the university's Institute of Forensic Psychopathology. His academic interests primarily involved the study of sadomasochism and sexual crimes. He was also reportedly the first to translate the works of the German-Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers into Italian. In 1962, Semerari was asked to provide a psychiatric analysis of the writer and film-maker Pier Paolo Pasolini, who was then on trial. In his report, Semerari pronounced Pasolini to be a "sexual deviant" and "instinctive psychopath", whose voyeurism and criminal tendencies were stimulated by his communist affiliations. Semerari did not succeed in getting his evidence accepted by the court. The controversial nature of Semerari's evaluation of Pasolini did not dent his status as a leading consultant to the criminal courts in Rome, and throughout the following two decades his psychiatric evaluations continued to influence judicial rulings. In the 1970s, Semerari was also involved in making films himself, developing a partnership with the director and screenwriter Brunello Rondi. In his youth Semerari was a communist ideologue. In 1954, however, he suddenly pivoted to the extreme right, becoming a convert to national socialism. He was also a member of the Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge, reputedly maintaining links with SISMI, the Italian military intelligence agency. Semerari also hosted a number of seminars with various far-right militants at around this time. In exchange for financial support for his organization, Semerari helped the members of various criminal organizations evade imprisonment when they were arrested, devising strategies for coping with police interrogation and writing reports that sought to establish either innocence, which were usually supported by a fraudulent diagnosis of mental infirmity. Semerari made similar deals with both Raffaele Cutolo's New Organised Camorra and one of Cutulo's main rivals, the New Family. In August 1980 Semerari was arrested on suspicion of being involved in the bombing of Bologna Central railway. He was freed in April 1981 due to a lack of evidence. On 23 March 1982 Semerari traveled to Naples, ostensibly to meet a local Camorra leader, Umberto Ammaturo, who had requested a psychiatric certificate. Semerari was last seen leaving the Royal Hotel in Naples on 26 March. His decapitated body was discovered on 1 April in a stolen car in Ottaviano, Campania. Semerari was murdered on the orders of Ammaturo, who desired revenge after discovering that his enemy, Raffaele Cutolo, had also availed himself of Semerari's services. Semerari's assistant was Fiorella Carrara, who was found dead from gunshot wounds in her apartment in Rome soon after Semerari's body was discovered.