«Denis Bergamini was killed because the matches were fixed and he wanted to stay out of football betting. But if you want me to tell you more you have to help me, the prosecutor Gratteri must protect me and give me guarantees, I risk my life. If Gratteri gives me guarantees, I will come to Cosenza and tell everything».
This was said by Pietro Pugliese, 70 years old, a former justice collaborator and believed to be a Camorra hitman., heard today in the Cosenza court during the hearing of the trial on the death of Donato «Denis» Bergamini. Pugliese was heard via connection from a Carabinieri barracks in Naples and then added nothing further. At the end of the hearing, the two minutes of the statements made by Pugliese in recent years were acquired. «An imaginative and grotesque testimony. It’s a shame – declared the lawyer Fabio Anselmo, lawyer for the Bergamini family – that he avoided our questions, otherwise I would have asked who instigated the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. I believe he wants state protection because this also includes financial compensation. His credibility is nil.” The trial was then postponed to February 23, when Professor Emanuela Turillazzi of the Forensic Medicine section, department of Surgical, Medical, Molecular Pathology and Critical Area of the University of Pisa will be heard.