The Strage di Via D'Amelio (aka the Via D'Amelio Bombing) was a terrorist attack carried out by the Sicilian Mafia on July 19th 1992 to eliminate one of their worst enemies, Anti-Mafia magistrate Paolo Borsellino. His fellow colleague and close friend, Judge Giovanni Falcone, had been killed 57 days prior in another bombing attack.
The terrorists had taken advantage of the usual visits the judge used to pay to his mother, Maria Pia Lepanto, who at that time lived in an apartment in Via D'Amelio together with her daughter, future Anti-Mafia activist Rita Borsellino.
Alongside the Judge, in the attack died five members of his escort: Agents Agostino Catalano, Emanuela Loi (the first Italian female member of a police escort and the first to be killed on duty), Vincenzo Li Muli, Walter Eddie Cosina, and Claudio Traina. The only survivor of the escort in the bombing was Agent Antonino Vullo.
As he will recount: "I didn't hear any noise, nothing suspicious, nothing at all. Suddenly it was hell. I saw a huge blaze and I felt the armored car jolting. The shockwave threw me out of the seat. I don't know how I managed to get out of the car. Around me there were shreds of human flesh scattered everywhere".
In 2012 it was confirmed the existence of negotiations between Italian institutions and the Sicilian mafia. According to Judge Antonino Di Matteo, the Via D'Amelio Bombing was carried out "to protect the [State-Mafia] pact from the danger that Dott. Borsellino, having being made aware of it, would publically reveal and denounce its existence, thus irreparably compromising its desired outcome"
It's worth noting that, after the bombing, the so called agenda rossa (red notebook) owned by Borsellino, that the Judge always took with him and where he used to write down his notes regarding his investigations mysteriously disappeared and it hasn't been found ever since.
