Italy reopens investigation into director Pasolini's murder

The 1975 murder of legendary gay Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini is being reinvestigated following two statements that suggest the wrong man may have been imprisoned for the crime. BBC News reports that Italian state network Rai Tre ran an interview Saturday with Pino Pelosi, who says that he did not kill the director but that three other young people "with a Southern accent" did and that the unnamed men shouted insults like "dirty Communist" while beating Pasolini to death. Meanwhile, director Sergio Citti--who worked closely with Pasolini--gave an interview to the Rome newspaper La Repubblica in which he claims five men committed the murder. "Pino Pelosi was only a boy," he told the paper. "He acted as a bait for those five. They only used him; they needed somebody to blame for the crime. Pelosi had to play the game played by these people, the 'respectable' people who ordered the murder." Citti cites a source who told him that Pasolini was murdered in another locale before his body was dumped on the beach. He also says that Pasolini's murder was part of a political conspiracy: "His death was convenient to many, to all those who were afraid of his mind and free spirit." Rome mayor Walter Veltroni told La Repubblica, "Pelosi's statements rekindle doubts and questions which the poet's friends, many intellectuals, and a good section of public opinion have always had about what really happened that night." Pasolini--whose films include Teorema, The Gospel According to St. Matthew, and Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom--was also known in Italy as a poet, novelist, journalist, and playwright.