Mystery of Rome's jigsaw skeleton skeleton
Friday October 31 2003 dawned bitterly cold in Rome after a long Indian summer. Despite the weather, 77-year-old Libero Ricci, a retired interior decorator once employed by the Vatican, had no intention of missing his daily walk. Bundling up against the icy wind, Ricci said goodbye to his wife and son, with whom he lived in the south-western suburb of Magliana, pocketed his wallet and keys, and set off as usual after breakfast at 10am.
Robust and fit for his years, Ricci usually walked no more than a mile, keeping to the nearby streets. Halfway, he liked to rest on a bench not far from Magliana’s shopping centre before returning home at about 11am. But that morning he didn’t return.
By midday his family had become anxious. Throughout the afternoon and early evening, his son, Claudio, searched the neighbourhood, questioning shopkeepers, asking in cafes, inquiring at the nearby hospital. No one had seen anything of Ricci, and at nightfall Claudio reported his father’s disappearance to the police.
By November 1 Libero Ricci had become a statistic: one of about 500 people who disappear each year in Rome, many of whom are never found. To Ricci’s anguished son, the disappearance was inexplicable. 'My father is a perfectly normal, simple family man,’ Claudio Ricci told a reporter after the disappearance. 'Before he retired, he would go to work in the morning and come home in the evening. He lived a quiet life, had no indulgences; there were never any rows with anyone and he had no enemies.’...
Read entire article at Telegraph (UK)
Robust and fit for his years, Ricci usually walked no more than a mile, keeping to the nearby streets. Halfway, he liked to rest on a bench not far from Magliana’s shopping centre before returning home at about 11am. But that morning he didn’t return.
By midday his family had become anxious. Throughout the afternoon and early evening, his son, Claudio, searched the neighbourhood, questioning shopkeepers, asking in cafes, inquiring at the nearby hospital. No one had seen anything of Ricci, and at nightfall Claudio reported his father’s disappearance to the police.
By November 1 Libero Ricci had become a statistic: one of about 500 people who disappear each year in Rome, many of whom are never found. To Ricci’s anguished son, the disappearance was inexplicable. 'My father is a perfectly normal, simple family man,’ Claudio Ricci told a reporter after the disappearance. 'Before he retired, he would go to work in the morning and come home in the evening. He lived a quiet life, had no indulgences; there were never any rows with anyone and he had no enemies.’...