ITALY: A Roman holiday proved a little too dramatic for one French family recently, writes Paddy Agnew
The Serge family from Toulouse, France are unlikely ever to forget their Italian holiday in the summer of 2004. They travelled to the Eternal City doubtless dreaming of a Roman Holiday along Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn lines. In the end, they found themselves in a version of Roman Polanski's Frantic as they unwittingly got caught up in the police killing of Italy's most wanted fugitive.
The Serges, Jean-Louis, Anne Jeanne and their three children, were out on the tourist trail recently, looking at the Circo Massimo, site of chariot racing in ancient Rome, when the suffocating heat prompted them to seek refuge and refreshment at a little nearby kiosk, selling water melon and soft drinks. They were not to know it but their paths were about to cross with that of Luciano Liboni, Italy's most wanted man.
The most recent chapter in the life and death of Liboni had begun on July 22nd in the tiny Marche town of Pereto di Sant'Agata. Liboni, who escaped from prison two years ago whilst serving an eight year sentence for a variety of armed robbery crimes, had driven up to a little bar in the village on a motor bike that turned out to be stolen.
Liboni ordered a drink and then went into the phone booth in the bar to make a call. When he came out of the bar, he walked straight into carabiniere Alessandro Giorgioni, the local policeman who had just walked in for a drink.
Something about Liboni's manner aroused suspicion in policeman Giorgioni. He asked Liboni for his documents. Certainly, said Liboni, but they are in the holder on my bike outside. At which point, the policeman and Liboni walked out of the bar towards the motor bike.
Before he got to the bike, however, Liboni jumped on Giorgioni and shot him in the head with a calibre 38 revolver. For good measure, Liboni then shot the 36-year-old father of one (a four year old boy, Leonardo) a second time as he lay on the ground, dying.
From the moment that Liboni jumped on his bike and sped off, a massive nationwide police hunt for the killer had begun. The bar owner and a client had both been able to identify Liboni, someone well known to the police as "The Wolf", the solitary killer. Identikit pictures of Liboni were flashed across posters, newspaper front pages and TV news bulletins.
Just two days later, close to Termini station in central Rome, the police almost caught their man. Spotted by a policeman, Liboni had, however, made good his escape by first sequestering a passing car at gunpoint and then jumping out of the car and disappearing into the Rome underground.
That close call only served to heighten national awareness re "Il Lupo", The Wolf. Thus it was that exactly one week later, as she was walking towards Circo Massimo on her way to that night's Simon and Garfunkel concert, that 54-year-old Luciana Lena thought she recognised The Wolf.
She immediately alerted a nearby traffic policewoman, who in turn alerted two motor cyclist carabinieri who had just parked close to the Circo Massimo, after having ridden as escort for Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi across central Rome.
The two carabinieri, Angelo Bellucci and Alessandro Palmas, opted to tail Liboni, staying on the opposite side of the huge Circo Massimo with Liboni well in their sights. At a certain point, the two carabinieri then rode ahead, parking their bikes directly in Liboni's path. As the killer walked past them, one of them called after him: "Luciano, Luciano."
At first Liboni did not respond. Then suddenly and without warning, he turned and opened fire. The policemen dodged for cover. At that point, the Serge family unwittingly became involved in the action as Liboni, desperate for a way out, ran down the road to the bar where they were sitting and, grabbing Anne Jeanne by the throat, shouted: "I'll kill her, I'll kill her."
As the two policemen tried to reason with Liboni, one of them quietly moved around behind him. At a certain point, suddenly aware that policeman Bellucci was behind him, Liboni turned round brusquely, in the process losing his grip on Anne Jeanne Serge, who had the good sense to dive to the ground. As he shot at Bellucci, fortunately missing him, Liboni himself was then hit in the head from behind by Palmas.
Even though he was mortally wounded, Liboni still tried to struggle. Within minutes, he was on an ambulance headed for emergency surgery at San Giovanni hospital where he died two hours later.
Behind him on the footpath, he left a bloodsoaked rucksack, containing €33,000 with which he may have intended to make good an escape to Sri Lanka, where he had land and a female companion.
As the two police "heroes", Angelo Bellucci and Alessandro Palmas, stood at the scene of the shootout, talking to police colleagues and reporters, Roman passers-by shouted at them, "Well done, lads". (Later in the day, state President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi sent his congratulations to both the police force and Bellucci and Palmas).
For the police, it was a case of "mission accomplished". For the Serge family, however, it had been a terrifying ordeal but one that was partly alleviated by the fact that none of them speak or understand much Italian.
Mme Serge admitted afterwards that she had taken Liboni for a handbag snatcher and that she had no idea what he was shouting at her.