Death Before Lunch

Like most Italians, Genoa Chief Prosecutor Francesco Coco, 67, preferred to eat lunch at home, and last week that habit cost him his life. Coco and a bodyguard were climbing a long flight of steps to the prosecutor's Genoa house when three men stepped out of an archway and shot them down at pointblank range with heavy-caliber pistols. Two more assassins, meanwhile, closed in on the blue official Fiat from which Coco had just emerged and pumped bullets into the police chauffeur. As the three victims lay dying, their killers vanished; two of them sped away down a labyrinth of alleys aboard a red Vespa motor scooter.

The murder of Coco, who was nationally prominent and constantly guarded because of his investigations of political extremists, quickly became an issue in Italy's upcoming election (TIME cover, June 14). Italians were shocked when an extreme-left organization known as the Red Brigades took credit for the killing and listed the charges for which Coco had been gunned down. In a crowded courtroom in Turin, where 23 members of the organization were already on trial for kidnapings and urban guerrilla attacks, one defendant named Prospero Gallinari suddenly stood up. Ignoring the judge's admonishments, Gallinari read from a statement held in his manacled hands: "Yesterday an armed nucleus of the Red Brigades executed the state hangman Francesco Coco and two mercenaries who were supposed to protect him." Police did not challenge Gallinari's claim. From composite sketches based on the descriptions of witnesses who had seen the five attackers flee, authorities had already zeroed in on one man, a 29-year-old Genovese named Giuliano Nara, a long-sought member of the Brigate Rosse.

Momentarily, at least, as a result of the murders, violence suddenly overshadowed Communism as a central issue in the election campaign. Politicians warned of a renewed "strategy of tension" among extremist groups to foment disorder and influence voters: in addition to last week's triple killing, the violence has already included the murder of a Communist demonstrator following a neo-Fascist rally, street battles between extreme right and left, and the fire-bombing of a Rome movie theater used for neo-Fascist rallies.

Responsible political organizations all quickly deplored Coco's murder, but they also projected it into the increasingly hectic election campaign. Premier Aldo Moro, stumping for the Christian Democrats, deplored "a grave disturbance at a delicate electoral moment." The Communists, by means of a statement in the party newspaper L'Unit`a, protested that such "ferocious criminality" was meant to prevent Italians from making "new choices to bring Italy out of its crisis and disorder." Added the statement: "In the face of this worrying reality, the action of the government appears inadequate and weak." Political observers thought the mysterious mounting strategy of tension might hurt either party, but nobody knew to what degree. The latest election polls showed the Communists, led by Enrico Berlinguer, gaming slightly on Moro's Christian Democrats, but the polling took place before Coco was gunned down on his way to lunch.

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