Murder of the head physician Montanari: after 42 years there is a suspect, the father of a patient

One of the main cold cases in Emilia reopens after 42 years. A murder, that of Professor Giorgio Montanari , 51-year-old director of the obstetrics-gynecology clinic of the Modena Polyclinic, murdered with seven gunshots on the evening of 8 January 1981 after finishing a day's work in the hospital.

The case has been reopened and a person is registered in the register of suspects: he is the father of a man, a newborn at the time of the events, who suffered injuries during childbirth . The motive, it is hypothesized, is to be found in retaliation against the then head physician.

Archived first in 1991 and then in 2020 after the reopening of the investigation, the case is now sensationally reopened: this was decided by the Modena Prosecutor's Office after new and currently still unknown elements, and new investigative technologies available to the investigators.

Anna Ponti, the man's ninety-year-old widow, has never stopped searching for the truth .

It is, the magistrates point out, a lead. And the registration of this man in the register of suspects, it is explained, is a necessary act to allow investigations . The Modena Flying Squad reached him after re-examining the medical records of the patients at the time. They took up papers that had already been analyzed 42 years ago, listened to various health professionals and thus opened up the possibility of revenge .

In 1981 the Modena judiciary concentrated on the health sector in the search for the killer. The law on abortion had recently come into force and the professor had left his collaborators freedom of conscience. A decision that had caused discontent and friction in the hospital. Montanari had received threats, including envelopes with bullets, and one of his colleagues, with whom relations were not optimal, ended up under investigation . But to date the murderer has never been identified. The latest reopening of the file was requested by the then Modena prosecutor Paolo Giovagnoli, after a weapon compatible with the one used in the 1981 crime, a 45 caliber pistol, was sold at auction by the crime office. Even that lead, however, ultimately led to nothing.

(Unioneonline/L)