Some people seem to have stepped straight out of the pages of the most compelling crime novels or crime novels. Not only for what they have done in their professional life, but also for the character contours, passions, obsessions and commitment with which they have transformed their work into a real mission. One of these is the deputy prosecutor Alessandro Pili, who will turn 70 on 2 July and will have to leave the judiciary. His name is linked to some of the best known crime news cases of the last half century: from the murder of Gisella Orrù to the crimes of the so-called "Monster of Arbus", passing through an infinite number of other crimes solved in forty years of investigations, ten of which he spent at the head of the homicide pool.

The last day. Officially the prosecutor will retire in July, but due to the accrued holidays, yesterday he closed his last day of work in the prosecutor's office. In the room, on the third floor of the Palace of Justice, many have been passing by to greet him for days, showing a mixture of emotion and respect. Starting with the carabinieri and police officers who have worked with him since he entered the judiciary on March 1, 1983. As mentioned, an expert in investigations into homicides and violent crimes, for Alessandro Pili filing a crime without identifying the perpetrators has always been a painful decision, to be taken as late as possible, so much so that - at every starting point for an investigation - he still tried to reopen the case. And he has always done so not only to give a justice response to the families of the victims, but also to honor those lives forcibly taken from those who were unable to defend themselves. The case of the infant found dead in February 1996 under the Bau Ferru overpass at the entrance to Siliqua is exemplary. For 16 years, every year, the magistrate refused to close the investigation, ordering the military to check who put flowers on that small gravestone in the cemetery. Eventually she discovered that the infanticide had matured within a history of incest and violence.

The Girl of the Well. In the summer of 1989, when the naked body of 16-year-old Gisella Orrù, killed with an awl to the heart, was found in a well in the Sulcis countryside, prosecutor Pili coordinated one of the most complex and followed-up investigations ever. Many leads beaten by the investigators: from that of satanic rites to feasts, until they discover that behind the crime there would have been an attempt at sexual violence that cost the teenager his life. All three levels of judgment ended with the convictions of the suspects.

The monster of Arbus. When Italy was terrorized by the chain of crimes involving the Monster of Florence, on 4 September 1982, near the beach of Piscinas, the Volkswagen T2 van was found with the corpses of two German lovers. The girl had first been raped and then killed with a shot in the back of the head. By coordinating the work of the carabinieri, thanks to the intuition of a marshal, Pili was thus able to convict the perpetrator of the double crime, also discovering the members of a gang responsible for numerous other murders.

A life on the line. Determined, almost to the limits of Machiavellianism, to solve the case of a boy killed, the magistrate had spread the news that he had died of an illness, while in the meantime intercepting everyone. After a sensational misdirection, he had a repentant 'Ndrangheta convicted. The chronicles of the newspapers are full of news of cases solved by Alessandro Pili: from the murder of two sisters of Sardara, to that of the Jolly Market in Pula, passing through Ogliastra, where in the summer he often worked as acting prosecutor. After 4 years at the District Anti-Mafia Directorate and, before that, another 4 as an investigating judge in Nuoro, he never wanted to make a career. But he honored public ministry until retirement.

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