BRIGADIER’S DEATH
ITALIAN WOMAN x CHARGED (Rec. 7 p.m.) LONDON. March 19. Maria Pasquinelli, aged 33, an Italian school teacher, pleaded guilty before an Allied military court in Trieste , to a charge of having murdered Brigadier R. W. de Winton as he was inspecting the guard outside a British brigade headquarters at Pola on February 10. The court rejected Pasquinelli’s plea because the charge, which was brought under an Allied military proclamation, is punishable by death. The prosecution said that the brigadier was inspecting the guard when Pasquinelli fired three rounds from a pistol into his back. After her arrest Pasquinelli said that she shot the brigadier as a protest against the Italian peace treaty. “I felt it my duty to protest. I would have gone to the Big Four, but I could not get near them,” she said in evidence. She added that she had lost hope that the Allies would change their decision on Trieste, but she felt it necessary to rebel. She was determined to assassinate the Big Four’s representative, whom she took to be Brigadier de Winton.
Pasquinelli told the Court that she loved Fascism and that she tried to join the Italian front line troops to North Africa as a soldier. She had sought death assiduously.
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Bibliographic details
Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25139, 21 March 1947, Page 7
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211BRIGADIER’S DEATH Press, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 25139, 21 March 1947, Page 7
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