MONTESI TRIAL ALLEGATION

Press, Volume XCV, Issue 28234, 23 March 1957, Page 11

MONTESI TRIAL ALLEGATION

“Gamekeeper Urged To Admit Crime”

(Rec. 8 p.m.) VENICE, March 21. Two witnesses at the Montesi trial today claimed that a defence counsel of the Marquis Ugo Montagna, one of the main accused, tried to persuade a gamekeeper to take responsibility for the death of Wilma Montesi. The witnesses were Tommaso Ruffini and Mario Dascenzi, respectively the brother-in-law and a cousin of Anastasio Lilli, a gamekeeper of the Capocotta hunting reserve (near where Wilma’s body was found in April, 1953).

Lilli, who is charged with false testimony, claimed early in the trial that Girolamo Bellavista, Montagna’s lawyer, asked the brother-in-law and the cousin to try and persuade him, Lilli, to take responsibility for Wilma’s death.

“He’ll only get three years on a manslaughter charge, and anyway, the crime will come under the amnesty,” Bellavista was alleged to have said. Piero Piccioni, son of a former Italian Foreign Minister, is charged with the manslaughter of Wilma Montesi by leaving het to drown on a beach. Nine others, including three gamekeepers from Capocotta, are accused of false testimony. Two of Bellavista’s junior assistants, who said they were present at the conversation, denied the allegations and declared that all Bellavista said was “Lilli and his wife must tell the truth, the whole truth.” Lilli's two relations stood by their stories when confronted with the two junior assistants. The trial goes on tomorrow,

Telephone Clock Stopped.—The talking clock on the Paris telephone system was put out of action by its technical staff today in sympathy with French university science tutors staging a 48hour strike for a wage r*se. — Paris, March 22.