COUNT CIANO

Grey River Argus, 3 July 1944, Page 2

COUNT CIANO

AMERICAN STORY OF EXECUTION (Rec. 10.10) NEW YORK, July 2. A Rome correspondent of the “New York Times” says: On the eve of the execution of Count Ciano, former Italian Foreign Minister, someone apparently spent millions on a plot to save his life. The Idea was to take adyantage of the. Italian law*, which ’provides that, if a condemned man is alive six minutes after shooting, the sentence is cons’dered to have been carried out. A film of the execution of Count Ciano and six other members of the Fascist Grand Council was taken at Hitler’s orders It showed that Count Ciano conclusively threw himself to the left at the exact moment that the execution squad fired, apparently feigning to be dead. However, the money was spent in vain. Rome’s most dreaded killer, Pietro Caruso, Himmler’s Ital’an counterpart, had come to Verona personelly to supervise the execution. The film shows Caruso’s finger twice closing on the trigger of his pistal as he gave Fascism’s plavboy his coup de grace. At his trial Count Ciano behaved pretty badly He swore that he would not have voted for Count Grandi if he had foreseen the results, and if he had not felt that II Duce’s fate was at stake Count Ciano d : d not take his death sentence seriouslv, because he was Mussolini’s son-in-law. but when a priest came to his cell he realised with horror that he was. to die. He hurriedly signed a petition to II Duce for clemency- A courier flew in a spec’al plane to Lake Garda, where Mussolini was staying. But. Il Duce did not appear before next morning, when he shouted with grief and rage because he had not been notified in time. Eye-witnesses say that it was a good piece of acting.