PLOT THAT FAILED

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVI, Issue 22934, 3 July 1944, Page 6

PLOT THAT FAILED

Execution Of Ciano (Rec. 7.30). NEW YORK, July 1. On the eve of Count Ciano's execution, someone apparently spent millions on a' plot to save his life, reports the Rome correspondent of the “New York Times.” The idea was to take advantage of Italian law, which provides that if a condemned man is alive six minutes after shooting, the sentence is considered to have been carried out. A film of the execution of Ciano and six other members of the Fascist Grand Council, taken at Hitler’s orders, showed that Ciano was conclusively there himself. He fell at the exact moment the execution squad fired, apparently feigning he was dead. However, th. money was spent in vain, for Rome’s most dreaded killer, Pietro Caruso, Himmler’s Italian counterpart, had come to Veront personally to supervise the execution. The film shows Caruso’s finger twice closing on the trigger of his pistol as he gave Fascism’s playboy his coup de grace. At his trial Ciano behaved pretty badly. He swore he would not have voted for Count Grand! if he had foreseen the results, and if he had not felt that II Duce’s fate was at stake. Ciano did not take the death sentence seriously, because he was Mussolini’s son-in-law, but when a priest came to the 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 special plane to Lake Garda, where Mussolini was staying, but 11 Duce did not appear before the next morning, when he shouted —ith grief and rage because he was not notified in time. Eye-witnesses say it was a good piece of acting.