Kidnapped, trapped and alone in her cage, Berica Marchiorello struggled to keep her sanity. How long could she last ? and yet, silently, courageously, she kept insisting: "Daddy, Don't Pay!"
Early
on the evening of Monday, December 20, 1982, Berica Marchiorello was
speaking on the telephone. The 27-year-old blonde was filled with
excitement: in only 12 hours she was to fly to Riod de Janeiro for a
fort night’s holiday. “Isn’t it fantastic?” she was saying.
“Soon I’ll be basking in the sun.”
As
she spoke, she checked the clock on the wall. It said 7:30pm. But for
a moment Berica could make no sense of what she saw. Two men wearing
balaclavas were standing in the doorway, holding shiny black pistols.
One of them raised his weapon to his mouth, meaning “be quite”
then he took the receiver from Berica’s hand placed it on the hook.
The other went to fetch Berica’s mother Angela del Corno .They
pushed the two women at gunpoint down the stairs into the kitchen.
Three
other masked intruders were there. They had entered the plush 17th-
century villa on the outskirts of the town of Rosa through a back
door window on the ground floor. Two men began climbing the stairs to
the first floor. The others were standing guard over three terrified
women seated at the kitchen table: Berica’s 23-year-old handicapped
sister, Alessandra; Alessandra’s nurse, 20-year-old Letizia
crestani; and Erminia Pegoraro, 73, Berica’s beloved one time
nanny, now the Marchiorellos’ housekeeper.
The
bottom steps of the stairs were wet with blood. Jerry, one of the
family’s two Dobermans, lay on the floor, his throat silt.
“Which
one of you is Berica Marchiorello?” one intruder asked. He pointed
at Berica. “It’s you, isn’t it? ‘’
“No,”
Berica lied, her voice surprisingly calm. “I’m a friend of
Letizia’s I’m just visiting.” A slim girl with a level gaze and
chiselled features, Berica had inherited her father Dino’s sharp
mind and iron resolved – qualities he’d used to become one of the
most successful businessmen in Venice.
But
when the intruders asked for their identity papers, Berica saw that
it was useless to goon lying.
“Very
well,” she said. “I am Berica Marchiorello.”
The
men led Berica to a waiting car, where she was made to lie across the
knees of three of the kidnappers in the back seat. About half an hour
later, they stopped and switched cars. In another five minutes, they
reached their destination. Two men held Berica by the arms , led her
through a door way and down a passageway. She heard the sound of a
metal door scraping open.
HER
CELL measures tow and a half by one and a half meters, most of the
space taken up by a narrow bed. There was a plastic pail for her
bodily needs and an electric convector heater. The view from a
ventilator grille at one end of the room was of bales of hay. There
was a small aperture at the foot of the locked door at the other end,
through which Berica received food. Her prison has been a poultry
incubator.
The
features of her captors were squashed and blurred by stockings pulled
over their heads. “Take your jewels off.” One of the men ordered.
They checked them and then her, looking for hidden electronic bugs or
radio transmitters.
No
Escape.
Then they wanted to know how much ready money her father had, what
assets he could realize. “You’ve got the wrong person,” Berica
kept laying. “We have no money.” They wanted six thousand million
lire.”
The
first night, Berica was chained by her wrist to a bolt in the wall.
She could not sleep; as she tossed and turned, the chain jangled its
message of humiliation. She had tasted the terrible resignation of
the wild animal that has fallen into a trap. Her captors could do
anything they wanted to her. She has no way of fighting back.
On
Tuesday morning, the black gloved hand of her jailer pushed a
breakfast tray through the opening in the door. He was clearly an
underling. The decision – makers were the two men who has searched
her. They returned three or four hours later with a book, some
magazine, and a copy of the morning paper, a pen and a paper. Beric
asked her to remove her chain. It served no purpose, she could not
possibly escape.
They
took a picture of her holding up the paper, the date in view. As
evidence that she was alive. And then they made her write a note:
“Pay up and don’t tell anyone, or they will take it out on me.
Pay whatever they ask. ‘’ On her own initiative she added,
“Please, please understand me.’’
Now
Berica was alone. In her cell there was no sound save that of her own
breathing. No motion save that of her own body.
The
first thing she did was to start a calendar. Then she worked out a
daily routine. After cleaning her teeth, she sat cross-legged on her
bed, doing deep breathing exercises. Next came knee bends and
push-ups. She had to stay strong.
Her
reading matter consisted of an issue of the weekly magazine,
Panorama, a
syrupy paperback and a comic book. By Berica’s biological clock
reading took up about four hours, after which she couldn’t
concentrate any more. Then she bathed herself using water from a
pail. They‘d given her a red track suite for a change of clothes.
After that there was nothing to do except wait.
Finally.
Footsteps on a concrete. A scraping at the door. Her breakfast tray
was replaced by another bearing supper. “Wait!’’ she cried.
“Don’t go. Please, let me hold your hand.” The hand lingered in
the aperture. Berica took it between her own and held it against her
face. The hand withdrew. Berica was alone again.
THE MESSAGE and accompanying photograph reached Dino Marchiorello on Wednesday. He paled as he read the ransom note, but understood Berica’s real message immediately. The words “understand me” in the note really meant “do not pay” He and Berica had often discussed what they would do if a member of the family were kidnapped. In 1982 kidnappings were taking place on average once a week in Italy. Some of the victims, like industrialist Livio Bernardi, never came back. Ransoms running into billions of live were paid. Father and daughter agreed on one thing. They would never pay no matter what. As long as ransoms were paid kidnappings would continue- and spread.
Dino
knew what he must do: negotiate. Promise, stall. Play for time. Every
hour that passed increased the chance of criminals betraying
themselves
HER
JAILER bought her cake and chocolates on Christmas day. There was a
spring of calicanthus on her tray. On New Year’s Day there was
another gift – a jigsaw puzzle of a little shepherdess playing with
a lamb. She did and undid it until she lost count.
Days
passed. A month. Six weeks on her calendar. She hadn’t gone mad.
Not yet. But one day, waves of panic started shooting up her spine.
“Stay calm or you’re finished,’’ she urged herself. Words she
had read came into her mind: “People spend their lives walking on a
wafer-thin crust concealing a terrifying abyss.” I
have slipped through a crack in that crust she thought. I have fallen
into the abyss.
But
she was lucky, she finally told herself. She must have landed on some
kind of Ledge, for now the crisis was over. Sitting on the bed, she
began brushing her teeth.
DURING
the second week of February, the two men with stockinged faces came
to see her again.They wanted to know something only she could
know--her nick name for her nanny—as evidence to convince her
family she was still alive and that they were the real kidnappers.
“How long are you going to keep me here?” Berica screamed. “I
can’t stand it any longer!”
They
laughed. “You’ll stay here forever –if your father doesn’t
pay up.”
After
they left, she panicked again. Rivers of sweat ran down her back. She
could not control her breathing. She dragged herself to the
ventilation grille. The bales of hay outside. She struck a match.
Make
an end of it. I’ve reached the limit. I can’t take any more.
She
let the match drop ---- on the floor. To commit suicide would be to
give it, and that she could never do. She was Dino Marchiorello’s
daughter.
THE
WAIT was taking its toll on her family as well. Berica’s mother was
so nervous that she jumped every time the phone rang. She often wept
and her hands shook .At night she and Dino tossed and turned in bed
for hours. It was usually dawn before they fell asleep.
Meanwhile
the net patiently drawn by soldiers and the police was closing around
Berica’s kidnappers. By mid February, the police figured that the
kidnappers were in padua,Treviso and Belluno areas were using public
phones to make their ransom demands. Policeman tapped 1500 phone
booths in a 200- kilometer radius and kept them surveillance.
ONE
NIGHT Berica dreamt her mother had come to release her. She heard
Angela calling, “Berica Berica.” Walking, she was convinced this
was the day she would be freed. She dressed and sat on the bed,
waiting for the door to open. She waited all day.
Berica
didn’t know what kind of god she believed in, but she tried to pray
anyway: Please,
if you can, don’t forget me.
One
day supper didn’t come. Maybe something had gone wrong. Maybe
they’d left her here. There was no explanation
from her jailer when he came the next day. After that, Berica started
setting aside part of her rations everyday so she would have a
survival store in case they really did abandon her.
She
often exchanged a few words with her hailer when he brought her tray.
She even wrote him letters in which she described her emotions. “I
can’t take this much longer,” he confided one day.
“Don’t
worry, it’ll soon be over. The irony of it. Prisoner comforting
warder.
ON
MARCH 7 a plainclothesman on the outskirts of castlefranco Veneto
noticed two men in a phone booth. The way they were hunched over the
receiver aroused his suspicions. Forcing his way into the booth, he
arrested 47-year-old former convict luigi Niero and his brother,
Lino, 38. They had covered the receiver into which they were speaking
with paper to distort their voices. Taken to police head quarters and
grilled for hours, they confess shortly after dawn.
At
2pm on March 8th,
15 police men surrounded a farmhouse in Montebelluna. Inside the
house they arrested Ines Casagrande; later they picked up her
husband. Alessandro Adami, 58, the jailer with the gloved hand.
Next
to the house stood a barn filled with straw, the police soon found
the passage leading to Berica’s cell.
BERICA
opened he eyes. It was time to start her 78th
day in the captivity. Dear god, how she missed the sun, its light and
warmth! If she ever got out of here, she would never take anything
for granted again.
“Berica,
Berica.” She must be hallucinating.
But
the voice still called. “Berica, Berica.”
She
froze with terror. They had sold her to another gang, she thought.
Vicious, brutal men who would torture and kill her. She cowered on
the bed.
There
was someone at the grille. A young man in uniform of a police
officer. Berica could not believe her eyes.
The
police broke down the door, Strong arms embraces Berica. Her legs
were jelly as they helped her out into the incandescent sunlight. It
shone on her face; it shone inside her as she laughed cried and
babbled words that made no sense. Berica knew that from this
wonderful moment on, each day would be uniquely precious. But the
happiest moment of all came when her father strode into the chief
inspector’s office in the little police station in Castelfranco
Veneto. She melted into his strong arms as he embraced her and told
her what she was waiting to hear: “Darling, I love you so much. And
I’m so proud of you.”
Later.
When she was reunited with her mother back at home, tears of joy made
words unnecessary. The whole village turned out to greet her. There
were flowers, smiles and laughter. She felt as if she’d walked into
the paradise, but she’d only come home.
ON
NOVEMEBER 23, 1984, the court sentenced Gianfranco Dalla Santa Casa,
the “brain” behind the kidnapping. Who was also being tries on
another charge, to 21 years in prison; Alessandro Adami to 17 years,
three months; Ines Casagrande to 16 years, Eight months; and the tow
Nieros to six years each. (The Niero brothers benefited from a law
that reduces the penalties for criminals who co-operated with the
police.) On October 24, 1985, the venice court of appeals slightly
reduced the sentenced except for Ines Casagrande’s the court of
Cassation made the sentence final
Condenced from READER’S DIGEST
BY-CHRISTOPHER
MATHEWS
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