The monster of the Maiella – I escaped while he was raping my sister

The sad sentence in the title was spoken by the only survivor of the massacre carried out by the monster of the Maiella, Halivebi Hasani, in 1997. The words belong to Silvia Olivetti, just seventeen at the time.

Silvia, Diana and Tamara

Silvia and Diana Olivetti were sisters, friends of Tamara Gobbo, with whom they shared a passion for trekking and mountain hikes. The three girls left Albignasego, in the province of Padua, for a holiday in Abruzzo, where they spent a few days surrounded by nature, sleeping in a tent. They then decided to camp at the “Colle dei Lupi” campsite in San Giacomo, and on the morning of 20 August they drove to the refuge at the San Leonardo Pass, about ten kilometres from their campsite, planning to continue on foot along a scenic trail to the top of Monte Morrone.

They set off early and after a couple of hours met a young man with two horses and a mule, probably a local shepherd, and asked him for directions to Monte Morrone. He offered to walk with them for a stretch, warning them about some stray dogs. The girls thanked him and walked on with him, not knowing that he would be their tormentor and that those would be the last moments of their lives.

The massacre

The young man led them into a grove, where he pulled out a gun and pointed it at the three friends. Silvia offered him money, but that was not what Hasani wanted. Silvia insisted and he shot her in the chest and shoulder, knocking her to the ground. Diana, Silvia’s sister, screamed in despair, believing her sister was dead, but Hasani went over to Silvia, pulled her up by her hair and said, “She’s not dead, and be careful because I have more bullets”. Then it was Tamara who screamed in fear, and that is when Hasani fired two more shots at her. Tamara fell to the ground.

Only Diana was left. Hasani ordered her to undress, threatening her with the gun, and Diana obeyed. Silvia was still alive and conscious, but pretended to be dead. She heard the two move away, opened her eyes and saw Hasani on top of her sister a short distance away. He was raping her. Then Silvia heard a shot, the one with which Hasani killed Diana, hitting her in the heart, and in that moment she understood she had to escape. She got up and ran away, hiding after a while under a rock, terrified. She was out of breath, wounded and bleeding, and had just seen her sister and her friend die. It was raining and foggy, she was afraid the killer would find her, but Hasani did not.

The girl then started running until she reached the hamlet of Marane, near Sulmona, where some people came to her aid.

The monster of the Maiella, Halivebi Hasani

As soon as the Carabinieri arrived, Silvia, despite the terrible ordeal, told them everything she remembered. Every detail, the young man’s appearance, his clothes, every little thing, even his accent. Thanks to her meticulous description, investigators focused on the Slavic shepherds, very common in the area, where they worked as farmhands.

Silvia recognised her attacker among the mugshots of several shepherds, and investigators found 23-year-old Halivebi Hasani, a Macedonian known locally as Alì, at the isolated sheepfold in Capoposto where he lived and worked, sleeping peacefully. He had not even tried to flee or hide the evidence. At the sheepfold they found the clothes he had worn that day and three pistols, which he said belonged to his employer. On 21 August, after trying to justify himself, he confessed to the two murders and the attempted murder of Silvia, but denied the sexual assault.

In 1999 the Assize Court of L’Aquila sentenced him to life imprisonment, which he began serving in Italy. He asked to be transferred to his homeland, however, and in 2016 he was moved to Macedonia, where he is serving the rest of his sentence.

In the Mandra Castrata woods, where the massacre took place, there is now a memorial stone for Diana and Tamara, and every year their parents gather there to pray. The case, which newspapers at the time compared to the Circeo massacre, has also, according to some journalists, left grey areas that were never fully cleared up, starting with the weapons.

Sources

• Morrone killings, Wikipedia
• il Giornale, Come Diana e Tamara, uccise sulla Maiella (2007, Italian)
• il Giornale, L’assalto sul sentiero delle Signore (Italian)