-
Strage in Genzano di Lucania
The murder scene in Genzano di Lucania
I am afraid to say this, but this 2011 year ends in Genzano in a very sorry way. You see, there cannot be any joy around for a very long time, no matter which way you look at it, it does not look good. Christmas is supposed to be a peaceful and happy family gathering, and everybody should cherish the company of their friends and close relatives; but this year in Genzano di Lucania it has not happened because of a crazy man shooting other fellow citizens, and if some people have been able to put aside what has just happened in Genzano will be a small minority.
When such terrible things happen just at Christmas Eve one should be forgiven to thing that there is no God, otherwise why God let this horrible things happen one may ask for good reasons?
Listen! My heart cries to hear this horrible news; you see this is the town that I came from and I have always thought that nothing violent would ever happen it this friendly town where everybody knows everybody, so to thinking of murdering people in this town is impossible, but that was/is until today, because today has happened something so horrendous that has changed everything, as a triple murder has happened, and it has happened just on Christmas Eve, so what sort of Christmas will the inhabitant of Genzano have this Christmas?
I am afraid to say, but this Christmas will be a very said one for most Genzanesi, just to think that one of their own has killed three people, it is incomprehensible one can only think and say that the killer has lost his mind, what else can it be?
The killer is 77 years old that means that he is an old man and he should have known better but he didn’t. I have to say that I have talked to the killer a couple of times when I were in Genzano about thirty years ago and he seemed all right then, but when I think about it I have always known that he was a man that would easily turn to violence; So what sort of man is he one may ask?
He is a skinny man of average height very alert and sensitive, he was/is lame I don’t know exactly why or what happened to him when he was young, but somehow I know that he was usually restless even when he was a kid, and as the story goes he peeked up one of those unexploded petard too soon after it fell, but the petard exploded and so he was wounded and became lame. He happened to do that because he belongs to a family that are specialized in firework, and that is why he happened to be there when that unexploded petard fell. Notwithstanding this incident he continued to work at the family fireworks factory and this is what he has mostly done all his life, except perhaps when he migrated to Australia for a few years in the seventies, this is how I can describe this heartless killer, Ettore Bruscella.
You see I have migrated to Australia from this Genzano town when I was young, and I am still in Australia today, therefore we are wondering today to which family the victim belong, there are too many Menchise families in this town, so we wonder whether we can be related to them, there are no description on the Italian news for us old Italians to understand that, you see we would like to see written the names of the parents of the victims, so that we could recall who they are, or a given name that some families have, or perhaps even where they lived or their farm possessions, just to give us a better idea who they are. So we who are away from our native town are left wondering about this fact of life.
Anyhow I am going to publish what I have written already, and by doing that I will be informing my countryman what has happened, and I also hope that some of my countryman will let us know a few more details about this terrible event, so that we may learn the facts as they are.
--
Who are the victim’s relatives we wonder?
As I have already said above, for lack of more detailed information, at this stage we don’t know exactly who the victims are, even though we know their names, we don’t know to which family they belong, they could even be some of our relatives who know. For us that have been away from our native town of Genzano for 50 years or more, it is near impossible to figure out who the victims are, just by using what we have learned from the Italian news, but we would like to know anyhow, so, I and my wife who is also from Genzano have tried to assume to which family the victims could belong, so at the moment we have assumed that the victims may indeed be some distant relatives, I am saying distant as they may fall in that category when we start thinking that we are not related anymore because the link is too far back.
Although I am a Menchise I believe that they are not related to me because of this name, but they could be related to me in a different way. For instance I assume that the victims could be related to me in this way on my mother side, starting from me and working my way back I can see; me, my mother, my grandma and my grandma parents Ceruzzi, from here I could go forward to the present generation of the victims. So, from my grandma parents Ceruzzi who had a large extended family including my great uncle Leonardo who had I believe a son Gerardo who once was vice mayor in the town of Genzano in the fifties and a daughter Marietta who married a Menchise and had a family including Leonardo Menchise who is the husband and father of the victims, this is what we believe they are. I wonder how close we are to the truth.
Here I have to say again that this is only an assumption, or a discussion if you like to call it, that we have had in order to find out who they are?
----------------------------------------------
