When he referred to the profession to which he had dedicated more than 50 years of his life, he repeated: “A lifeless body speaks, explains the causes of its death, but it must be questioned in the best possible way.” He would have turned 94 in October alfonso zarone, who died in his house in Vomerese. He let himself go calm, after an existence of battles even in recent years when, to a mind that was always clear and full of memories, there was no longer a self-sufficient body.
Medical examiner, when this activity meant hours and hours in contact with the corpses in autopsies without the supports of today’s sophisticated instruments. He had performed over a thousand in his career, becoming one of the trusted consultants of the Public Prosecutor’s Office between the 70s and 80s of the last century. Very young, it was he who performed the external inspection of the body of Lucky Luciano died suddenly at the entrance of Capodichino airport. But he has signed hundreds of autopsies, which have remained in judicial history on many delicate cases: the murder of the vicoletto Berio, which inspired Michele Massa’s film, the murder of Anna Spoken Grimaldithe death of the little girls of Ponticelli, technical advice on mussels in the Gulf of Naples during the 1973 cholera epidemic or the delicate autopsies on the bodies of many killed in the Camorra war in the Cutolian era.
He had been a pupil of Vincenzo Maria Palmieri, whom he always called his “teacher”, together with his contemporary Carlo Romano. At the University he had been a free lecturer in forensic medicine, but while Romano had continued his university teaching succeeding Palmieri, he had the primacy of founding a hospital forensic medicine division at Cardarelli. He was the first to do it in Italy and was among the youngest primary at just over 30 years old. He also became vice president of the National Forensic Association. Lover of poetry and music as the son of a pianist, he self-taught to play the piano and the accordion. His friends have always appreciated his liveliness in the evenings when he played Neapolitan songs, accompanying them to tasty stories. President and past president of Rotary Vesuvian municipalities of which he was one of the founders, he continued to work as a freelancer after retirement. Also in technical consultancy in delicate processes such as that of Father Rassello or the former minister Franco De Lorenzo.
In the years of terrorism, his name was found in documents where he was listed among the designated targets after the killing of his criminologist friend. Alfredo Paolella. He received many threats addressed to him and to his family, but he always kept balance in his appraisals and diagnosed the prison incompatibility of the nappist Alberto Buonaccount who later committed suicide. He loved to repeat: “Mine is a clinical work, on an objective basis in which personal beliefs must not enter.” He died leaving myriads of memories and memories, even written ones, of a life of battle that went on despite the six bypasses he had had since he was just over 40 years old. He leaves his wife Wanda, his son Fernando, a full professor at the Secondo Policlinico, his daughter Biancamaria, an Italian teacher and his four grandchildren.