MILAN. In the folds of the breaking latest news, and also of history, sometimes characters are hidden who, while not conquering the limelight of notoriety, represent the indispensable ingredient for certain facts to be fulfilled. Rocco Stragapede, non-commissioned officer of the traffic police, placed in force at the judicial offices in Milan following a firefight in which he was wounded, was certainly one of these, in particular for the investigation of Mani Pulite of which he was probably the witness more direct and silent.
Stragapede, after a long illness, passed away at just 71 years old, leaving his wife Giovanna and their son Gabriele, always close to him in these last years of suffering. Rocco was therefore one of those “minor” characters without whom, however, things would not have gone as they did, for better or for worse.
The man in fact, due to a series of somewhat fortuitous circumstances and a bit of character (bristly, fiercely ironic and at the same time good-natured), found himself sharing a small room with the then unknown prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro, in the the less noble wing of the fourth floor of the courthouse, where the investigation of Mani Pulite began. An investigation that, ironically, will turn 30 in two weeks.
Rocco, the disenchanted policeman who wrote the minutes of the first suspects sharing the effort with another inspector, Giancarlo Spadoni, was however the only one who could “clash” directly with the impetuousness of the Molise prosecutor who, like him, shared a primordial love for the earth and the toil. Both bent over the computers that “the farmer” Di Pietro, with a passion for information technology, had first wanted in the Prosecutor’s Office, the two agents with their self-denial and loyalty basically allowed the investigation to take off. Stragapede, however, was in a certain sense more symbiotic with Di Pietro, for the type of impetuousness and also for a certain hurry that often, mixed with the lightning-fast intuitions of stone, made lawyers go crazy. It was he who accompanied Di Pietro in the most sensational hunts for fugitives and in the search abroad for the various “treasures” of bribes which, despite the subsequent revisionism, enriched people more than parties. It was he who found himself under the walls of the Pio Albergo Trivulzio to arrest the then president Mario Chiesa, starting the avalanche that swept the parties and entrepreneurship of the 90s.
Stragapede, shy, reserved, but also with a big heart, he was certainly one of the most important figures, for his investigative role, of the investigation that changed the First Republic forever. It is no coincidence that he never wanted to give any interview about those years, preferring to remain in the shadow of the man who was the symbol of Mani Pulite. Rocco remained tied to Di Pietro until the latter took flight towards the political buildings, which the policeman did not like. He left without being able to remember, certainly not without some bitterness, the thirtieth anniversary of a period that would be better relegated definitively to history.