There is nothing heroic in the figure of a bandit. Not even in that of the Passatore, terror of travelers on the streets of Romagna. Yet, just one step away from the end, a gesture, an attention to a frightened child, opens a glimpse of light in a dark, gloomy life.
Giuseppe Camaggi, who does other things by profession, particularly in the Imola healthcare sector, who breathed the air of the Passatore in his Castel del Rio, tells us about the last days of the bandit in a book to be enjoyed in one breath. ‘The last day of Verloc’ is a story in the original language, like a chronicle of the time, which begins and ends in Bologna with the burial of the Passatore near the Certosa in deconsecrated land, and which unfolds between Russi, Lugo, ‘Apennines, the abandoned farmhouse where the bandit and his (few) associates are surrounded. Where Corporal Calandri finishes him off with a shot to the face that makes him almost unrecognizable even to his brother. Ultimately leaving a small doubt: was that body really Passatore’s, or is his ghost still wandering around the Apennines with his double-barreled shotgun ready to fire?
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