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Who is Chico Forti
Before his arrest, Enrico Forti known as Chico, born in Trento on 8 February 1959, was a successful windsurfing champion. After his beginnings on Lake Garda, he became the first Italian to compete in the category world cup, in 1985. Together with the Hawaiian Richard White, he also designed the first indoor windsurf jumping ramp. A sporting career that ends following a car accident. Thus began his activity as a television producer and documentary maker which led him to the creation of his company, Hang Loose, in 1990. In 1997 he created the video investigation into the death of Gianni Versace “The smile of the Medusa”. Some of Chico’s defenders see precisely in the making of this documentary, in which the actions of the Miami police are questioned, a hypothetical cause of the way in which the surfer was treated during the investigation and the trial which would later condemn him to ‘life sentence.
The murder of Dale Pike
On 15 February 1998 Dale Pike, son of Anthony Pike, with whom Forti was negotiating the acquisition of the Pikes Hotel in Ibiza, was found lifeless on Sewer Beach in Miami, Florida. The Australian had been killed with two 22 caliber pistol shots to the back of the head and was completely naked. Pike, who had arrived in the US the previous day, had met Forti with whom he had driven to the parking lot of a restaurant in Key Biscayne, where the Italian would later say he had left him around 7pm. A few hours later Pike would be killed. The time of death will be traced back to between 8pm and 10pm.
Forti’s mistakes
A few days after the discovery of the body, Chico Forti was interrogated as a person informed of the facts by the Miami police department. In the first summons he denied having met Dale before his death. An error that proved fatal. The police learned of his contact with the victim shortly thereafter. According to what we read on the website created to tell his case, Forti said that he had not met Pike because he was frightened by the news that his father Anthony had also been killed. False information, given by the US authorities to understand how Forti would have behaved. On the night of February 20, Chico Forti returned to the department to deliver documentation relating to the business he was having with Anthony Pale. He showed up without a lawyer. He was interrogated for 14 hours and then arrested. In his statements he recanted his first version, admitting that he had met the victim a few hours before his death.
The process
Forti has always declared himself innocent and the victim of a judicial error. Initially arrested for fraud, circumvention of an incompetent person and complicity in murder, as we always read on the site relating to his case, he was released on bail and “in the following twenty months he was acquitted of the eight charges involving fraud“. Despite this, the prosecution used the element of fraud as a motive for the murder. On 15 June 2000, the final speech was reached, after a 24-day trial. Forti’s defense was not given the right to reply. During in fact, the Italian’s defenders had advised him not to testify so as not to expose himself to dangerous questions regarding the falsehoods he told the day following Pale’s death. The absence of concrete evidence against him would have led the defence jury not to convict him. A condition that Forti’s supporters highlight as decisive for the conclusion of the trial. The prosecution was left completely free to present its reconstruction, hitting Forti hard.
The sentence
The Dade County jury in Miami found him guilty.”for having personally and/or with other persons still unknown to the State, acting as an instigator and in partnership, each through his own participatory conduct, and/or in execution of a common pleasure project, painfully and preordainedly caused the death of Dale Pike“. These are the words of the jury, again reported by the website chiccoforti.it. Chico Forti was thus found guilty of first degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. “I am speechless”, said Forti in the courtroom. All the appeals against the sentence presented in the various appeals they were rejected without justification.
The latest developments
On Friday 1 March 2024, the Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, announced that the authorization for Forti’s transfer to Italy had been signed, “a result resulting from the diplomatic commitment of this government”, she underlined.
