“My brother’s dream was to see his daughter with the rank of marshal and stand at attention to salute her, as one does with a superior.” There is all the heartbreak of a family in the broken dream of Stefano Belcuore. He is a sergeant of the Carabinieri. He is almost 60 years old and in a few months he will retire. After 40 years in the force he imagined passing the baton to his only daughter: Beatrice, 25 years old, in her last year of the marshals course. But last April 22nd she took her own life, shooting herself in the temple in the bathrooms of the marshals’ school in Florence. Since then, all that remains of father Stefano’s dream is the photo that shows them together, proud, with the same carabinieri uniform.
“We are devastated,” says Davide Belcuore, Beatrice’s uncle. «For me she was a daughter. I practically raised her too, she was always at my house.” Beatrice’s father is not lucid enough to tell what she is experiencing, the anger and the desire for justice. So it’s up to his uncle to act as spokesperson for the whole family. «We want justice – says Davide Belcuore – and we won’t stop. We want the truth to be told about Beatrice’s death. AND the truth must be sought within the Marshals school of Florence where someone has a distorted idea of what hierarchy is. Inside that school, perhaps Beatrice clashed with someone or perhaps she suffered attitudes that she could not stand. But for us, this is incitement to suicide.”
Days ago Davide Belcuore met the M5S deputy Stefania Ascari who is waging a battle on the drama of suicides in the Armed Forces, which has reached alarming numbers: one every 5 days. For this reason he presented a bill to request the establishment of a Commission of Inquiry. For the uncle, Beatrice’s tragedy would be linked to what had already been reported in the lawletter sent by the family to the Unarma union. Among other things, the story was told of when Beatrice had been forced to attend the meeting, despite having Covid. On that occasion, her father, worried, called the marshals’ school. “They responded harshly,” her uncle recalls, “so much so that he later sent an email of apology.”
But for Davide Belcuore that accident left its mark. «From that moment, in my opinion, Beatrice was targeted. On a police force website we also found an anonymous comment from a student according to which, my brother’s complaints, “she paid dearly for them.” Why doesn’t the prosecutor track down this student? Why aren’t the others on the course heard?” There are currently two investigations underway. One from the Florence Prosecutor’s Office and one from the Military Prosecutor’s Office. «But to date we know practically nothing – says the family’s lawyer, Riziero Angeletti -. There are no suspects, there is no hypothesis of crime. It may be paradoxical, but we are waiting for them to ask for it to be archived, so at least we can see the file and understand where we are at and what was found in Beatrice’s cell phone.”
For the family, there are many “things that don’t add up.”Why wasn’t an autopsy done? – the uncle asks – Why were the investigations delegated to the carabinieri themselves? And then there is the day of the tragedy. «That morning she was in class. At a certain point she asks to leave for a moment. But for over two hours no one looked for her. A colleague will find her. But does she seem normal to you? And then: until a few hours earlier she had messaged her mother, sending her carefree stickers. What happened in those few hours that you made her collapse.”
That morning my uncle was the first to arrive at the marshals school in Florence. “They had already dressed her and were in a great hurry.” The uncle doesn’t even accept the idea that Beatrice couldn’t handle the harsh military life. «Nonsense! She had been in the Navy for a year and had already been a Carabinieri for two years. Not only that, she was also aiming to go to the Academy. She was certainly no novice. If anything, she had a strong charge of ideality which can sometimes be difficult to bear. For many who honor the uniform there is a part of the sick hierarchy that bases everything on fear, not on authority and leadership ability. Some command only by rank. It’s one thing to do hard training, it’s another to have no respect for people”
