«Chico Forti is innocent, I ask for his immediate release». Thus begins the letter from Bradley Pike, brother of Dale, the 42-year-old killed in Miami in 1998 and for which the former Italian television producer, now 65, was sentenced to life in prison. The victim’s brother wrote a letter to the mother of Chico Forti, who returned to Italy on May 18 after 24 years of detention in Florida and is now detained in the Verona prison. “I am so very happy that you were finally able to see your son again after all these years and after the tragedies and grief that both our families have had to deal with over the last twenty-six years,” writes Bradley Pike in the exclusive advance letter from Fourth Degree. “I hope we can meet again and mourn together the wasted lives, thinking about what they could have been if this whole story hadn’t happened,” adds the American citizen.
Precisely in the days in which he was killed, Dale Pike was in negotiations with Chico Forti for the purchase of an Ibiza resort. The Italian has always declared himself uninvolved in the crime, but the US judges never believed him. “Relax now and enjoy the proximity of Chico, hoping that one day you will be able to sit at the table together with all your loved ones and look your children in the eyes, working and praying so that they can live in a more just world”, he writes again. Bradley Pike in the letter sent to the mother of the 65-year-old from Veneto. On Wednesday, May 22, Forti received special permission to join his 96-year-old mother, brother and uncle. A permission that also sparked some controversy, with the SPP, the prison police union, which spoke of “bitterness and bewilderment” at the speed with which it was granted.
