Pose as a drunk fails –
Last hours of Mussolini described by witnesses
‘We have come to liberate you,’ Patriots tell Duce – and execution follows
By James E. Roper, United Press staff writer
GIULINO DI MEZZEGRA, Italy – Mussolini and his young mistress spent the last 14 hours of their lives together locked in a room of a mountainside villa here, overlooking Lake Como.
The details of how Mussolini and Clara Petacci died side by side were told to me by Partisan eyewitnesses of their execution.
After their “People’s Tribunal” trial, the couple was brought to this tiny hamlet of 150 and put in a room in the mountainside house. That was at 2 a.m. Saturday.
Mussolini depressed
There they remained until 4 p.m., disturbed only by the serving of meals.
When a guard entered the room Saturday afternoon, Mussolini was fully dressed and wearing hat. Clara was in bed, wearing a silk slip.
“You must go away now,” the guard told them.
Clara began to dress slowly. The guards told her to hurry. Mussolini seemed very depressed.
The guards drove the couple 500 yards in an auto, then made them walk another 500 yards.
‘Come to liberate you’
“We have come to liberate you,” one guard told Mussolini.
Il Duce seemed to believe it, and for the first time he smiled.
The small group walked down the narrow “24th of May” Street, which has a stone wall on either side. They stopped in front of No. 14, from where Mussolini could see the snow-tipped Swiss Alps to which he had tried to flee. The couple stood with their backs to a stone wall.
Then a Partisan proclaimed: “By order of the General Command of Comrades of Volunteers, I am charged with rendering justice for the Italian people.”
Clara grows hysterical
Clara threw herself across Mussolini’s chest as a shield and cried hysterically, “You shouldn’t kill him.”
“Then we’ll kill you first,” the Partisan said.
The couple was pulled apart and one Partisan – according to villagers, he was a Milan man – fired several pistol shots into Mussolini’s chest and several more into Clara’s chest.
Mussolini squirmed on the ground, so they fired a shot through his head.
“Mussolini didn’t die immediately probably because he twisted just as the shots were fired, making the bullets miss his vital organs,” said a witness.
Rain falls on bodies
The bodies were left there for several hours until it began to rain.
The rain washed away the bloodspots and now the historic spot is marked only by a silvery splotch on the black, iron grill which runs along the stone fence. That splotch is where a bullet, which passed through Mussolini’s or Clara’s body, smacked into the grill.
The Partisans told me that Mussolini was first spotted at a roadblock at the town of Musso, just south of Dongo on Lake Como. He was lying under a blanket in the back of a truck in a German convoy of 32 vehicles. He wore the overcoat of a non-commissioned Luftwaffe officer and a pair of dark glasses.
Posed as drunk
Partisan Negri Giuseppe lifted the blanket and looked down at Mussolini. A German soldier said, “That’s just a drunk.” But the ruse failed.
Mussolini was taken from the truck, and after some negotiations, the Germans were permitted to continue toward Switzerland, minus an armored car which was part of the convoy.
When the convoy was first stopped, the Germans had moved the armored car to the rear of the column, under pretext of towing a truck. The Partisans thought Mussolini first was in the armored car and that he used that opportunity to slip into the truck and hide under the blanket.
He was taken at 6:50 a.m. last Friday.