Manrico Ducceschi was born on September 11, 1920 in Capua (Caserta) from Fernando Ducceschi and Matilde Bonaccio. He also had a smaller sister, Leila. The birth in Capua was absolutely casual, due to a trip of his mother, in fact the family came from Pistoia, a town situated close to Florence, where Manrico grew up and finisched his studies. Later, he choosed to go to the university in Florence, PhD Faculty, which  he brightly attended.

He however interrupted his studies as he attended the Military Academy and later, on events of September 8, 1943, when the Italian Armg was dissolved,he came home from Tarquinia, where he was at that time, on foot, avoiding the principal roads just to avoid the risk to be captured by Germans.

Strong of his military experience as Alpine Official, he immediately got in touch with the Florentinian group "Giustizia e Libertà" (Justice and Liberty) and he had the chance to form a mobile group of Patriots with the purpose to create troubles to the Nazi army in Italy. Then, his exceptional abilities as commander let him always have loads of combacting Patriots around him, just to fight with him, so that it was possible to form  one of the most organized and combative existing Patriot bands in Italy. In fact, the 11th Military Patriots Zone was one of the few Formations of Partisan which enumerates victories and it doesn't suffer military defeats. 0ne of these, was the killing of an important Japanese Admiral, in Piano Sinatico (on Abetone road) on June 1944, which permitted to catch important documents for the future developments of the War in the Pacific Ocean area.

His position in partisan actions put him at the top in the "most wanted" German chase list, putting in serious danger not only him, but even all his relatives, who were forced to disperse for the whole period of the war and to hide themselves. Once, to escape to a German raking, his mother and his sister needed to hide themselves in a funeral wagon, faking mother and sister of the corpse.

Loved by his people and respected by the enemies, "Pippo" (Manrico's fight nickname) was one of the few to arrive as first in Milan with his group. He was decorated by the U.S. with the "Bronze Star" Medal, delivered to him in Santini Building, in Lucca. Despite all his undisputed heroic enterprises, however, no medals came from any Italian political Party, despite to the promise of a "post-mortem" monument in the town of Pistoia, so that his corpse was moved from Lucca, where he died, to Pistoia, where he still lies.

On August 24, 1948, "Pippo" had to go to Rome but he already preannounced that, pm his return, he had reported facts and circumstances concerning some partisan groups. His father first found him, when he searched for "Pippo" being worried for his son's silence, in the house, hung with the belt of his own pants and so it begins the mystery related to his death.

A lot of inferences were subsequently made but, even if the official version remains "suicide", many elements throw a great deal in a different light on this mysterious epilogue.

Many years later, during a judicial inquiry concerning another subjects, we can read:

The death of Ducceschi Manrico

Regarding Ducceschi's story, it has been analyzed both the actions of the criminal proceeding related to the death of Manrico "Pippo" Ducceschi, the documents transmitted by the 1st Division of the S.I.S.MI, related to the Ducceschi Manrico's report and Mustur Vassilie's one, are the documents acquired by the DCPP on the account of Ducceschi.

The GI in Bologna had held profit to acquire the above mentioned documents as Mannucci Benincasa through the anonymous envoy in contest with Nobile in April 1981 to the  judge Gentile, had shaded responsibility of Licio Gelli in the death of Ducceschi, from him connected to the partisan commander Silvano Fedi's death. The colonel Nobile, besides, had furnished ample testimony to the PM in Florence in the convictions that Mannucci Benincasa, in respect of the death of the partisan Ducceschi, recalling, on the subject, the searches served as the journalist in Florence, Marcello Coppetti. Particularly, in the story, that Nobile reported to this GI says that "Mannucci spoke to me of the suicide of Manrico Ducceschi, happened in 1948, and that he sustained to have been in reality a homicide; Mannucci was convinced that the agent was Licio Gelli." (v. examination Nobile Umberto, GI 01.12.90)

You holds profit to reconstruct the story of the death of Ducceschi using the job of analysis developed by the Police Prevention Central Direction. Manrico Ducceschi, called "Pippo", was commander of the 11th partisan formation, compose above all by monarchic, democratic and republican elements and that, for obvious purpose, at the end of the war, they entered in conflict with the formations of faith "social-communist". For this particular anticommunist ideological component that the 11th zone, in October 1944, took contact with the Command of the OSS, the American 4th Corp of army and until June 1945, it lent service as framed troop in form to regulate organic department.

Ducceschi was recovered hung on August 26, 1948 in his home in Lucca. The coroner verified that death went up to no more than 48 hours sooner and that the death had to appear, indeed to hanging. Later more than a week the secret file of Ducceschi was recovered as well as some weapons and ammunition. Other documents  will be recovered in another secret file referable to the activities of the 11th partisan zone.

It must be observes that from the documentation, acquired by the DCPP, it has been possible to notice that during the search in the apartment where the dead body of Ducceschi had been recovered, other documents had been seized by the Police headquarters of Lucca in a secret drawer Ducceschi's closet. The documents - informations on hidden organizations of soldiers,  communist arms and decoders - were escaped to the unknown of the AG and transmitted to the Chief of the Police that time.

On December 16, 1949 the PM believed that the death of Ducceschi was happened following suicide and he asked the filing, that decided in conformity to the GI. But already from some declarations and from many who had been recovered and seized after his death it appeared clear that Ducceschi developed assignments which - to the state of the knowledge of that time - they could have been define "unusual" and they would have been able to attract the "attention" of various political entities.

In 1972 the reopening of the criminal proceeding happened on the death of Ducceschi due to informal declarations made by a graduated of the CCs. to the Chief of the CC Station of Castelnuovo Garfagnana. He reported to have learned from a certain Asara, tnat Ducceschi was hung by the Slavic Mustur with the complicity of his wife Santini Mirella and De Chiara Gino; agent of the crime was the ing. Di Ricco from Lucca. The reason was to seek in a report, that Ducceschi wanted to make on  public the activity developed by the partisan in the period of the Resistance.

The criminal proceeding at the end of the preliminary activity concluded in 1979 with the acquittal of all the suspects.

Both in the first and in the second procedure any reference emerged on the account of Licio Gelli. In the second procedure the GI asked checks to the S.I.S.MI on the death of Ducceschi, checks that were turned for the part of competence to the CS Center in Florence, to which was asked to make to know, besides, his "clear and hidden affairs to reopen a case, from years filed." This center transmitted after more prompt a relationship dated September 15, 1978 when was set in evidence the complex figure of the Mustur, defined "broadly known in actions", but some answers were not given to the application on the motivations of the reopening of the criminal proceeding.

While near the 1st Division it was recovered and transmitted the correspondence of Ducceschi and Mustur, any documents were exhibited by the CS Center  in Florence. In fact during a joined access of the AAGG in Bologna and Rome, they have been in demand from the AG in Bologna the practices of Ducceschi and Mustur. While the first one was declared that it was destroyed, in the second was reported that Mustur was unknown to the actions of that Center. He doesn't explain accordingly because Mannucci Benincasa in the relationship to Mustur reported that it was "broadly known in actions."

The GI in Bologna, after having taken action that the issue related to Ducceschi Manrico of the CS Center in Florence resulted destroyed and premising that the destruction of the correspondence certainly was not to attribute to the successor of the Mannucci Benincasa, in the already quoted sentence, so it comments: "it remains to understand the reason why the colonel Mannucci Benincasa has prepared the destruction of  papers related to person who - it was seen by the anonymous envoy to Bologna - he annexed such a particular importance in the reconstruction of the past of Licio Gelli."

In additional to this, it also appears very doubtful the nonexistence of actions related to the Mustur, which instead would have had to be near the Center, as in the practice concerning Mustur of the 1st Division they result well nine documents transmitted by the CS Center in Florence and copies of these two transmitted to the Center in Florence by the 1st Division.

It finally has to stand up again that from the examination of the practice concerning Mustur of the 1st Division, it emerged that the Center in Rome with sheet dated June 8, 1949 had reported on Santini, wife of Mustur, as it follows: "On the other hand it seems that Santini has belonged to the partisan gangs and that has had interference in the hanging of a partisan chief, happened in Lucca."

Such important reference - that the 1st Division of the S.I.S.MI omitted to report to the AG of Lucca - it brought a news to the light that already almost one year of distance from the death of Ducceschi circulates and it found comfort, later almost thirty years, therefore, in the informal declarations that sharpens him spontaneously elli had released to the commander of the CC Station of Castelnuovo Garfagnana (v. relationship to the GI in date 1.06.93)

(...)"

Extract from: Istruttoria SENT. N. 34/2001  II^a CORTE DI ASSISE DI APPELLO DI BOLOGNA

Anyway, the real motivation Manrico's death can perhaps be tracked by him in the extract of the document down which well describes this objectives:

Extract from: "Agenda March 8,1945"

"(...)  We don't have and we don't have to have, at the present or in the future, some political purpouse in breast to some constituted party or to constitute it, both in Italy and in a foreign country. "

"(...) I intend to say: not only absence from any political address, but even hostility to the life of all the existing parties at the moment in Italy; understood hostility not against the principles, but against the men, in their moral insufficiency and politics, that currently form the masses of mottos parties (...) "

"(...) Remember that all of us from the first to the last one is still ill and it will be still that way for a long time our wretch people, of the fascist Evil, that calls: overbearance, dishonesty, ambition, gerarchismo, insolence. We have therefore even before to fight this evil of the other ones to try as far as possible to eradicate it in the middle to us. Before then none of us will have to feel in any case to the height to elect to judge, to consider it part of the healthy strengths of the Nation."

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