Michele Moretti (aka Commissioner Gatti) – Corriere.it

The footballer, the plumber, the partisan, but above all Mussolini’s executioner. That of Michele Moretti, known by the comrades of the Resistance as Pietro Gatti, is an almost legendary storybut which intertwines sport and politics in one of the most dramatic and significant moments for Italy. Born in Como in 1908 to a railwayman father, his sporting exploits were soon forgotten in the face of the role he played with the partisans in the capture and execution of the Duce, so much from having fought with the partisans before and having fled to Yugoslavia and then the Soviet Union, when behind the escape the mystery of an alleged booty in millions of lire of the time stolen from the Republic of Sal and the last fascist hierarchs remained unsolved.

But what few remember that as a footballer he played as a full-back and then a winger in Comense between 1927 and 1935, protagonist of a fantastic season in Serie C, where the team didn’t lose a single game with 90 goals scored. Overall he played 4 cadet championships with 83 appearances to his credit, until the 1933-34 season when, losing 4-2 against Bari, he saw the promotion to A conquered instead by Sampierdanese (ancestor of Sampdoria) fade on the last day . He also had the opportunity to wear the national team shirt the players viewed by Vittorio Pozzo, the only coach to still hold the record of two World Cup wins, playing among the players who could be blue, had a fluctuating, fiery and questionable behavior, early showing his combative nature, even in life.

At home, the boy who in order to survive at the time actually worked as a plumber in Maslianico (Como), had always listened to the thoughts of some exponents of Italian and foreign socialism, such as Costa, Turati, Prampolini and of course Marx. In 1944 he too took part in strikes, before working in Austria, in a branch of Gerenzana in Pols, when his story would become famous. He had fled, but always maintaining contact with the Communist leaders in northern Italy during the Resistance. It was on April 25, 1944, exactly one year before the Liberation, that he fully embraced the cause of the partisans in the Lepontine Alps, on the western shore of Lake Como and Lake Mezzola. His companions said that he had as many lives as cats, until it was clear that fascism had fallen and that the Duce was fleeing across the border.

As political commissioner of the 52nd Garibaldi Brigade Luigi Clerici, operating on Mount Berlinghera, intercepted a group of German soldiers, who, fleeing, tried to raid houses, works of art, wealth and what they could. The fugitives were captured, the discovery: Benito Mussolini and his companion Clara Petacci, together with other faithful hierarchs, were hidden among the hostages. Moretti asked the communist military leaders for advice, but soon it was decided to execute the Duce. The partisan leaders Walter Audisio and Aldo Lampredi arrived from the Dongo checkpoint in Bonzanigo, a hamlet of Mezzegra. The story gets confusing, but it seems that Moretti took part in the shooting with a French MAS-38 of 7.65 caliber.

From that moment, in an extremely confused historical phase, the former footballer was accused of having fled with 33 million lire, part of the treasure of the Republic of Sal, previously seized from prisoners. An aspect that was also the subject of a trial in 1957, renamed L’Oro di Dongo but the partisan Gatti had already fled to Yugoslavia, before resuming his job as a plumber in the then Soviet Union after the war. It tells of the loss of his wife, of that of a son, even if the rest of her life was largely shrouded in mystery, including her direct testimony on the death of the Duce. The footballer-partisan was awarded the Abbondino d’Oro in 1993, the highest honor of the Municipality of Como, where in the meantime he had returned in the last period of his life, before dying of natural causes on March 5, 1995. A story among many complex years, but which shows how sport and life always remain components that are difficult to untie and that intertwine in the unfolding of events.