Through His Eyes Only

By Vincenzo Rulli and Maria Lucia Romeo

This book is in part autobiographical in that it examines the life of Vincenzo Rulli. It is a story that needs telling. It needs telling because his life commences with an awareness of him being disassociated from his body. It needs telling because it traces the struggles of his parents and the history behind their decision to leave their country of birth and migrate to Australia in search of a better life. It is a story that needs telling because it chronicles the happy years when the family lived, worked together, children married and grandchildren and parents visited grandparents on a weekly basis, and grandchildren played together. It needs telling because it is filled with paranormal phenomena that followed Vincenzo from birth to the murder of one of his nieces and beyond. It needs telling because it chronicles thirty-four years of struggles by Vincenzo and the police of the state of NSW who having arrested charged and convicted one person, rested on their laurels, notwithstanding evidence within their own brief that points to the complicity of others, it needs telling because Vincenzo gathered evidence that should have been gathered by police and that even though this evidence supports the hypothesis that more than one person was involved, the police could not be moved from their position that only one person was involved in the murder of his niece. It needs telling because this story is proof positive for the proposition that good guys don’t always win, and yes you can get away with murder.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Oct 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781669830412

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Through His

Eyes Only

Vincenzo Rulli

Copyright © 2022 by Vincenzo Rulli.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 10/12/2022

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Prologue

Chapter 1    Vincenzo’s Earliest Memories

Chapter 2    His Parents and Grandparents

Chapter 3    His Parents’ Adolescent Years

Chapter 4    His Brother Santino

Chapter 5    His Brother Frederico

Chapter 6    From Dee Why to Mascot to the Northern Beaches

Chapter 7    The Fruit Business

Chapter 8    The Shoe Shop

Chapter 9    Psychic Phenomena

Chapter 10  Vincenzo’s Friend Shane

Chapter 11  The Avalon Venture

Chapter 12  Anna

Chapter 13  Laying the Groundwork for Anna’s Murder

Chapter 14  Taking Anna to His Father’s House

Chapter 15  Mixed Messages

Chapter 16  The Day of Anna’s Murder

Chapter 17  Committal Proceedings and the Two Weeks That Followed

Chapter 18  The Death of Vincenzo’s Father and Shortly Thereafter

Chapter 19  Committal and Trial Proceedings

Chapter 20  Analysis of Committal Transcripts

Chapter 21  Entreaties to Ministers

Chapter 22  Police Requisitions Raised by Vincenzo and Sunil

Chapter 23  Evidence Supporting the Presence of a Third Party

Chapter 24  Flashback to 1988: Change in Knowledge Equals Change in Attitudes

Chapter 25  The Principal Officer’s Analysis

Epilogue

Addendum

Introduction

As for myself, I have always wanted to author a book. The subject matter has always eluded me. I have, during my life, become familiar with a gentleman who will be referred to by the pseudonym of Vincenzo Rulli, who during his lifetime has also dreamed of authoring a book, and it is his story, with his assistance, that I propose to tell.

What is in the prologue below comes from newspaper articles written at the time when, sadly, this event took place. Additional material to that which was reported in the newspaper articles comes from suspicions held by Vincenzo. In this work, to protect the anonymity of witnesses, the names used are fictitious for legal reasons. The story is real.

Vincenzo is currently in the seventh decade of his life, and he and I, looking back over all that has taken place in his life, believe that his story is worth telling because it is indented with paranormal phenomena. For many years, he has been at odds with the police of the state of NSW and if, for nothing else, those events should be recorded. The victim, mentioned in the prologue of this treatise, is one of his nieces, who was murdered at the tender age of 24; the police brief presented to the department of public prosecutions (DPP) charged her father-in-law with her murder. Vincenzo has always believed and continues to believe that more than one person was involved, but despite evidence within their brief and subsequent evidence gathered by him and put before them that suggested this involvement, the police sat on their laurels and refused to undertake any further investigations.

His entreaties did not stop with the police; over the years, they included the then premier of NSW, police ministers, solicitor for public prosecutions, and director and deputy director for public prosecutions. I am told by Vincenzo that a long time ago when he discussed the matter with the then director for public prosecutions, the assistance received at the time was that of being given the email address of the then commissioner of police. Vincenzo contacted the commissioner’s office. The contact was acknowledged; he was told that he need not do anything further, raising his hopes that the matter would be revisited. Time passed, and nothing concrete ever eventuated. Throughout and over the years, all of Vincenzo’s efforts had all been to no avail. From time to time, he pondered why this was so, why those in positions of power who could have, and should have, delivered the justice that his niece deserved for a life that was so cruelly taken were unable or unwilling to deliver. This, to him, presents as the million-dollar question, to which even as of today, for him, there has been no rational answer.

The conclusion that he has come to, which I am asked to expand on as we get further into this book, is that the universe is guided by unforeseen forces that play on our consciousness, and decisions made, in retrospect, are not always the ones that we could or should have made. And as will become apparent, even to this day, he continues to partly blame himself for the death of his niece. Over the years, his mind has been invaded by questions whose relevance only served to document the stress and confusion that he has been labouring under, questions such as if only he had acted differently, if only he had taken heed of premonitions that warned him of the impending danger that his niece was faced with, his niece might be alive today. These thoughts have invaded and continue to invade his very being, daily at first and immediately after the event; after more than thirty years, they have become less frequent. Though less frequent, from time to time, they still come back to haunt him. Total escape from thoughts such as this is impossible; the self-blame game continues, and to this day, he still feels responsible for what happened to her.

The exercise of trying to rationalise events as they have occurred is important because, if for nothing else, they reveal the state of his confusion because he knows that he was forewarned of the impending danger by what he believes to be a superior entity, which at first instance prompted him to give a warning. The warning that he gave was veiled; it could and should have been so much more. Call it a premonition; call it what you will. His personal belief is that the series of messages that he received was from God. There was not just one message; different messages invaded his thoughts daily for at least one week after the initial warning. Those thoughts urged him to take a certain course of action which he did not take. As will become clear when I document events before her death as explained to me and as the events unfolded in the worst of possible ways, the initial warning that he gave was not sufficient to save her life; and over the years, he has been left wondering whether the result might have been different had he followed and taken the course of action that he was being urged to take at the time and, in retrospect, should have taken.

The mind is an enormously powerful instrument, and in saying that, he recognises that in seeking to protect himself to maintain his sanity, he has often rationalised and concluded that had he taken a different course, she still would have been murdered and that the entirety of the blame could have been laid at his feet for interfering and not minding his own business. Given his firm belief that those messages were direct messages from God, he also recognises the real possibility that had he acted upon messages given and received, she may well be alive today. In the end, he finds himself the prisoner of a conundrum that he is unable to resolve.

Vincenzo, during parts of his life, has been aware of a connection between himself and the spiritual world and is aware that, as a lawyer, introducing the paranormal into a criminal investigation will be off-putting to some and that the recounting of events connected to the paranormal will not be believed and will be discarded by many as the product of an irrational and confused mind; yet as I sit here in front of my computer and knowing Vincenzo to be a man of honour, I am determined to tell his story as he experienced it and recounted to me. An appreciation of potential negativity from various quarters does not allow either of us to deviate from the path that we have chosen. His story is tragic and heart-rending, the warnings received are real, and if this book does nothing more than lead a single unbeliever back to God, then Anna’s life will, in a small way, have been of benefit to that person.

Over the years, Vincenzo and his eldest brother, the father of the deceased, wrote to and tried to move those in positions of power to do a review of the brief of evidence. The one time when it was reviewed, the reply, which will be fully documented at a later stage, reiterated the view of the police that the evidence within the brief did not support his and his brother’s belief that, on the day of Anna’s murder, more than one person were involved. In this treatise and as we move further into the body of our book, we will refer to evidence in the police brief, requisitions raised but not followed through, and evidence collected by Vincenzo, all of which were made available to police at various stages as that evidence became known. Whilst a host of requisitions raised were never followed through, there is no doubt in Vincenzo’s or my mind, having listened to his story, that whilst evidence within the initial police brief threw suspicions about the possible involvement of more than one person in the murder of Anna, that evidence, supplemented by enquiries and findings by Vincenzo, would result in other members of the Fellini family being charged with a criminal conspiracy to murder.

Each reader is invited to play the part of a juror and can individually make up his/her mind about whether what he or she find in this book is merely the rambling of a distressed mind or the police failed in their duty to carefully consider not only the evidence within their brief but also the additional evidence that was put before them. At one stage during his struggles, he had the assistance of an ex-attorney-general of Sri Lanka; together, they penned requisitions, which to Vincenzo’s knowledge were never taken up. During the end of his time with the department of public prosecutions, a level 5 solicitor within the department, independently of Vincenzo, undertook an analysis of the available evidence and met with Det. Adam Williams from the New South Wales Police, who initially undertook to do a sound test, the importance of which is unparalleled and will become apparent as we move more deeply into this story. However, its importance notwithstanding, the sound test was never conducted. The officer continuously cited pressures from other work as the reason he was unable to organise the test; he eventually stated that, as far as he was concerned, there was only one person responsible for the murder, and that was where the matter ended. No ifs, no buts, just a blanket refusal to do what he had promised to do.

After this, Vincenzo had a break in his attempts to get the justice that his niece deserved. Within the police brief, there was a piece of evidence of injuries that the original forensic pathologist, Dr Bratwurst, was unable to explain. After careful consideration, Vincenzo believed that he was able to explain how those injuries were inflicted and that they could only have been inflicted with the assistance of a third party. Repeatedly, his views were made known to the investigating police; but once again, he was never listened to, and they were never taken up by them.

Having considered the evidence over time and believing that he was able to offer a rational explanation, he eventually—because by this time Dr Bratwurst was deceased—sought the assistance of a forensic pathologist from the University of Sydney. This pathologist, whilst accepting that his explanation was possible, offered an alternative explanation. The forensic evidence from the pathologist at the first incidence, Dr Bratwurst, was two nicks, one on either side of the nose, and he concluded that they were ‘from the corner of the blade of the tomahawk but [he] could not explain it apart from that’. In Vincenzo’s view, he was unable to explain those nicks because at no stage did he consider the presence of any other party to the murder. The scenario contemplated by him was an attack by one person. If this was so, then the two nicks on either side of the nose would be unexplainable because when one considered the width of the blade and an attack from the front, there can be no way in which those nicks could be inflicted. Vincenzo’s view was, and still is, that those nicks can be explained by introducing the presence of a third person. The only other person present in the house at the time of the murder was Anna’s mother-in-law, Morgana, and it was through her involvement in the murder that those nicks can be explained.

Other evidence that supported the submission that Anna was attacked by both her father-in-law and her mother-in-law was the fact that a neighbour heard the voice of a young person screaming out, ‘What are you trying to do to me?’ It was followed by the sound of cupboard doors slamming. The slamming suggested someone hurriedly looking for something, which must be the tomahawk; it cannot mean anything else. Had only one person been involved in the murder and that person was hurriedly looking for the tomahawk, in this case Fabrizio Fellini, Anna would have been up the stairs and gone. In Vincenzo’s view, the two nicks were caused by the struggle that ensued after Morgana sourced the tomahawk from the cupboards. Whilst Morgana was handing the tomahawk over to her husband across Anna’s shoulders and Anna was trying to parry the tomahawk from being passed over to her husband who was in front of her, numerous superficial cuts were inflicted to the back of her hands; these cuts were documented in Dr Bratwurst’s report. In her attempts to stop this from occurring, with head tilted back and looking up, trying to stop the tomahawk from being handed over to Fabrizio, the curved corner edge of the tomahawk twice came down, causing the nicks on either side of her nose.

Support for this submission was found in that the accused sustained a cut to his thumb, and whilst there were other ways in which he may have sustained this cut, one of those ways would have to be whilst the tomahawk was being handed to him head first. Additional support for this submission was also found in the forensic evidence that documented that she was hit with the handle of the tomahawk, and we know this because the handle was split, which in turn added to the proposition that the tomahawk was handed to Fabrizio head first. Whilst other scenarios causing the nicks may be possible, Vincenzo, for one, cannot think of any; and because of this, he was of the firm view that, in all probability, the cut to his thumb and the nicks to either side of the nose occurred whilst the tomahawk was being handed over by Morgana to Fabrizio over Anna’s shoulder.

The forensic pathologist, qualified by Vincenzo, whilst admitting that the two nicks could have been caused in the manner described, added that it was also possible that she was hit with the handle of the tomahawk, and there was no question that this did occur; the force with which she was hit caused bones to fracture, protrude out, and then recede back in. Vincenzo did not accept this alternative view because the injuries described by Dr Bratwurst were nicks and not protrusions. And had the alternative explanation been available, Dr Bratwurst, as the pathologist who inspected the body, would have offered this explanation; but since this was never offered, his evidence at all times was that he was unable to explain those injuries. Additionally, the injuries were visually observed by him, whereas the pathologist qualified by Vincenzo relied on photographs. With such thoughts in mind and to put everything into perspective and because the paranormal did have a part to play, Vincenzo proposed to now give a preliminary account of what the book is about, he then proposes to go back to a time and place by recounting the earliest recollections of his life, and he does this. Because his earliest recollection of what might be seen as supernational phenomena first occurred at the time of his birth.

Prologue

It is now 2022, and the events that I am about to recount have long passed. They belong to another time and place when two families came together in the most tragic of circumstances which took place in a town on the Northern Beaches of the eastern side of the coast of New South Wales. The newspaper caption intended to gain the attention of its readers: ‘Father-in-law held over axe killing.’ The body of the article reported that a 69-year-old man appeared in court, charged with the murder of his daughter-in-law at their home on the Saturday before his first court appearance. It continued and reported that Fabrizio of Wallaroo Road, Bollaroy Plateau, was arrested after his daughter-in-law was found axed to death in the basement of his home.

A police prosecutor told the court that though Fabrizio had not yet entered a plea, he nonetheless signed a statement and freely admitted his involvement in the matter. It was alleged that whilst the deceased was in the laundry, she was attacked by her father-in-law, who without warning dealt numerous blows to her head with an axe. The police prosecutor told the court that Fabrizio waited until his wife was in the shower before taking the axe downstairs and added that the cause of the alleged murder was disputes over money and other matters between the accused and the family of the victim.

It was reported that Fabrizio sat handcuffed in court as the charge of murder was read out to him through an interpreter. The article reported that members of the deceased family had to be restrained by two police officers from moving from the public gallery into the body of the court.

The solicitor for the accused told the court that Fabrizio had arrived in Australia in the fifties and that from 1955 had resided in the same house. The accused applied for bail, stating that he had no fears for his safety. The application for bail was refused by the magistrate because of the serious nature of the charge and the concerns held over ‘further acts of violence’. The case was then adjourned to the coroner’s court for a committal hearing on a date, and the accused was held in protective custody until then.

After the matter had been dealt with by the local court, the newspaper caption of the day reported on that which took place on the day in court. The article explained that the man charged with the murder of his daughter-in-law broke down and cried as his son gave evidence to the court. It went on to say that the husband of the deceased gave evidence that they had no problems with his father but that his father resented his wife because of his Italian traditions and values. The husband of the deceased said that his father had ‘very hard ideas and that he never appreciated his wife talking back to him’. In a brief outburst, he, pointing his finger at his father, and said, ‘He had no right to kill my wife.’

The court was told that the accused person did not take kindly to being told what he should do. The husband reported that when his wife suggested that his father could do some painting, he went crazy and went to his room without speaking to anyone. The barrister for the accused then asked the husband of the deceased, ‘If on the very first time she interfered with your father he could not accept it, was it mainly because she was not a blood relative?’

The husband replied, ‘Probably not.’

The court also heard evidence from a neighbour who said that he saw the accused taking to the deceased with an axe. The hearing continued, and a hearing date for 17 October was set.

The next newspaper article took place during the Supreme Court hearing. The article suggested that the father-in-law committed the murder to free his son from the chains of his marriage. It reported that the officer in charge of the matter was told by the accused that he had freed his son from this family and that he did so because his son had a chain, pointing to his ankle. He laughed and said, ‘I am going to gaol. So what?’

The officer in charge said that the accused decided to kill his daughter-in-law the night before whilst lying in bed. He was told by the accused that he had taken the axe from his toolbox after his wife went to shower and that he then went downstairs to where his daughter-in-law was doing some washing. The officer in charge said that he went downstairs, and as he lifted the axe, she turned around and grabbed his arm. As they struggled, she said, ‘What’s the matter? What have you done?’

The accused then allegedly said, ‘I gave her a good stroke. She fell to the floor. I finished.’ The court was told that the victim was dealt with twenty blows; the accused said that because of his anger, he could not remember. He also said that he was fed up with her and was always thinking of killing her. The officer in charge was also told by the accused that there was no party at the victim’s twenty-first because the two families could not bear to be in the same room.

What Vincenzo found strange about this account was that the accused said that he had taken the axe from his toolbox before going downstairs. The upstairs section was the residential part of the house, and given that the laundry area was downstairs, which had many built-in cupboards, keeping the toolbox upstairs appeared as something unusual and not believable. Nevertheless, this was what he told the police, and it seem to have been accepted without objection or further questioning by them.

In a statement, the husband of the deceased said that they were getting along very well just before the killing. He added that the deceased was not antagonistic or aggressive and that she would stand up for him and his mother when the accused was speaking in a derogatory manner about them. In this statement, Vincenzo believe that the husband was presenting his father as the bad guy and by doing so was seeking to distance himself from him, something which, as we delve further into this story, was mirrored in the accounts given by his two sisters.

Of particular note was the fact that this evidence was garnered from reading one of the statements taken by police from the husband. The trial of the accused, who had fully admitted that the deceased was killed by him, relied on a defence of diminished responsibility; no civilian witnesses were called, and the husband by this stage had taken himself out of the country, signalling to Vincenzo and his family a complete 360 turnaround from the behaviour that he initially entered into at the time when his wife was killed by his father.

At trial, the accused was not successful and was found guilty of murder. After the sentencing, a newspaper article reported that as the judge sentenced a 70-year-old man to life imprisonment for the tomahawk murder of his daughter-in-law, uproar erupted in court. One man was restrained by staff at Sydney Central Criminal Court as he tried to leap over the public gallery railing whilst the victim’s family shouted abuse at the convicted killer. When the judge passed the sentence, Fabrizio Fellini shrugged and then attempted to push the interpreter aside whilst shouting abuse at the victim’s family in Italian. Members of the gallery were warned that they could be arrested for offensive behaviour, after which the court was cleared without further incident.

In another newspaper article, it was reported that the second eldest daughter of the accused pointed her finger at the father of the deceased, shouting, ‘It’s all your fault! You pushed him into it!’

The defence case, supported by a psychiatrist and psychologist, was that the accused suffered from early dementia, which diminished his responsibility for his actions. The presiding justice said that the jury rejected this explanation and in doing so accepted that his motives were driven by a combination of personality traits that were in part culturally induced.

CHAPTER 1

Vincenzo’s Earliest Memories

In December of 2017, Vincenzo, his wife, and their son travelled to America. They went to Hawaii, Los Angeles, San Diego, and New York. Everything about America bespoke a nation that was both powerful and self-assured in its identity. The glitz and glamour of Manhattan with its tall buildings and lighting stood in great contrast to the city where Vincenzo was born. He was born in southern Italy in the city of Palmi on the sixteenth of March 1945. Nothing was exceptional about that date except that, at birth, he has a recollection of being detached from what was to be his body.

He remembered being in mid-air, elevated above what were to be his siblings. But what was he then? He was aware of his surroundings. He had consciousness; therefore, he was, and yet he had no body, no eyes with which to see, and no ears with which to hear, yet he could see and hear and had a total understanding of what was taking place below.

Whilst in mid-air looking down, ‘he’ was aware of the presence of a largish woman dressed in black, holding a baby. The use of the pronoun ‘he’ to describe this perceived existence at that time is misleading because at that stage, he could not be a he because there was not a body; therefore, there could be no identity and no persona. He was just a conscious being, but what was he? if he was anything at that stage, he was an intelligence floating in mid-air, taking in what was occurring below.

What were to become his siblings were standing together next to this large female, the midwife, dressed in black, holding a baby, teasing them, telling them that the baby was a girl. As far as all this is concerned, he is unable to explain how or by what means he became aware that a pact had been made that if he were a girl, he would be unwanted and was to be thrown into the local creek, which was not too far from the house where the birth took place. It needs to be understood that if he had been a girl, this would not have happened. At the time, as he learned in more recent times whilst speaking about this event with his eldest sister, it was just childhood banter initiated by her.

At that stage, there were three girls and two boys in the family; a third boy was wanted to even up the numbers. Fixed in space, looking down at events as they unfolded, once the midwife lifted the baby’s dress, revealing it to be a boy, he plummeted down, and the baby’s body and ‘he’ were joined and become one.

The end of World War II in Europe came with the German surrender on the seventh of May 1945, nine days short of two months from the date on which Vincenzo was born. His family’s home was one of four homes elevated from the rest of the street; the area in front of those homes was dirt. To this day, he has a memory of vegetables being grown in front of the houses. He did not know when this practice ceased, but it may have been shortly after the war.

He also has a recollection of being in the arms of a female outside his house, where females had gathered and were conversing together about German atrocities that had taken place during the Second World War. The very animated discussion recounted stories of prisoners of war thrown into boiling vats whilst still alive. The person holding Vincenzo was explaining to the others that a prisoner was chosen by the Germans and was required to push others into the boiling vats. Those who refused were themselves thrown in and replaced by more willing participants.

Another memory that lingered on and recounted was the memory of a royal carriage coming down Corso Garibaldi which for security reasons was cordoned off, thus preventing the public from approaching. The royal carriage, or what appeared to be one, was accompanied by several persons on horseback in front, on each side of the carriage, and at the rear. Vincenzo is unable to describe the regalia that they wore other than to say that it was very colourful, but he does have a memory of horsemen having some form of headgear with plumes on them, much like what one sees in old Roman movies. The spot where he was standing and watching was opposite the chemist shop in Piazza della Liberta. But how can this be so? He was born in 1945, and Italy became a republic after a referendum held on the second of June 1946, so his memory of standing behind a roped area in Corso Garibaldi, watching a royal carriage meandering down the street, cannot be true. If it were, how and from where did such a memory originate?

Over the years, he tried to search through Google Scholar for any evidence that any member of the Italian royal family visited Palmi, all to no avail. Over time, he had, in his attempts to make sense of this event, theorised that it may well be a memory from a previous life or passed down through what either of his two parents had themselves experienced during their lifetime. Whilst Google was not able to assist him in his quest, more recently, he asked a relative who resided in Palmi to research for him whether any member of the Italian royal family visited Palmi at any stage of its history. The response that he was given was that Prince Umberto and his wife, Maria Jose, went to Palmi on the third of June 1932 for the inauguration of the monument to the fallen. His parents were born in 1907 and 1909. In 1932, his father would have been 25 years of age and his mother 23. Either or both of his parents would have certainly witnessed the procession; it may well be that this memory was passed on genetically by either or both of them. It may also be a confabulation on his part.

His mother was a great storyteller, and if during his young years she recounted the story of the royal family coming through Palmi, he years later may have formed the belief that this was an event witnessed by him and not an event recounted to him. Whilst this appears as an explanation, he is unable to dismiss the feeling that this was an event witnessed by him and not told to him simply because, in his mind’s eye, he has a vision of where he was standing. The rope, the riders, the carriage, and the chemist shop opposite of where he was standing, to this day, remains as vivid memories. However those memories came to be, such matters are not easily explained., Like other matters that occurred during his life are not easily explained, is something that will become apparent as this story unfolds.

Each one of us from birth to death is on a journey. No two persons experience the same journey, and each is moulded and shaped by events that he/she encounters throughout his/her journey in life. At any point, Vincenzo believes that the person that we become is because of our cumulative life experiences from the day that we were born to that point. As the years go by, our experiences change; we also change. Life is never easy and is not meant to be so. The trials and tribulations that we encounter during our life’s journey have the potential to impinge on each of us positively or negatively, but no matter what tribulations, he has experienced during his time on this planet, one thing that has always remained with him and has not changed is his unshakeable belief in the existence of a creator and his benevolence.

Recollecting past events, there were many stories that came to his mind. He was told that by the age of 16 months, he could both walk and talk in full sentences. The happiest memory that he had was that of family dinners. At the end of dinner, he was placed on top of the table, where he would do a jig to the accompaniment of his parents and siblings clapping. In those days, there was no television, no radio, no other form of entertainment; for all intents and purposes, he was the entertainment. Those were happy days, as he recalled, a family in its truest sense of the word dining together, enjoying, supporting, and encouraging the social development of the newest and youngest member of the family. They were poor, but they were happy.

Not all memories of his infant years were happy; other memories were quite traumatic. At 16 months, he was walking unsteadily in a laneway that separated their house from the house next door; the owners of that house had a goat tied to a stake. As he was walking by, the goat horned him in the groin, causing a growth to develop. Italy, after the Second World War, was a poor country with little by way of medical facilities. He was taken to the local clinic, where he was examined and placed on an operating table; there was no anaesthetic. He was held down by his father and eldest sister and operated on. After the procedure, the wound was cauterised using a hot stone. Once the operation was done, he was sent home with instructions to his father and sister to return daily for the monitoring of any potential developing infection. This procedure was the cause of untold pain; each day he was taken to the clinic by his sister by way of different routes. As soon as they approached the clinic, faced with the clinic’s imposing double doors, he would, for obvious reasons, begin to scream and cry.

Other memories recounted by Vincenzo were of witnessing a man strip his adolescent son, tie him to a tree to the left of their house, and whip him. His crime was that he had run away from home. Given the calibre of the man, it was not surprising that his son had run away. Vincenzo never knew till years later that the man was his uncle; not surprisingly, the son whom he publicly humiliated and whipped, as he grew up years later, joined and became a member of the communist party. In the latter years of Vincenzo’s life, he learned that he, the father of the young boy that was whipped, at some stage, separated from his wife and lived his twilight years as a lonely old man.

Other memories were more pleasant. He recalled the very first time that they went to the beach as a family. His father, mother, and five siblings walked down a cobbled road with olive trees on either side; he and his sister Chiara, being the youngest, were placed inside two cane baskets, each of which was strapped to either side of their donkey. Once they arrived at the beach, his nostrils were filled with the sensation of salty air brought about by waves crashing against rocks, causing fragments of water to spray in all directions, imbuing the air with a salty fragrance. The heat of the summer sun, the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks, and the sound of the ebb and flow of the waves as they made their way to shore, crashing and then retreating, remained as one of the fondest memories of his infant years and his first day at a beach. He recalled women standing by, only wading in knee-deep water. Unlike in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, their costumes were linen petticoats that went from their shoulders down to their calves. In a time and place where women’s sexuality was strictly controlled, prudishness was the order of the day.

Other events that may or may not have shaped

Reviews for Through His Eyes Only

[Antonino Cipri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

interesting read. Full of psychic phenomena. Hard to understand why a full investigation of Anna's murder was not carried out. From my understanding of the book, more than one person was involved