On the evening of January 8, 1991, Luigi Pinna looked at his watch insistently. He is in a hurry, he has to pass by a friend in Maracalagonis and go with him to the gym in Sinnai at 7 pm. It is 6.30 pm and he is in the mountains, under the antennas of Punta Serpeddì, at 700 meters above sea level and 8 kilometers from the town. He is arranging the wall for the shelter of the goats of his father-in-law Gesuino Fadda in Cuile is Coccus, but by now it is dark and he cannot stay any longer. Drop the tools and say hello when two sequential explosions block him. Immediately afterwards, a few tens of meters further downstream, he hears the shouts of the shepherd Ignazio Pusceddu addressed to Giuseppe, the owner's son: "Take your rifle, they are shooting at your father".
The slaughter
It is the beginning of a slaughter, the "Sinnai massacre", which in the space of a few minutes will leave three corpses on the ground and a fourth dying person, who miraculously survived the murderous and decisive fury to direct the investigators to the culprit: the shepherd Beniamino Zuncheddu di Burcei, now 57 years old, sentenced to life imprisonment, in prison since February 1991. For 31 years he has sworn to be innocent, victim of a judicial error, but according to three identical sentences in the conclusions he was the one who killed the Fadda family thanks to a quasi-military action in development and precision. After having killed Gesuino, crossed on the road that led to the buildings just upstream, he had killed his son, went to look (unsuccessfully) for a 16-gauge shotgun hidden in the barn just in case, then entered the cottage where the kitchenette and the room with the cots and here, opening the door with a kick, he had killed Pusceddu and then fired twice at Pinna. Sure of having eliminated all witnesses, covered by darkness he had returned to Burcei, about half an hour's journey on his vespino, and then went to a friend's house. Instead the young bricklayer was alive. He had spent a whole night with the risk of bleeding, until help arrived. His testimony had nailed Zuncheddu: he had recognized him, albeit a month later and despite at first he said that the killer had a nylon stocking on his face. "I was afraid they might kill me," he justified himself by revealing that, in reality, the murderer had acted with his face uncovered.
The motive
Unsurpassed statements, once linked to the investigative findings. According to the judges, the pastor of Burcei had acted to put an end to conflicts that "since 1988" according to the judges had made the territory "a powder keg ready to explode". Everything revolved around the disputes between those who worked at Cuile is Coccus, that is the Fadda (who had a thousand goats and sheep and were "in order" with the pastures, because they had received the surrounding land in use by the Commissioner for civic uses), and those who gravitated to the nearby Masone Scusa, a “collective” sheepfold used by the Burcerese “who were the masters”. Trespassing of livestock, quarrels, threats. The Faddas had bought a pack of dogs to drive away (and kill) the cows of others, but it had been killed. A second had been hanged for the owners to see. The shepherds of Masone Scusa in turn complained about the gunshots that went off against their own sheep. On one occasion Gesuino and Giuseppe Fadda ran to the neighbors with a billhook and a stick. That day Beniamino Zuncheddu said to his rivals: "If they did to you what you do to the cows ...". Proof of his guilt, according to the judges. The suspect had claimed to have returned to the village at 5.45 pm to go to a friend at around 7.30 pm, but for the Court of Assizes in that hour and a half of hole he could carry out the massacre; furthermore, the two witnesses who only months later had revealed that they had seen him in the village at 6.30 pm were "false and complacent". Zuncheddu had been "recognized by the victim", he had "the motive", he had "threatened" the victims with death, he had "prepared a false alibi". Therefore "he is guilty".
An. M.
