Questions
After the war, Holohan's brother, Joseph R. Holahan (his spelling), a stockbroker, sought to learn more about the night at Villa Castelnuovo. He wrote to the Defense Department, to Italian police, and he interviewed Icardi, by then a lawyer in Pittsburgh. In 1947, after the OSS men returned to civilian life, Icardi was interviewed by Army investigators and he was given a polygraph examination. Icardi offered to reenter the Army in order to submit to a court martial and clear up any questions.
In January 1949, Italian Carabiniere Lieutenant Elio Albieri became interested in the case. When he questioned ex-partisans Tozzini and Mannini in March 1950, they told a story of Icardi becoming resentful of Holohan's refusal to support the Communists and hatching a plot to murder the major. When an attempt to poison Holohan's soup failed, a toss of a coin selected LoDolce to go to Holohan's room where LoDolce shot him twice in the head. The Italians stuffed Holohan's body into a sleeping bag and then dumped it into the lake. The men assisted the Italian police in recovering the body, which was identified as Holohan's. The skull showed two bullet wounds.
On August 3, 1950, former Sergeant Carl G. LoDolce gave a statement to Army CID (Criminal Investigative Division) in Rochester, New York. LoDolce alleged that he and former Lieutenant Aldo Icardi, both members of Holohan's team, had killed Holoran in a dispute over providing aid to Communist partisans. The members of the mission had drawn lots to see who would kill Holohan.
Another former OSS sergeant who served on Chrysler, Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, declared the allegations "silly." As for feelings towards Holohan, Ciaramicoli told a reporter, "We all didn't particularly like the major. He was older than the rest of us and was content to sit back and take things easy. He endangered our lives on several occasions by his attitude".
Icardi denied involvement in Holoran's death, and LoDolce repudiated the press accounts of his involvement in murder taken by the CID investigator. Former partisan leader Vincenzo Moscatelli, by now Senator in the Italian Parliament, told reporters that Holohan had an "anti-Communist attitude" and described Icardi as a "valiant soldier who helped greatly in the partisan struggle against the Germans." True magazine Rome correspondent Michael Stern published an article based on the Italian case, and Time magazine also adopted the Italian version in its coverage. The New York Times published a lengthy statement by Icardi given to the Pittsburgh Press.
Read more about this topic: The Holohan Murder Case
Famous quotes containing the word questions:
“It is not impossible, of course, after such an administration as Roosevelt’s and after the change in method that I could not but adapt in view of my different way of looking at things, that questions should arise as to whether I should go back on the principles of the Roosevelt administration.... I have a government of limited power under a Constitution, and we have got to work out our problems on the basis of law. Now, if that is reactionary, then I am a reactionary.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“To the questions of the officiously meddling police Falter replied absently and tersely; but, when he finally grew tired of this pestering, he pointed out that, having accidentally solved “the riddle of the universe,” he had yielded to artful exhortation and shared that solution with his inquisitive interlocutor, whereupon the latter had died of astonishment.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“The at present unutterable things we may find somewhere uttered. These same questions that disturb and puzzle and confound us have in their turn occurred to all the wise men; not one has been omitted; and each has answered them, according to his ability, by his words and his life.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)