Walter Audisio

Walter Audisio (Alessandria, June 28, 1909 – Rome, October 11, 1973) was a Italian partisan and politician. He was responsible for the extrajudicial killing/murder of Benito Mussolini.

Biography

Audisio worked for years as an accountant before entering in 1931 a group of clandestine anti-fascists. The group was discovered by the OVRA, and in 1934 Audisio was sentenced him to five years of solitary confinement on the island of Ponza. Released during World War II, he resumed his activities against the government of Benito Mussolini, and in September 1943 he started to organize the first bands of partisans in Casale Monferrato. Later he joined the Italian Communist Party and commanded Garibaldine formations operating in the Province of Mantova e the Po Valley.

With the Nom de guerre "Comandante Valerio" he became the inspector of the Brigate Garibaldi Brigade and, in January 1945, the principal figure of the Italian resistance movement in Milan. As an official of the CNL, he received on April 28, 1945 the order to enter Dongo and enforce the capital punishment that was decreed against Mussolini and others in the fascist hierarchy. The death of Mussolini remains shrouded in mystery today, but Audisio always claimed that he was among those who shot and killed the dictator and his mistress, Claretta Petacci.

After the war, Audisio was elected a deputy from the Popular Democratic Front in 1948 and supported the party until 1963, when he entered to the Italian Senate. In 1968 he left to work for Italian gasoline company Eni. He died five years later in 1973 of a heart attack.