""Those few who've shaped history, are the ones who've said 'no'..." Pier Paolo Pasolini said in an interview a few hours before he was murdered. "As a person, I do pay for what I say... Maybe I'm wrong after all, but I keep on thinking that we are all in danger." Fifty years ago this November 2, Pasolini's body was found on a soccer field in Ostia, a working class suburb on the outskirts of Rome."
"The details are probably as well known as any of his films. He had been run over multiple times by his own Alfa-Romeo. His face was so badly disfigured he couldn't be immediately identified. His testicles had been crushed and his clothes were singed, evidence of an attempt to light him on fire. He was fifty-three years old, a national celebrity, and his body appeared on the cover of the Italian tabloids, mobbed by local gawkers being held back by cops."
"The details are still murky. A seventeen-year-old "rent boy" confessed. After serving nine years, he claimed he was intimidated into taking the rap to protect his family. The court agreed that more than one assailant was certainly involved. The case has been reopened and shut down in court over and over. Was it an anti-gay hate crime, as the tabloids claimed? Was it the neo-fascists or government elites Pasolini railed against in his newspaper editorials?"
Pier Paolo Pasolini was discovered dead on a soccer field in Ostia with severe bodily trauma, signs of having been run over by his own car, mutilation, and attempted burning. A seventeen-year-old 'rent boy' confessed, later claiming coercion; courts acknowledged likely involvement of multiple assailants and the case has been repeatedly reopened and closed. Speculation has implicated anti-gay violence, neo-fascists, government elites, a corrupt oil baron, theft-related disputes over film reels, and possible suicide staged as murder. The murder generated extensive mythology and artistic responses. Kathy Acker fictionalized the event in a 1988 novel portraying Pasolini investigating his own death.
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