Appearances are deceptive, in fact. Other than good people! I later learned that this place was a reference point for business meetings. I don't care what others do, it's their business, but the discrimination I suffered was really heavy. A little revenge from the owner, a real minus habens, who had failed to invite me out for dinner and maybe even get something else, which perhaps he had taken for granted. Like all cowardly people, he retaliated by rubbing it in to humiliate me in front of others.
The police report of that evening did not lead to anything obviously, only a piece of paper remained, but I didn't want to let him get away with it. I went to a lawyer. What a pain! I asked myself: "But if I have to convince the lawyer as well, where can I go?". How many prejudices behind that refrain that is always the same: "Forget it, there are many other restaurants".
People always tended to trivialize and discourage me without trying to make the slightest effort to understand what I felt inside, without even trying to understand my state of mind, putting themselves in my shoes for the wrong I had suffered, no one felt a shred of empathy towards me.
I tried to get over it. But the bitterness remained, like the fear that other similar episodes might be waiting around the corner.
With the global recession that began in 2008 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the clouds began to thicken over the real estate sector as well. Between 2011 and 2012 the crisis in my professional world made itself felt in a pressing way. So I chose the path of increasing the business by extending the network of contacts: I intended to broaden the range of action outside Italy, especially in London.
I had become a Rome-London commuter, a great sacrifice for me as a mother and for Julia as a daughter, but everything was aimed at our future. Luck helped me for once: my daughter's babysitter was good and very honest, she stayed with us full time for four years and I am grateful to her for the quality and amount of effort she put into helping me to grow Julia.
I was a very caring mom. At the beach or at the playground, wherever there were many people and the risk of her getting lost increased, I wrote her name and my phone number in ink on her arm. I taught her to dial 113, and told her that in an emergency, if mom got sick or wasn't at home, she would have to dial it. She asked me, as all children do: "Why?", I explained to her that it is the police number and that policemen are good people who intervene whenever someone needs help. Julia listened to me in silence. And then: "I want to call them now!" I was blown away, I thought that perhaps I had not explained myself well. "There is no emergency now, we are all fine, there is no reason to call", she, in a voice full of love and innocence, said "I want to tell them that I love them". I melted, it was touching. Her naivety had broken all kinds of barriers on respect and trust in the forces of law and order. I hugged her and promised that one day she would have the opportunity to greet all the policemen in person, even through their boss. A secret wish.
Managing had now become the word of my life: I managed the small spaces with the son who lived with his father Biagio, I managed the trips to London; I was managing a complicated job that I had to invent step by step and day after day, because it was full of traps and characters that were not always crystal clear. Fortunately, my London collaborators were suitably professional. And I learned from them to focus on a deal, to put into practice strategies to search and find clients for prestigious properties, to acquire the techniques to work on construction sites and to sell houses on approved projects.
And here I am, in a 2020 that has come quickly. Aware and fortified by the thousand adventures, sometimes very difficult, dramatic, bad, above all unjust of my life. In July, the hot days passed quietly, commuting to London was over: there was Brexit.
Italy was discussing the anti-Covid measures that in March 2020 had resulted in the total closure of every activity, of every move. Now we were a little more free, so I decided to take a spin on Google. I typed in my name and surname: Eva Mikula. I was curious, I already knew many articles about me, others where I had been unjustly brought up for reasons of opportunity and marketing of certain police bodies, were known but caused me anger and sadness. For example, those on the robbery of my ex-husband arrested by the carabinieri, who were careful not to spread his personal details, indicating him only as Mikula's ex-husband, or those on the Savi brothers, the killers of the gang who were asking for benefits to shorten the time their release from prison. All stuff already seen, I found no new or unpublished ideas or news. However, I came across some video interviews that I did not know, where the capture of the members of the White One Gang was described.
In particular, my curiosity was attracted by the stories of the public prosecutor of Rimini Daniele Paci and of the two agents, at the time of the events in the Rimini police station, Luciano Baglioni and Pietro Costanza.
They described, celebrating themselves in great detail, their great investigative capacity and the extraordinary courage put in place to complete the sensational operation.
I listened to their interviews found online for an entire afternoon. I felt like I found myself face to face with them, just like on that night between 25th and 26th November 1994.
From them not even a word about the young woman who, really bravely, put them on the right path, the girl who at the risk of her own life led them to the arrest of that group of policemen with a double life of brutal criminals.
They had erased me, as if wrapped in a black blanket. For them, in those paroxysmal and distressing days of 25 years ago, I had not existed. Not a single mention of my collaboration in the service of justice. They denied the evidence with the complicity of the time that had concealed the truth of the facts, sedimented under mountains of papers, among which they chose what to show and what not so that only their trial version emerged.
Now I'll tell you the real truth.
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10
9 and 10. Eva Mikula and her daughter Julia, 2013
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11. Her children, Julia and Francesco, 2015
12. Eva Mikula a selfie in the car, 2016
Poems have wolves inside...
except one: the most wonderful of all...
she dances in a circle of fire
and she gets rid of the challenge with a shrug.
Jim Morrison
Author: Eva Mikula
https://www.facebook.com/ev a.mikula.75
evaedit23@gmail.com
Editor: Marco Gregoretti
marcogregoretti.gregoretti@gmail.com
Editing: 8 Media srl
8media.srl@gmail.com
Cover graphics: Augusto Ace Silva
acesosilva@gmail.com
Publication: 2021 Italy
Copyright: © 2020 Eva Mikula
DRS filed on 22-01-2021
© Edition Il Ciuffo
Translated by Nevia Ferrara
Published by Tektime
Eva Mikula
LOOSE END
Hidden truths about the White One Gang
by Marco Gregoretti
INTRODUCTION
The life of each is the sum of what each of us is into the depth of one's heart and not of what others think of us. It is the essence of one's self that intersects with those close to us and with those who cross our lives.
I don't believe in destiny. Destiny is a convention, a construction for those who use to feel sorry for themselves. However, everyone is the arbiter, aware or not, of their own life, always and regardless of whether or not they are inclined to spend a senseless and flattened existence on the interests of others.
This is Eva Mikula's story, a young girl who was wrong of growing up very quickly, perhaps too quickly, in a difficult if not impossible context, and of trying to change her existence for the better, and this did not can be considered a fault.
She did so with the very few tools she had at her disposal given her age, looking for shelter, stability and new affections in a world alien to her that soon became hostile, finding herself alone among the wolves.
What she thought to be the golden world of a beautiful fairy tale soon turned into a nightmare from which it seemed impossible to wake up. It might seem like a story similar to many girls like her, but this is a different story, very particular.
Eva will become, in spite of her, the protagonist of the recent history of the Italian Republic, the story of the criminal gang of the White One that will indelibly mark her existence from a very young age. Six criminals, including five policemen on duty in different locations in Emilia Romagna, will cross their lives with Eva's. Criminals who with their actions will produce a long trail of blood, robberies and mourning from 1987 to the end of 1994.
Despite her being dragged into black news stories and international judicial intricacies that have sunk her even more and exposed her to public mockery, she never gave up, never stopped to feel sorry for herself.
Eva struggled to survive, not to be killed by criminals first and distorted justice later. She fought against everyone, even against those who would have had the task and the legal duty to protect her. She did it for her sense of justice, for her future, for a life under the banner of normality. She fought and won the first half of her most important game, a game that is still open, and she must continue to do so in order not to be once again banned by society, by those who have divergent interests regarding the truth.
Eva got back in the game and decided to do it for her children, so that they never have to suffer abuse or be ashamed of anything in comparison with others, just like their mother did many years ago.
Enjoy the reading.
Làszlò Posztobànyi
Poet, composer, journalist.
1. THIS IS MY STORY
This story, my story, begins on August 18, 1975 under the sign of Leo and ends on July 28, 2020, the day of the turning point in the year of catharsis.
That day, between random web searches and what I read about my past, something clicked in me. As if a crazed embolus had circulated in search of all those emotions that each of us holds and keeps inside the soul.
I was surprised to see that my feelings: sadness, disgust, anger, joy and fear were all in total conflict with each other. Along its path, the embolus also encountered awareness, which in turn led to the search for consciousness. In this great confusion shrouded in the darkness of memories, my ego exclaimed: "Who are you? Who is Eva?". After a moment of silence and hesitation, the conscience spoke: "We must mend the threads between us, with all our feelings to find peace. To do this we have to take a trip back in Eva's life, do a bit of order without neglecting anything".
The embolus dissolved, vanished, Eva looked in the mirror, spoke again and decided: the truth will be our guide, as always.
The truth is not what you find on the web, written in the newspapers, said on TV or manipulated in certain courtrooms.
So, on August 4, 2020, after thinking about it for a long time and after reorganizing the first documents, I wrote to Marco Gregoretti, a journalist.
A dry and decisive email with which I asked him to get in touch with me.
Why him? I don't know, I felt I could trust. I managed to get his phone number too. I called him, I wrote him long messages that touched my memories, since I was a child. I have sent him complicated e-mails relating to some of my letters and others, which related facts that you will find in this book. I asked him to help me put them in good shape, in a more correct Italian than mine. In short, I tested him. I wanted to understand if my instincts were still alive in me; I needed confirmation and to know that I could truly trust him.
It was thus that throughout the summer we talked, wrote and exchanged opinions, thoughts and memories, even hard, very hard, like those of the events related to the infamous White One Gang, a brand of horror.
I used a thousand tricks to scrutinize his personality. But he too was cautious at first, incredulous that I had looked for him, without mediation. Then it didn't take us long to abandon our respective distrust to their fate. We talked a lot. I jammed his email with documents. I remembered some articles he had written about me; that of Panorama in the days following the arrests of the Savi brothers and the other members of the gang, and the one in the magazine of the television program Quarto Grado, where he only talked about me.
So I didn't have too much trouble starting to talk to him about my children too, about my personal, professional and sentimental events that have crossed my life.
When we finally met in person in October it was as if I have known him, not since ever, but very, very well.
He phoned me from the train to tell me that the B & B where he used to stay during his trips to Rome was closed. So he was a guest in my accommodation facility.
There have been many other meetings, real and virtual, also due to the limitations decided by the Government due to the coronavirus pandemic.
I told him everything I wanted to tell in front of a mirror. Even the most intimate things that happened to a woman, whose suffering began very early, as a child.
There is no present until the past is clear to you; where you no longer need to escape from the injustices suffered to get out of the woods; I just have to find the courage to accept my story, tell it to everyone, just like the story of Little Red Riding Hood is told to our children. Now I write my story for myself, surrounded by a beam of light.