Marcello Petacci

Marcello Cesare Augusto Petacci (marˈtʃɛllo ˈtʃeːzare auˈɡusto peˈtattʃi; Rome, 1 May 1910 – Dongo, Lombardy, 28 April 1945) was an Italian surgeon and businessman, the brother of actress Maria Petacci and of dictator Benito Mussolini's lover Clara Petacci. Accused by many of enriching himself illegally through his closeness to Mussolini, in the last days of the Second World War Petacci managed to escape to Switzerland with his family, but chose to go back to Italy. He was captured and executed a few days later by partisans along Lake Como at the same time as Mussolini and his sister Clara. Son of Giuseppina Persichetti (1888–1962) and the physician Francesco Saverio Petacci (1883–1970), Marcello Petacci was a businessman and an officer in the Regia Marina. His father worked as a physician in the Holy Apostolic Palaces. He graduated in medicine at the age of 22 in 1932 and was assistant to the renowned surgeon Mario Donati in Milan. In 1939 he became a lecturer in surgical pathology. Benito Mussolini's relationship with his sister had begun in 1936, but it was only at the beginning of 1939, when the family had a luxurious villa built on the slopes of Monte Mario in the rationalist style ("La Camilluccia"), that the relationship became public knowledge. From 1940 onwards, a group of intriguers and parasites (nicknamed "Clan Petacci" by the people) had gathered around the Petacci family, led by their mother ("halfway between a boxer and a caryatid") with an iron hand; Marcello, with his economic manoeuvres, was an integral part of it. They sought to exploit the privileged channel with Mussolini for their own interests. From 1940 Petacci was an opponent of the Chief of Police Carmine Senise and tried to dismiss him. In his autobiography, Senise recounted the episodes that led him to clash with Petacci: the expulsion from Italy of a Romanian "adventurer" with whom the latter was in business; the liberation of an ex-convict, who had promised a bribe of 400,000 Lire to the doctor if the latter "saved" him; the failure to hand over a box full of gold coins smuggled into Spain.