Creasy–Sandri vendetta

Creasy–Sandri vendetta is the pursuit that turns Creasy’s investigation of Pinta’s kidnapping toward Sandri, the man identified as having shot her bodyguard and raped her. Creasy first intends to capture and question Rabbia, whom he expects to break more readily; Rabbia’s answers then establish Sandri’s place in the crime and reveal why ordinary punishment had not restrained him: Sandri is Fossella’s nephew.

The target and the plan

Creasy places Sandri within a larger criminal hierarchy rather than treating him as an isolated offender. He explains to Guido that Fossella and Abrata are the two principal bosses in Milan, and that Fossella arranged the kidnapping. Rabbia and Sandri stand below Fossella in the chain of responsibility; Conti, based in Rome, would receive a share, as would Cantarella in Palermo, who takes a portion of everything. Creasy’s account makes clear that the pursuit of the men on the ground is also a route toward those who ordered or profited from the crime.

When Guido asks when he will begin, Creasy makes the first step concrete: he will drive to Milan, reach the cottage early the next morning, and observe Rabbia for a few days before taking him. Rabbia and Sandri are his first targets, but Creasy expects that he will need to question only one of them. He judges Rabbia to be muscle, slow-witted, and more likely to crack than Sandri. This is a tactical distinction, not a withdrawal from the vendetta against Sandri: Creasy plans to use one participant’s testimony to reach the other.

What Rabbia reveals

The interrogation lasts more than an hour. Rabbia remembers the face of his questioner, and the questions begin with the kidnapping itself. He admits that he drove the car, but immediately identifies Sandri as the one who shot the bodyguard. He names Dorigo and Cremasco as the other men who later died, while denying knowledge of the ransom money. The answers separate what Rabbia claims to know from what he does not, and locate Sandri’s responsibility inside the operation rather than merely alongside it.

Rabbia says that the men had been ordered to collect the girl at a specified time and place and hold her in a house in Niguada. He describes the operation as badly handled from the outset: Fossella had said that a bodyguard would be present but would not be a serious obstacle, and had instructed Dorigo to fire a couple of shots to frighten him away. The kidnapping’s supposed ease had encouraged carelessness. In Rabbia’s account, the failed assumption about the bodyguard and the men’s own conduct form part of the chain of events leading to the violence and deaths.

Sandri’s violence and protection

Asked who raped the girl, Rabbia answers at once that it was Sandri. He says Sandri was angry because Dorigo had been a good friend, and that he liked very young girls; he also says Pinta had fought and scratched Sandri’s face. These details make the assault an act committed amid the kidnappers’ violence, not an incidental uncertainty in the account. When the questioner then asks whether Rabbia also raped her, Rabbia falls silent before admitting that he did, after Sandri. He says he thought it made no difference. The pause and the admission broaden the record of culpability: Rabbia’s earlier answers about driving and the bodyguard’s shooting do not exhaust his part in the crime.

The questioning then turns to punishment. Rabbia confirms that Fossella stopped his pay, but insists that the men were lucky because Sandri is Fossella’s nephew, his sister’s son. The explanation exposes the protection surrounding Sandri: even after the crime, his relationship to Fossella shapes the consequences he faces. Creasy answers that they were lucky and turns the questioning back to Sandri. The shift is significant. Rabbia’s interrogation has supplied a name, a direct account of Sandri’s acts, and a family connection that helps explain why Creasy cannot regard the existing punishment as justice.

The vendetta’s immediate direction

The relationship is defined by an asymmetry of knowledge and power. At first Creasy has identified Sandri as a target but expects to approach him through Rabbia, whom he considers easier to break. Rabbia’s confession makes Sandri’s actions more specific, while the disclosure of Fossella’s kinship gives the pursuit a further obstacle: the man Creasy seeks is protected by the same hierarchy that organized and benefited from the kidnapping. The interrogation does not resolve the vendetta; it directs it. Creasy’s final question about Sandri follows the evidence toward the next target, turning Rabbia’s account into the next stage of the pursuit.