Murders, trials and legal troubles. The life of Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, son of the last king of Italy who died this morning at 86, seems like a thriller. The most famous case, for which he was arrested and accused of murder, is the death of Dirk Hamer, a 19-year-old German hit in the night between August 17 and 18, 1978 by a bullet fired in the dark off the Island of Cavallo, in Corsica.
The death of Dirk Hamer
The Savoys had bought a house on the island to feel less far from the homeland where they could not return. But on the night of August 18 a group of boys, including billionaire Niky Pende and some friends, German model Birgit Hamer and her brother Dirk, on a trip to the island of Cavallo, borrowed Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia's rubber boat: the heir to the throne went in front of the boys' boat at night and fired two shots with his carbine, hitting Dirk in the leg. In December of the same year, after months of agony, the boy died.
Vittorio Emanuele was acquitted of murder charges in November 1991 by the Assize Court of Paris and was only sentenced to 6 months in prison for the illegal carrying of his firearm, used outside his home. However, in 2006 the case resurfaced due to a wiretap of the man made in the Potenza prison where he was detained for the Vallettopoli scandal. Vittorio Emanuele admitted to having "fooled the French court. It's really exceptional: twenty witnesses and so many important personalities have appeared. I was sure to win. I fired a shot like this and a shot down, but the shot went in this direction, it went here and hit his leg, which was stretched out, passing through the cockpit".
The documentary
The case is reconstructed in the Netflix series "The Prince", directed by Beatrice Borromeo, which tells exactly that night of 1978. And it brings up another issue of weapons and death within the royal houses. The prince, in an off-camera, admits to having witnessed another "accident" with young King Juan Carlos as the protagonist: "He was the one who killed his brother, Alfonso of Bourbon-Spain. I was there". "That scoop may seem disconnected from the rest of the documentary only to a distracted observer - explains Borromeo in an interview with Corriere della Sera - The fact that Savoy, during his adolescence, that is in the years when you learn everything about the world, witnessed an incident similar to his, which caused a death immediately covered up (that of the younger brother of Juan Carlos, Alfonso, killed by an accidental gunshot, ed), is the missing piece to really understand the Cavallo affair".
The Juan Carlos case
Vittorio Emanuele repeats that confession off camera, believing he is not being recorded. "He repeated the story of Juan Carlos several times at the end of his interview, to me and then to other members of the crew. It was he himself, spontaneously, to connect the two cases. I think he did it because of the deep analogy between them, both for the dynamics of the incidents and for how they were managed afterwards. It was delicate material, but when Paolo Bernardelli, our executive producer, had the idea of putting the recording at the end we immediately understood that it worked".
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