A lot has been written about the Palermo slaughters, Capaci and Via D’Amelio. Maybe too much. Seventeen years of investigations, trials and imprisonments. Magistrates and policemen working hard. Celebrations, memories and testimonies from people of the institutions. Shared memory, mourning, truth and lies, dedication and betrayal. But when we ask ourselves the reason why Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino were killed – the real reason, I mean – we cannot find an answer, we just look around, we grope and stagger. When a couple of days ago Maria Falcone said that refined minds ordered that death sentence, we felt a shiver. Crime can count on a net of unforgiving complicity of its members. Complicity that cannot be renounced. Justice must make its way within thousands of traps. We know very well that in the judicial system there are magistrates who, thanks to their determination and willingness, are trying to discover the truth, we know very well that many issues are starting to come out from darkness, but it is a difficult and risky job. If you continue operating in the shade, as it has been done in the last fifteen years, nothing happens, but as soon as power is touched, every mistake can be paid with the failure of the investigation, the vilification of investigators, suspects of plotting and so on. We still have a question that makes us uncomfortable. Why did they kill Giovanni Falcone? We found dozens of motifs, but none of them explained, why, in Capaci on the 23rd of May 1992. We could discuss Totò Riina’s rough intelligence, but not the fact that – having chosen terrorism instead of the typical Mafia methods – they showed everyone that they were not those refined minds Giovanni Falcone feared, or very refined, as Maria Falcone called them. And we must think about this point: if the Sicilian bosses ordered the slaughters – even this point is still being discussed – without a strong motivation, this means that they couldn’t escape that death burden. Or it could mean that since they just followed an order, they would have received in exchange much more than they already had. Protection and complicity. The negotiation between the State and the Mafia, denied by the policemen who were suspects, believed by the investigators, must be placed on the betrayal wave of the new State longed for by the bosses and promised to them (untruthfully or not). On one hand the “negotiation” makes the investigation more confused, on the other it can reveal the real nature of the context and lead to the “refined minds”. Whether the negotiation was brought forward or not, the State “servants” who are suspected are now in the same position of the bosses who were ordered to carry out the slaughter. We strongly hope in the application of those who are working for this purpose and we will always support them. We are no one, but since our will for justice and truth has never ended, we feel essential. Memory is nothing without this will. Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino certainly knew it. Translated by Chiara Nunnari from John Milton Institute