• General of the Carabinieri Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, 1920
• Undercover Agent of the Carabinieri Silvano Girotto, 1939

On May 1, 1982, Dalla Chiesa was appointed as prefect for Palermo to stop the violence of the Second Mafia War. He was murdered in Palermo on September 3, 1982, on the orders of Mafia boss Salvatore Riina. He and his second wife were being driven through the city at night in a Lancia A112, when a number of gunmen on motorbikes and a car forced the car off the road where it crashed into a stationary vehicle. The gunmen opened fire and Dalla Chiesa was killed along with his wife and their driver. The lead killer was Giuseppe Greco, who was later convicted in absentia of the crime at the Maxi Trial. A number of other gunmen were involved, including twenty - one year old Giuseppe Lucchese, who was also convicted of the crime at the Maxi Trial. Riina and various other Mafia bosses, such as Benedetto Santapaola, were subsequently convicted for ordering the killing.

Dalla Chiesa was also investigating the death of Mauro de Mauro, a journalist who had himself been investigating the murder of Enrico Mattei, head of Agip, the Italian oil company.

In the foreword of the Argentine National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons report on the Argentine Dirty War, Dalla Chiesa was cited as having rejected the use of torture in Italy in response to the kidnapping of Aldo Moro, the former prime minister killed by the Red Brigades in 1978. In response to a suggestion that torture be used in the investigation, Dalla Chiesa stated, "Italy can survive the loss of Aldo Moro. It would not survive the introduction of torture."

The son of a sergeant of the carabinieri pushed, as he said, by curiosity and thirst for adventure, came as little more than a teenager in France, passing the border illegally. Stopped by police around the country and risking arrest for illegal immigration agreed, lying about his age, to enlist in the Foreign Legion, being sent to Algeria, where the 'French army was engaged in a bloody war against the National Liberation Front. After only three months Girotto defected due to repugnance, as he said, to the practice of torture against captured Algerian combatants.

After returning to Italy he became involved in a robbery in a tobacconist with a band of youth and, although his was a marginal role, ended up with peers in the adolescents' Turin prison, where he decided on a religious path, and later he entered the Franciscan Order, wearing the robe on 10 October 1963 and assuming the name of Father Leo (one of the most faithful companions of St. Francis).

The pastoral activity, carried out among young people extremely politicized him and its proximity to the workers in an area like that of Omegna, characterized by a strong presence of the Communist Party, earned him the reputation as the "red priest" because of which his license to preach was withdrawn by the Bishop of Novara Placido Maria Cambiaghi.

In 1969 he helped to quell the revolt in the New Prison in Turin as a mediator, then asked his superiors to be sent as a missionary in the Third World .

As a missionary in Bolivia, one of the poorest countries of the Latin America, on 21 August 1971 in the capital La Paz, during a bloody military coup against the progressive regime of Juan José Torres, he sided with the peasants, workers and students who tried to react. Popular forces in an attempt to resist the coup, stormed a military depot and with  the weapons thus obtained waged fierce battles that ended with the victory of the army after the remedial action of the armored regiment "Tarapaca", who joined the coup also. The clashes left hundreds of dead and wounded, including Girotto himself, who chose the underground, entering the ranks of the armed opposition to the dictator Colonel Hugo Banzer Suarez.

The Bolivian guerrillas had logistic bases in Santiago, capital of Chile, where Girotto, assumed the nom de guerre David, when the Pinochet coup occurred. Even during that, he participated in the attempts at popular resistance, coming back wounded by the military. Following the injury he took refuge in the Italian embassy, being repatriated at the end of November 1973, together with a large number of political refugees from Chile who like him had sought refuge in the embassy.

During his time as a fugitive from the army in South America he was expelled from the Franciscans, through a decree issued by the Provincial Curia of the Minor Order of Friars of Turin, in which his participation in the armed struggle was expressly mentioned.

For this reason and because of his militancy as a guerrilla in South America in the early seventies he was dubbed in the media reports of those years "Frate Mitra" (``Machine Gun Friar").

Girotto started collaborating with the Carabinieri in what, as he himself said, was the result of a painful decision reached under the weight factor and the rush of events of those days, starting from the double murder in cold blood of two militants MSI and the kidnapping of judge Mario Sossi. Girotto, recently returned from Chile to Italy, where he directly assisted against the coup by General Pinochet and was himself injured by the military, and also of with direct experience of guerrilla movements in Latin America, would have realized the ineffectiveness and pointlessness of the initiative of the Red Brigades in the Italian context. The former religious terrorist organization would have considered the action a tragic mistake, that can only generate unnecessary deaths and lead to the ruin of many young idealists of the left, as well as running the risk of provoking attempts to justify the coup.

That claim, publicly supported at all times by Girotto, is reiterated in an interview in 1975:

It all starts as a result of an article by Senator MSI Giorgio Pisano published in the weekly Candido, directed by Pisano. This article portrayed Girotto as a religious communist who knew the secrets of the Red Brigades, and could provide a useful contribution to the salvation of the prosecutor Mario Sossi, those days held hostage by the Red Brigades.

The same article, as claimed by Girotto himself, would push the Carabinieri of the counter - terrorism unit under General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa to seek contact with Friar Mitra. The officer who was instructed to contact Girotto was Captain Gustavo Pignero who, noting his distaste for the Brigades' initiative, proposed to cooperate. Girotto asked for a few days to reflect and ultimately accepted. Some investigations occurred in the extreme left wing in Piedmont, the contact was established between Girotto and the Red Brigades through Dr. Henry Arise. According to the version by Girotto, this followed a direct conversation with the lawyer Giambattista Lazagna, former partisan leader, animated by the myth of the betrayed Resistance and considered very close to the circles of political terrorism, some charges in trials that were instituted were dropped.

What facilitated the contact between the RB leaders and Girotto was his reputation as a revolutionary trained and educated in the tragic conditions of the South American guerrillas, emphasized by the famous Italian journalists of the time.

The first actual meeting between Girotto and RB occurred in the town of Pinerolo, where he met Renato Curcio, leader and founder of the organization, who probed the intentions of Girotto, judging them to be genuine. A few weeks later a second meeting took place in a restaurant with the presence of Mario Moretti. On that occasion it was proposed to Girotto to undertake the training of militants in urban warfare. The actual enrollment would have to materialize in the third meeting, scheduled for September 8, always in Pinerolo, but this time Girotto came along with the Police officers that, as expressly requested, had followed and documented photographically all movements earlier.

They arrested Renato Curcio and Alberto Franceschini, both leaders and founders of BR.

Despite this action having been commonly labeled "infiltration", Girotto was never part of BR, having been limited to contacting the heads and having them arrested.

This occurred, according to what was said by the Friar Mitra, against their own convictions for him to undertake an action of  classic infiltration that could lead to better results in the fight against terrorism. The former monk told the Commission that he was ready to take part in armed actions against the Red Brigades. The hasty arrest of Curcio and Franceschini was ordered by the Carabinieri General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who claimed, in defense of the timing of the arrest, that there had been excessive overexposure of Girotto that could end in failure.

Another issue that has not clarified on the arrest is related to the failure to capture Mario Moretti, who was alerted in response to a phone call placed in the home of doctor Henry Levati. The caller has not yet been identified with certainty. In this regard Girotto himself seems to give credence to the hypothesis of an origin from sources within or near the Interior Ministry, the only institution informed by the Police about the impending operation but has also recently claimed to have reached the conviction about the identity of the mysterious author of the call based on the facts at the time and an enlightening publication that appeared in 2009. Since it was an intuition, however, without conclusive evidence, he refused to name names.

Not even the events taking place immediately after the call are clear. Dr. Levati would have alerted some inner member of the BR but did not specify precisely who were the recipients of his warning.

What is certain is that the news of the arrest reached only one of the players potentially involved: Mario Moretti, who claimed not to have been able to warn Curcio and Franceschini due to a series of special circumstances.

Girotto seems to attribute no credence to this hypothesis. Girotto, in another part of his testimony to the committee on the massacres, expressed doubt that Moretti, unable to find a simple ploy to save his comrades from arrest, was able to direct himself a complex operation such as the Moro kidnapping.

After the arrest of Red Brigade leaders, Girotto, relinquishing any protection, resumed quite an ordinary life: with his Bolivian wife, a registered nurse who had shared with him the underground struggle against the dictatorship, he had two daughters, now both graduates. He worked as a laborer at Robassomero near Turin, where he was also elected in the union and was part of the workers' council. Later he worked for several years as chief engineer in the United Arab Emirates and then in Yemen, then returned and settled in Italy in 1981 to live and work in a large business hotel in Piedmont.

In 1978 he came voluntarily to testify against the Red Brigades in the trial under way in Turin.

On 10 February 2000 he was heard in the 62nd session of the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry on terrorism in Italy and the causes of the failure to identify those responsible for the massacres where had provided a draft of the autobiography that was published two years later.

In 2002, about to leave as a volunteer with his partner in a Catholic mission to serve the poor in Ethiopia, he wanted to reconnect with those who had arrested and were now free after serving heavy sentences. The meeting was made ​​possible by Sister Teresilla Barillà. Renato Curcio, while not expressing anger, maintained an attitude of reluctant acceptance, while Alberto Franceschini established a friendly relationship with him.