The man was originally identified as Professor Giulio Canella, an Italian philosophy scholar and teacher who had gone missing in action in World War I.
However, a few days after he was released to her, an anonymous letter was sent to the Quaestor of Turin, claiming that the man was actually an anarchist and petty criminal with an extensive police record named Mario Bruneri.
On 25 November 1916, Canella was serving on the Macedonian front, near Nikopole, as a captain of an infantry company committed to capturing Monastir Hill.
column of the national newspaper La Domenica del Corriere broke the story of an inmate of the Collegno Mental Hospital, confined there since 10 March 1926.
The man had shown signs of fear and psychological stress when confronted with staff members or visitors, so the meeting was to look to him like a random occurrence.
The man was taken for a stroll in the cloister of the hospital, and crossed Giulia Canella's path without showing any emotion or sign he recognized her.
The usually moderate Turin newspaper La Stampa printed the emphatic headline "A cry, a shiver, a hug, the light".
[2] The records about Bruneri included a detailed physical and psychological profiling, perfectly matching the character and aspect of the amnesiac.
On Sunday, 6 March 1927, the quaestor, firmly convinced he had been tricked, arranged for the arrest of Bruneri, who was brought back to Turin the same day.
Two days later, Bruneri's relatives were called in for an identification: his wife, Rosa Negro, recognized him immediately, as did their 14-year-old son, Giuseppino.
The identification was contested by Giulia Canella's attorneys on the grounds that the mother had not been allowed to see the man, claiming she would have foiled the whole Bruneri family plot orchestrated in conjunction with the quaestor and police.
The second try proved to be 100% positive, and the Scientific Investigation School of Rome wired back a telegram confirming that Bruneri and the alleged amnesiac were the same person.
Bruneri was a fugitive and had to serve two years from previous sentences, so he was jailed in the Collegno mental hospital while awaiting further trials.
Giulia Canella fought the allegations and began a long campaign of appeals to the Turin Court, asking for the man to be set free on the premise that he was not Bruneri.
High-profile witnesses were brought into the debate, including Father Agostino Gemelli and Earl Giuseppe della Torre.
The former had worked with Canella at the Rivista di Filosofia Neoscolastica, the latter was a co-founder of the Corriere del Mattino and director of the Catholic newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.
They were accused by Canella's attorneys -despite Carnelutti being a close friend of the Church himself- of being part of a secret plot to hurt the family.
The family took the matter to the Corte di Cassazione, which on 11 March 1930 agreed to consider the case and ultimately allowed a new trial to be held in a new courtroom.
Cassazione pointed out a procedural error by the Turin judges: they had denied Canella the chance to bring further evidence in his favor, in particular a new psychological survey and more examination of the fingerprints.
[2] In Florence, the Canellas' appeal was rejected again, and the man was sent to the Carceri Nuove jail to serve the remaining two years of Bruneri's sentences.
Other eminent contemporary scholars, among them Mario Carrara (son-in-law of Cesare Lombroso and his successor as director of the Forensic Medicine department) and Ernesto Lugaro agreed with Coppola.
The Court president had to cast the deciding vote, and called Minister of Justice Alfredo Rocco to ask for three more days of debate.
Her father, concerned about the damage to the family name, forced her to move to Brazil along with her sons and her alleged husband (as soon as he was released from jail).
They moved to Rio de Janeiro, where the man occasionally worked on local newspapers, studied philosophy and gave some lectures.
Despite the great span of time that had elapsed, the letters elicited strong reactions from the canellians, who tried to get a new trial to clear Giulio Canella's name.
[1] The case broke at a very delicate time politically, when the newly elected Fascist regime was beginning to face the many social problems of a divided country.
[2] The story was used by certain politicians as a means of distracting the public from the commission writing the Lateran Treaty,[2] the agreement between the Church and the Italian state that gave the former more authority, a trick by Benito Mussolini to gain the support from the Catholic electorate, while risking protests from the then strong Liberal party.
When the case itself turned out to be a divisive issue among clerics and liberals, he intervened, trying to reduce its exposure in the national mass media.
Luigi Pirandello was inspired by the case when writing Come tu mi vuoi [it], a three-act drama first staged in Milan in 1930.
Rai Uno produced a TV movie named Lo smemorato di Collegno by Maurizio Zaccaro.