[1][2] After having attended the Liceo Classico Massimo d'Azeglio, Carlo Casalegno graduated in literature[3] at the University of Turin and then, from 1942 to 1943, he was a teacher at Palli high school in Casale Monferrato.
He completely rejected the idea of resorting to special laws to suppress terrorism, fearing that such an initiative could have caused an endless sequence of violence, producing a loss of democratic freedom.
In 1977, on 16 November at 13.55, while he was going back to his house in Re Umberto avenue, 54 for lunch, Carlo Casalegno was victim of an ambush by a fireteam of the Turin Red Brigades' composed of Raffaele Fiore, Patrizio Peci, Piero Panciarelli and Vincenzo Acella.
It seems Red Brigades' militants had initially planned kneecapping him but, after a serie of postponements and a discussion between the members of the Turin column, it was decided to kill him mainly because of his latest articles, considered to be highly controversial towards the armed struggle.
During the subsequent trial in the Corte d'Assise, which took place in the summer of 1983, the Red Brigades' militants said they had chosen to kill Casalegno instead of kneecapping him (as they had done with Indro Montanelli) above all because of a brutal article of the 11 November '77 titled "Non occorrono leggi nuove, basta applicare quelle che ci sono.
[9] According to Peci, Casalegno was sentenced to death for having offended the memory of some members of the Red Army Faction who died in jail in (Germany) between October and November 1977 (Io, l'infame, p.137).