[1] Mambro became politically active while attending the lyceum, and later joined the Italian Social Movement,[2] first in its youth section and later graduating to the FUAN, where she worked at the organisation's headquarters in Via Siena.
[1] The historian Andrea Colombo has suggested that the formative event of Mambro's youth was the Acca Larentia killings of 7 January 1978,[3] which, he says, encouraged many MSI activists to take up armed struggle.
Riccardo Bocca describes the couple thus:[5] "He, already a fugitive, goes to see her in the hospital where she is awaiting an operation, then they start meeting in a garden near the house where she works as a baby sitter.
[5]One of Mambro's first acts with the group was on 7 March 1979—the night before the anniversary of International Women's Day—when she placed a homemade bomb in the Prati district of Rome; Fioravanti, with a number of others, covered her.
[6] On 30 March the following year, Mambro, Fioravanti and others attacked and robbed a Paduan army base, in which they stole machine guns, automatic rifles, pistols and ammunition.
[8] She murdered 26 year old Captain Francesco Straullu, a law enforcement agent investigating the far right in Italy in October 1981, publicly declaring:[9] We are not interested in seizing power nor in educating the masses.
[11] Mambro was charged with a total of 96 murders (including 85 in Bologna), as well as theft, illegal possession of weaponry, housebreaking, kidnapping, subversive association, terrorist activities, and conspiracy.