Pietro Valpreda

[4] Another anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, was also arrested for the bombing, and died after falling from a fourth-floor window a few days later while the police illegally detained him.

[5] Valpreda's name was splashed across the media as "the monster of Piazza Fontana",[6] and the television reporter Bruno Vespa claimed that "the guilty man has been found".

All over Italy, there were huge pro-Valpreda demonstrations and the trial was moved to the deep south in order to avoid any type of political interference.

The criminal trial started at Rome on 23 February 1972;[7] the Italian judiciary took 15 years to exonerate Valpreda, who was acquitted for lack of evidence,[8] and 29 years to find someone else guilty of the bombing;[9] Carlo Maria Maggi, Giancarlo Rognoni, and Delfo Zorzi, who had been sentenced to life imprisonment, were acquitted by the Court of Appeal in 2004 and by the Supreme Court of Cassation in 2005.

As it later emerged, most probably Valpreda was mistaken for Antonio Sottosanti [it], a far-right extremist close to the neo-fascist scene who was a lookalike of the anarchist.