Dalla Chiesa and his wife were hit by thirty bullets as the car slammed into the boot of a parked Fiat Ritmo (the general tried to protect the woman with his own body).

The general had led as head of the special anti-terrorism centre of the Carabinieri, starting from September 1978, the counteroffensive of the state on extreme left-wing groups, in particular the Red Brigades with remarkable results.

In virtue of his achievements, high prestige earned on the field, he was sent to Palermo as prefect of the city after the murder of the unionist and communist political man Pio La Torre.

In the three years before his establishment, the Mafia had murdered among others skilled detectives, magistrates and political men such as Boris Giuliano, Cesare Terranova, Piersanti Mattarella and Gaetano Costa.

But Dalla Chiesa, in just over one hundred days as prefect in Palermo, did not have the promised and better defined "special powers" by the Government, complaining in August 1982 in a famous and controversial interview given to journalist of the newspaper La Repubblica Giorgio Bocca.