Loose End

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I was intent on making a counter-complaint for slander, but I wanted to consult with a lawyer first.

Meanwhile, at home, the technician had not found the defects that the tenant complained of, except for a door to be adjusted in height and a burned-out light bulb. No problems with the gas, nor with the antenna signal. The next day the tenant called me back and, with an almost threatening voice, told me: “Here the gas comes out every day, even from the stove, I smell the stench!”. Not happy, he continued with the personal offenses: “You had to tell me right away that your name is Eva Mikula and you are the one of the White One. I discovered it, however, from the Internet, there is a lot about your past as a criminal. I suffered damage because of you”. I could hardly believe that a person could talk to me like that, in what capacity did he do it? I couldn't understand where he was going.

It was him who made me understand. Money. He did not finish his delusional phone call that the answer to my doubt arrived on time. “For the inconvenience I demand double the deposit, plus the monthly salary I paid, because to leave I have to face expenses”. So I immediately got the idea that, in addition to being in bad faith, he might be a bit disturbed. So I closed the phone call, which like all the others with him, I had been recording regularly for days now.

I went to the carabinieri to formalize a complaint for all the crimes for which he was responsible: slander, defamation, attempted extortion, blackmail and telephone harassment with requests for money.

In the barracks I explained all the facts in detail, I had also transcribed the telephone records, I provided the traceability of the payments made by him and my proposal for a full refund, as long as they left the house I owned. When the next day he was notified of the complaint, the neighbors told me, he too railed at the carabinieri, insulting me once again out loud in front of them: “But how! Have you taken a complaint against me from such a person? But do you realize? But do you know who Eva Mikula is?”. The military personnel did their best to calm him down. “The best thing is for you to get out of this house,” they told him. He had the nerve to call me for the umpteenth time: “You reported me for extortion, are we kidding? You are a poor fool who only seeks free publicity by hanging out with criminals, from this moment on don't address to me anymore. Forget you frightened me with the complaint, we will stay at home as long as we like”.

His partner called me back to tell me that if I didn't withdraw the complaint, they wouldn't leave. I had entered a state of total stress. After two days, the couple left the two-room apartment. I gave him back what they had left and also the month he had paid; obviously not twice as much as they claimed. The important thing was that they went away forever.

I thought that my complaint would have followed the expected procedure, however, more than two years after the facts, despite the testimony and incontrovertible evidence, the prosecutor strangely asked for dismissal, which was welcomed by the judge. Basically, after two years and a month of investigation, the law had come to the conclusion that my tenant's actions had not been slanderous, detrimental to my personal dignity, extortionate and therefore punishable by law. Perhaps because the plaintiff was named Eva Mikula. From my perspective, however, this umpteenth episode that I had to close in the basket of my dramatic experiences, upset me and all the good reputation hard earned over the years. It had touched my neighbors with brutality and, in particular, it had also muddied my working sphere, especially the relationships with the real estate agency, with which I often collaborated, here in the area and which was managed by some dear friends of mine. It was an episode that affected my daily life, my acquaintances with people who appreciated me for my seriousness, humanity and professionalism. Fortunately, I kept their esteem intact.

However, I felt an unbearable anguish that threatened to undermine everything I had been able to build up to that moment. I also went to the doctor, who prescribed me some anxiolytics and, for a couple of times, I underwent sessions by a psychologist. I feared that all these events would jeopardize the achievement of my full integration into civil society. Once again, however, I found the solution within myself, it could not be external interventions, pharmacological or psychoanalytic, the tool to resume the right path of my path. The right medicine was inner strength, the one I had trained by bearing the enormous weight of the past on my shoulders.

I thought about what I had managed to accomplish by believing only in myself. Difficult episodes can happen to anyone at any time, always when you least expect them. Public opinion had crystallized a distorted image of my person, it could neither be erased, nor modified, nor colored, because many, too many, lies had been told about me from the very beginning.

When I thought about it, I felt small and squashed, tiny and helpless. I was afraid that all prejudices, in addition to annihilating me, could fall on my children. This heavy gray cloud hung over my head, and as time went by it grew darker and darker. “But, mind you”, I mentally repeated to myself “You can say anything you want about me, so it's all false. But stay away from my children, don't even try to touch them. They have nothing to do with it”. My anxieties and my sleepless nights pushed me to write, wondering what was the origin of so much bitterness towards me, of the falsehoods that concerned me publicly exposed in the press. So I got the idea of sending a letter of release, strengthened by my full awareness of the reality that surrounded me, a letter written to the Association of the victims of the White One. Gang.

The letter to the Association:

To the White One Victims Association at the President of the Ms Zecchi Association

I turn to you again, despite having received no response to my 2005 letters.

Reading in the newspapers, you hold me forever morally guilty and you are indignant at my every attempt to approach. It has now been 20 years since light was shed on the misdeeds of the “White One”. Surely you remember the details of those moments: the first news in the newspapers, how they were captured, because I entered the judicial and media limelight. I remember everything as if it were yesterday, I was between life and death as in the previous 2 years of living together, beaten and segregated in the hands of killer policemen.

I am attaching some of the first articles, and who better than inspector Luciano Baglioni and superintendent Pietro Costanza can confirm you, as they were the first to record my first statements, a flood that lasted 48 hours with the arrival of 3 Public Ministries from various prosecutors even at 3 am.

In what psychological conditions did they find me? A little girl, clandestine, threatened and terrified of death. I started helping to shed some light on the affair, when Roberto Savi, just arrested, was about to be released as there was not enough evidence against him. The other components were on the loose while the investigators were only at the beginning of the reconstruction of the crimes to be attributed to the gang. There were 4 people in prison: “the Santagata”, already convicted, who had been serving a sentence for years for crimes not attributable to them and released immediately after my confessions.

I was taken away and placed under protection by the State in a distant and secret place, watched for 8 months waiting for everything to be clarified based on my confessions, looking for other people involved that I was not aware of. Once the investigation of the gang was over and the Savi were charged with their crimes, I was accused by them of complicity in murder and other serious crimes in revenge, which charges were later retracted.

Meanwhile, I have undergone 7 trials in various degrees of judgment and I was fully acquitted. I was forced to do television appearances to pay my lawyers, to defend myself. I fought alone against everyone, I had only God, my 19 years and a clear conscience as a guide towards a justice that then came for everyone. I have never sought acknowledgments and thanks from anyone, I have put aside the controversy, leaving vent to your unquestionable pain. I was consoled by the satisfaction and sadness that enveloped me every time I followed your commemoration. I wanted to be present, in the last row, but to be there. Unfortunately, in fact, this never happened; but the worst did.

Public opinion has been subtly led to discredit me, to discriminate me to the point of making me an icon of crime, a character to be trampled on who only makes headlines in the crime news as it happened in June 18, 2010, when my name was used to give relevance to the arrest of a person unknown to everyone, even me, as divorced for 10 years when he was cleansed, I no longer knew anything about him and his life choices.

The news took off on all national news and newspapers. My requests for correction were not even considered. No body contacted me, no one corrected the news that, as a result, it only had a strong discriminatory pressure on me and my family. I am clean, without pending charges and lead a normal, modest and honest life as well as a mother of 2 children. To date, some people in my workplace, after reading the news featured on the web, driven by a strong prejudice, have insulted and defamed me in public, considering me a person involved in crimes, prejudiced and guilty of frequenting criminal environments.

Despite myself, I had to file a lawsuit. They will have to pay penalties and damages as per law, whose victims are they?... it is not an isolated case.

For 20 years I have remained in the shadows and at the mercy of the media but always in support of the truth and close to your thoughts and pain. The Savi are serving life sentences as confirmed recently, largely thanks to me, for my timely, assiduous and precious collaboration. Otherwise, I would have died before seeing Fabio Savi's handcuffs on his wrists. With your permission and understanding, I would appreciate you allowing me to join the White One Victims Association or, please, at least accept my silent and heartfelt presence at the commemorations of October 13th as a surviving victim of a fierce, absurd and unforgettable story. Waiting for your in-depth evaluation and understandable response, I renew my best regards.

Eva Mikula. Rome, January 28, 2015

The response from Mrs. Zecchi, president of the Association, was not long in coming: “It is a request that does not stand, I do not know on what basis you can make such a request”.

I was still of the opinion that at least those who had been closely touched by this story of the White One knew the truth about the capture of the gang. I was wrong, I realized, however, that this was not the case at all. No less angry was the reply of Valter Giovannini of the public prosecutor of Bologna, which no one had called into question in the letter, but evidently he felt compelled to put his seal with the reply: “Silence is enough to respect the victims”, as if to say to be silent so as not to raise questions already closed and sedimented in the procedural truths.

I felt more and more alone and marginalized, I was not yet ready to face and publicly reveal the truth about the dynamics of the gang capture. My daughter was still small, my energies were used to manage a life full of responsibility and I still had a step, a pawn to put in her place: to tell the story of her life, of her destiny, why she does not have a dad. But for all this I had to wait until she was at least 9 years old, as the child psychologist suggested to me that followed me in the single-parent education path.

The years passed quickly and on the right day made itself known without having planned it.

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7. Eva Mikula a selfie at home, 2011

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8. Eva Mikula and her son Francesco, 2012

5. JULIA ARRIVES AND EVERYTHING CHANGES

My belly was growing and my life finally seemed to go smoothly, perhaps also thanks to the rules I had imposed on myself starting with the first one: to avoid emotional jolts, nervousness and discussions in working relationships.

I tried to resolve any misunderstandings, conflicts, unforeseen events, with Olympic tranquility, like a true number one. I thought positive and this satisfied me; I worked hard so that no negativity could cross my mind and body as I was about to become a mother for the second time.

I protected the creature that was growing inside of me and in the long evenings in solitude I talked to her a lot. I imagined her small, small, looking up and listening to her mother.

She was giving me almost supernatural strength. At the same time she detached me from the disappointments of the past and illuminated the hopes of the future.

Yes, the regulator of my new responsible happiness was coming. I was able to bask in these strong and languid sensations, loaded with projects to be carried out by myself. The plan did not include associates or partners, I did not want to share my new life even with Biagio.

So it was that, when the pains began, I got into my car and, without saying anything to anyone, I went, for the planned Caesarean section, directly to the hospital.

I parked and arrived to the ward I already knew: I had done the tests and checks right there, at the Santo Spirito Hospital in Rome and it was the second caesarean section I was undergoing.

Everything went well and the next day Julia was born. I was in seventh heaven. The first question I asked the healthcare staff was: "Is she healthy? Is she okay?" "Sure" replied the midwife. "She's a beautiful little girl" she added enthusiastically. I cried for joy. The inner voice whispered to me, caressing my soul: "Eve, you did it again, I'm with you".

That day it started my new life together with Julia. Biagio and our son came to visit me in the hospital, I have some beautiful photos of that very pleasant visit.

I went back to my nest driving the car. Biagio carried the baby inside the basket and escorted me aboard his car. Entering the house, he placed the basket with the baby on the sofa and left. A few hours later I went out with the baby in my arms to go to the pharmacy to buy what the doctors had prescribed for me and Julia.

The pharmacy was not far away, but it was almost evening and it was very cold in that gloomy November.

The wound from the caesarean section, still fresh, caused me a bit of pain. I hooded and, step by step, I arrived to the goal. The pharmacist widened his eyes when he saw me entering: looking like this and with a baby in her arms, he must have thought I was a gypsy begging for alms.

To his great surprise, however, he found himself in front of a mother who, with all her strength, and with her baby in her arms, asked for the medications for the surgery just undergone, the necessary to dress the umbilical part of the baby and the products for post-partum hygiene.

Really heroic, as only a mother can be. Returning home I thought that in those conditions, in the first few days, I would really have a hard time managing the baby, standing up, walking, bathing her, dressing her, taking care of her day and night. I absolutely had to get someone to help me; I thought about calling my mother in Romania, but a bad memory came to mind. When she learned months ago that I was pregnant, she seemed happy. As soon as I explained to her that Julia's dad had died in a car accident while I was in my third month and that I had also decided to continue the pregnancy, she fell silent. She disappeared altogether, for half a year, an interminable time.

I was really alone, without even her comfort, but I was happy all the same because I knew that she, my mom, had recovered and was fine. With the treatment she had stabilized. Fifteen days before the birth, the phone rang, I recognized her number. I really didn't expect it, after that long absolute silence. Finally I heard her voice again, it was my mom. I began to hope to have her soon in Rome.

She began with these words: "Excuse me, I had to think a lot about your choice, but I came to a conclusion: a good parent is better than two bad ones. I am proud my daughter for the choice you have made and if you need me, I'll be with you".

The profound meaning of what she told me came from a reflection on her life and, consequently, on mine.

As a child I had both parents and both declared themselves Christians; therefore a Christian family, yet it cannot be said that mine was a happy childhood nor that my mother was a loved woman, except in the first years of marriage.

It came natural to propose spending some time with me, after all I was about to give birth to her granddaughter. She replied that at that moment she would not be able to move because she had to bring the flowers to the market to sell them and she did not want them to be ruined, so as not to lose a profit.

I was disappointed "I'm worth less than her flowers" I thought. The economic costs that I would have had to face to get her to come to Italy so that she could stay for the necessary period would have been a hundred times more expensive.

I didn't count for anything to my parents when they had their busy schedule. After the birth, however, I called her with a determined desire to have her close for a while. I couldn't move and had a baby who needed to be looked after.

"Mom, this time I need help, I can't do it, I never asked you for anything and even now I would like to ask you, if I weren't in this condition: please come, don't tell me no".

So it was that my mother got on the first bus to Rome; she traveled for 24 consecutive hours from the north of Romania and I went to pick her up at the motorway exit.

We met in the petrol station service area located near the junction; I got out and walked towards her with little Julia in the basket, a 5-day-old girl. "But you took the creature with you, so small!" my mother exclaimed worriedly.

I laughed because I realized that she still had no idea what conditions I was in at the time, what it really meant to be alone in the world.

Amused by this externalization, I replied: "I could leave her at home, so she made us coffee".

We hugged each other tightly, I was jonesing for my mother: I hadn't seen her for over a year. She stayed with us for two months; so I had time to recover. Health returned to its place and so did I.

I put the work in order, found a babysitter to follow Julia as I worked; I hired her full time with room and board, to have continuity and tranquility. I had fully recovered and re-stabilized. So, having found my full balance, my mother left to go back to my father, she was always apprehensive for him.

She continually asked herself a thousand things: "What is he eating? What is he doing? Who did he talk to? Let's hope he hasn't argued with anyone. Did he remember to lock the door of the house when he went out to go shopping? Will he have found the socks in the bottom drawer of the closet?". They were the little anxieties of a woman who, despite what she had endured, continued to be devoted to her man. For me this almost maternal affection was an inexplicable fact, towards a husband who had mistreated, betrayed and beaten her and who had plunged her into the darkness of depression, alcohol, pain. But it was her free choice and I respect her.

The days passed in serenity with Julia nearby, I had found my lifeline. She had a different color, beautifully charged. She grew strong and fast like a train.

I too proceeded like a Frecciarossa train: I managed the house, the woman who helped me, the company and myself.

The frame of a rediscovered everyday life were the smiles of a little girl in search of love. Her sweet happiness perhaps concealed an unconscious unhappiness, mysterious to her, but not to me: she did not have a father. Slowly, therefore, my life began to oil the gears that risked rusting.

After a couple of years, I also managed to carve out a space for myself. With a group of friends, at least twice a month, we would go out for an aperitif or to eat a pizza. It became my own corner ritual, because the rest was governed by the imperative of my duties, my responsibilities: my daughter, my son, home, work. I was at the same time man and woman, mum and dad and also the responsibilities were double or triple.

That small, innocent and one-of-a-kind amusement with my friends had thus become a vital diversion.

Once again karma sent me an unpleasant warning: ugly, hateful, humiliating, bad, the same adjectives that fit perfectly with the actor who played that role of a little man by treating me unfairly, or perhaps in retaliation, because I had not indulged his winks. It was certainly not my fault, I did not like it.

I liked to go with my friends to a restaurant in the center of Rome, where they played live music. A pleasant place, I liked it very much and we were happy, there was a nice atmosphere and was frequented by apparently decent people. In my life path I had learned firsthand that there are at least two types of people: respectable and "bad" to stay away from. But appearances are sometimes deceiving.

One evening it happened that as soon as I crossed the threshold of the room a bouncer approached and invited me to go out, to go away. I thought for a moment that he got the wrong person, but he took me by the arm and forcibly dragged me out of the club and told me I should leave immediately.

My friends watched astonished without understanding what was happening. "I'd like to speak to the owner" I said. "I have a right to know why you're throwing me out." "Now I'll tell you" he replied when we were well away from the entrance and went back inside. After half an hour no one had appeared yet, neither the bouncer nor the owner, but the girls joined me to keep me company. I did not know what to do and did not understand, I knew the owner of the restaurant, he had come several times to our table.

He seemed a nice person with me and with all the guests. In truth he had addressed some more appreciation to me and wanted to take me out to dinner, but I declined his invitation, he was not a man I liked and I did not, however, want and intend to relate to him.

I just had to go home, but I promised myself that I would return the following week and that, if the scene was repeated, I would call the police. I always keep my promises and in fact I went back. Again, as soon as they saw me they threw me out. I asked again insistently to speak with the owner. He did not deign, but he sent me to say by a security officer: "You are not welcome because you are Eva Mikula of the White One Gang."

I called 113 and when a patrol arrived I explained that I was being prevented from entering a public place. They recorded my grievances. The owner was invited by the agents to come out to provide an explanation, justified himself aloud, in front of everyone: "The lady is not welcome in my place because she has a criminal record, she is a delinquent, has frequented delinquency, has been the woman of the White One Gang".

The policemen left with the report in hand and I tried to enter, but the two bouncers stood in front of me. I never went to that place again, but the bitterness remained in my mouth.

Appearances are deceptive, in fact. Other than good people! I later learned that this place was a reference point for business meetings. I don't care what others do, it's their business, but the discrimination I suffered was really heavy. A little revenge from the owner, a real minus habens, who had failed to invite me out for dinner and maybe even get something else, which perhaps he had taken for granted. Like all cowardly people, he retaliated by rubbing it in to humiliate me in front of others.

The police report of that evening did not lead to anything obviously, only a piece of paper remained, but I didn't want to let him get away with it. I went to a lawyer. What a pain! I asked myself: "But if I have to convince the lawyer as well, where can I go?". How many prejudices behind that refrain that is always the same: "Forget it, there are many other restaurants".

People always tended to trivialize and discourage me without trying to make the slightest effort to understand what I felt inside, without even trying to understand my state of mind, putting themselves in my shoes for the wrong I had suffered, no one felt a shred of empathy towards me.

I tried to get over it. But the bitterness remained, like the fear that other similar episodes might be waiting around the corner.

With the global recession that began in 2008 after the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, the clouds began to thicken over the real estate sector as well. Between 2011 and 2012 the crisis in my professional world made itself felt in a pressing way. So I chose the path of increasing the business by extending the network of contacts: I intended to broaden the range of action outside Italy, especially in London.

I had become a Rome-London commuter, a great sacrifice for me as a mother and for Julia as a daughter, but everything was aimed at our future. Luck helped me for once: my daughter's babysitter was good and very honest, she stayed with us full time for four years and I am grateful to her for the quality and amount of effort she put into helping me to grow Julia.

I was a very caring mom. At the beach or at the playground, wherever there were many people and the risk of her getting lost increased, I wrote her name and my phone number in ink on her arm. I taught her to dial 113, and told her that in an emergency, if mom got sick or wasn't at home, she would have to dial it. She asked me, as all children do: "Why?", I explained to her that it is the police number and that policemen are good people who intervene whenever someone needs help. Julia listened to me in silence. And then: "I want to call them now!" I was blown away, I thought that perhaps I had not explained myself well. "There is no emergency now, we are all fine, there is no reason to call", she, in a voice full of love and innocence, said "I want to tell them that I love them". I melted, it was touching. Her naivety had broken all kinds of barriers on respect and trust in the forces of law and order. I hugged her and promised that one day she would have the opportunity to greet all the policemen in person, even through their boss. A secret wish.

Managing had now become the word of my life: I managed the small spaces with the son who lived with his father Biagio, I managed the trips to London; I was managing a complicated job that I had to invent step by step and day after day, because it was full of traps and characters that were not always crystal clear. Fortunately, my London collaborators were suitably professional. And I learned from them to focus on a deal, to put into practice strategies to search and find clients for prestigious properties, to acquire the techniques to work on construction sites and to sell houses on approved projects.

And here I am, in a 2020 that has come quickly. Aware and fortified by the thousand adventures, sometimes very difficult, dramatic, bad, above all unjust of my life. In July, the hot days passed quietly, commuting to London was over: there was Brexit.

Italy was discussing the anti-Covid measures that in March 2020 had resulted in the total closure of every activity, of every move. Now we were a little more free, so I decided to take a spin on Google. I typed in my name and surname: Eva Mikula. I was curious, I already knew many articles about me, others where I had been unjustly brought up for reasons of opportunity and marketing of certain police bodies, were known but caused me anger and sadness. For example, those on the robbery of my ex-husband arrested by the carabinieri, who were careful not to spread his personal details, indicating him only as Mikula's ex-husband, or those on the Savi brothers, the killers of the gang who were asking for benefits to shorten the time their release from prison. All stuff already seen, I found no new or unpublished ideas or news. However, I came across some video interviews that I did not know, where the capture of the members of the White One Gang was described.

In particular, my curiosity was attracted by the stories of the public prosecutor of Rimini Daniele Paci and of the two agents, at the time of the events in the Rimini police station, Luciano Baglioni and Pietro Costanza.

They described, celebrating themselves in great detail, their great investigative capacity and the extraordinary courage put in place to complete the sensational operation.

I listened to their interviews found online for an entire afternoon. I felt like I found myself face to face with them, just like on that night between 25th and 26th November 1994.

From them not even a word about the young woman who, really bravely, put them on the right path, the girl who at the risk of her own life led them to the arrest of that group of policemen with a double life of brutal criminals.

They had erased me, as if wrapped in a black blanket. For them, in those paroxysmal and distressing days of 25 years ago, I had not existed. Not a single mention of my collaboration in the service of justice. They denied the evidence with the complicity of the time that had concealed the truth of the facts, sedimented under mountains of papers, among which they chose what to show and what not so that only their trial version emerged.

Now I'll tell you the real truth.

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9 and 10. Eva Mikula and her daughter Julia, 2013

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11. Her children, Julia and Francesco, 2015

12. Eva Mikula a selfie in the car, 2016