The Accursed Gold

After almost four months and nearly a million words of testimony from 381 witnesses, Italy's famed Dongo trial came to a melancholy stop. The government had been working hard to show that the Italian Communist Party had shot and knifed its way into illicit control of "the gold of Dongo"--the $90 million treasure that Mussolini was carrying at the time of his capture and killing by partisans in April 1945 (TIME, June 24). Last week, with about 30 more witnesses to be heard from, one of the seven blue-ribbon jurors. 62-year-old Silvio Aldrighetti, a rich Padua ironmonger who of late weeks had been ailing, walked into the study of his elegant country home and shot himself through the right temple.

"The accursed gold of Dongo has claimed another victim," mourned Presiding Judge Agostino Zen. a longtime friend of Aldrighetti. "I must declare a mistrial." It would be months before all the witnesses could be reassembled and new jurors sworn in to go at it all over again.

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