On the afternoon of Tuesday 7^th December 2010 in Via Contessa Casalini, the street which surrounds Bagni di Lucca’s Casalini gardens, near the church of the Sacred Heart and by the entrance of the driveway leading to a doctors’ surgery, Cala Perez Kaliannys, a 27-year-old Cuban girl, who was taking a walk with her cousin, was killed with nine pistol shots. First, two shots were fired into her chest; then another seven were released when Cala Perez was already on the ground and practically lifeless. A skinny young man wearing a leather jacket was seen walking away after the shooting. Meanwhile, on the other side of the gardens children were leaving the local school at the end of their classes. The local police quickly rushed in to protect them telling those outside to immediately lie down flat.

The search began for Cala’s presumed killer, Leonard Grifsha, a twenty-six year old Albanian construction worker employed by a Ponte a Serraglio company. Carabinieri from all stations in the Serchio valley were mobilised and, coordinated from centres at Lucca and Castelnuovo Garfagnana, to search for the killer, who had had a relationship with the victim in the past months.

Friends and acquaintances were questioned and, overnight, checkpoints set up along the main roads to and from the Garfagnana. The army at San Marcello Pistoiese also joined in along the mountain area leading to Abetone on the Brennero road. The search continued, too, around Lucca with considerable numbers being involved.

Three days later, on 7th December, Leonard Grifsha was captured as he tried to pick up his belongings in Ponte a Serraglio and confessed to the murder. In all probability Grifsha was preparing to escape to Albania. At the time of capture he was unarmed. Grifsha told the Carabinieri, however, that he had thrown the gun in the Lima River. A search for the murder weapon was made but I’m not sure whether it was ever found.
For three days and three nights Grifsha had hidden in the woods behind my house at Longoio where someone may have given him shelter from the bad weather. According to the carabinieri’s investigations, the Albanian had been trained in Germany as a paramilitary and had even fought in Afghanistan so he would have been used to roughing it in all conditions.

Grifsha fully collaborated with Lucca’s Public Prosecutor Salvatore Giannino, and was assisted by his lawyer Luca Cantini. He was then taken to the San Giorgio prison in Lucca. A trial followed and the murderer was condemned to life imprisonment.

What was the motive for the murder? It was mainly because Cala had refused to continue her relationship with Grifsha and also because, apparently, Cala had been receiving money from the Albanian to buy a flat in Florence which, however, she was sending back to her relatives in Cuba.

Cala, born and bred in a country we have visited and love but which we realize is quite impoverished because of US sanctions, had met a friend of ours from Bagni in Cuba. He fell in love with her, and she grabbed the opportunity of his offer of marriage to escape to a more prosperous country like Italy. Our friend paid for the considerable cost of the wedding (which was quietly questioned among some of our friend’s relatives).

Cala already had a son from a previous relationship and brought him along with her to Bagni di Lucca where he was entered at the local school.  He has since turned into a very personable young man who we met since his step-father lives in the same house where we used to visit Sam Stych, a retired librarian and world Boccaccio authority, originally from Birmingham, and who died in 2018 at the age of 101. Indeed, Cala’s son was very helpful towards Sam in several ways, for example, sorting out his television channels, helping with his meals and dressing him.

Our friend confirmed that Cala, his separated wife with whom, however, he remained on good terms, had been threatened by the Albanian and that she was afraid, but had not had the courage to report the situation to the Carabinieri for fear of reprisals.

And that is the problem. So many women, particularly in Italy which has one of the highest feminicide rates of the world – six hundred in the past four years – with an average of one woman murdered by a jealous husband/partner every other day (and showing little sign of diminishing) are scared of denouncing their cruel companions for fear of reprisals. There are so many cases where, even if a woman denounces her partner’s abuse, the police take little action and the social services are not always as prompt as they could be. Regrettably, the UK can hardly be held up as a good example of what to do in these terrible situations: I heard recently on the news that a violent husband, who had been imprisoned, was not only released before the completion of his sentence but also was returned the house keys by the police: he promptly returned to the family home and murdered his wife.

Without in any way mitigating the circumstances of the tragic event that occurred in Bagni di Lucca nine years ago it is clear to me that putting a woman brought up in the more easy-going mores of a country like Cuba together with a man bred in a world where honour and shame ruled supreme in a patriarchal world was asking for trouble if the relationship soured. However, Bagni di Lucca did not expect anything as awful as what happened. I remember being interviewed by national television and as I was eating my pizza at a local bar finding myself on screen. (I just said that the whole of Bagni di Lucca was shocked at the event.)

Last year Bagni di Lucca comune decided to place a now iconic red bench, symbolising the blood spilt by the murder of women by their possessive men, near to the spot where Cala was assassinated.

Last month on the day dedicated to the memory of these women the red bench was inaugurated by the mayor who in his speech stated that Bagni’s municipal administration would spare no efforts in the fight against violence on women and is cooperating with associations helping to prevent such crimes and offering protection to the victims.

A further initiative regarding violence on women will be the installation of another red bench, on December 9, in Montefegatesi; the same day when the village’s now famous the nativity scenes will be opened to the public. That is, indeed, I feel a fitting coincidence: the mother of the baby Jesus could be no better patron for those in search of a solution to a terrible and deep-seated cultural and psychological problem which invests the world well beyond the boundaries of Bagni di Lucca.

I would finally add that Cala’s Facebook page still remains, not so much as a consciously memorial page but one which is yet more poignant since it suddenly stops at that fateful day in 2010 with a comment in Spanish.

‘descansa en paz’ – which translates as ‘rest in peace.

Thanks to a major campaign organised by the Croce Rossa to collect funds, Cala was returned to her country of birth and lies buried in Cuba where her grave is regularly visited by her relatives and her ex-husband.

https://www.facebook.com/kaliannys.perez