The scandal that inspired La Dolce Vita

At about 5.15 p.m. on 9 April 1953, Wilma Montesi, a 21-year-old woman of no account, leaves the three-room apartment in a northern suburb of Rome that she shares with her father, a carpenter, and five other members of the family and never returns. Thirty-six hours later her body is found by the edge of the sea at Torvaianica, a fishing village close to the capital. She is lying face down in the sand, wearing all her clothes apart from her shoes, her skirt, her stockings and her suspender belt, all of which are missing. She appears to have drowned.

But why? Was it an accident? Was it suicide? Or could she have been murdered? There are no signs of violence to the body, so murder is not suspected. It is also difficult to conceive of a motive. Wilma Montesi lived an apparently blameless life, closely supervised by her mother; she mixed with other respectable members of the lower-middle class, and she was engaged to be married to a policeman. An attractive woman, she could have been the victim of a sex crime, but this, too, is excluded, because an autopsy shows that she died a virgin.

Her parents categorically rule out suicide, perhaps mainly because it would deny their Catholic daughter a Christian burial. But it also seems an improbable option. Wilma was a woman of cheerful temperament who had never shown signs of depression. She was said to be looking forward to getting married, and in the meantime she seemed to be enjoying an uneventful life in which the most exciting things she did were to go to the cinema, listen to popular music on the radio, and read gossip magazines.