Who is Chico Forti? Why was he sentenced to life imprisonment? A life on the crest of a wave
From windsurfing to TV production, the story of the 65-year-old who returned to Italy after 24 years of detention in Florida
ROME – Enrico Forti was born in Trento on 8 February 1959. Nicknamed Chico, before embarking on a career as a television producer he was a competitive athlete. A windsurfing athlete, in 1985 he was the first Italian to compete in the category world cup. A car accident forced him to abandon the sport.
THE CAREER AS A PRODUCER
In 1990 he founded Hang Loose, a company that produces video films and documentaries. Note, in 1997,the video investigation into the death of Gianni Versace: “The smile of the Medusa”. Many believe that this work too, in which the actions of Miami police are being questioned as to whether it may be one of the causes of the treatment meted out to the man by the police. Some of Chico’s defenders see precisely in the making of this documentary, in which the actions of the Miami police are questioned, a hypothetical cause of the methods of treatment of the surfer during the investigation and the trial which would later condemn him to ‘life sentence.
THE DEATH OF DALE PIKE
It is February 15, 1998. Dale Pike, a 42-year-old originally from Sydney, is found lifeless on Sewer Beach in Miami, Florida. On the body, left completely naked, the forensic team found the signs of two gunshots, a 22 caliber, to the back of the head. Dale Pike, is the son of Anthony Pike, owner of the Pikes Hotel in Ibiza. He had arrived in the United States the day before his death. He had met Forti, with whom he was negotiating the sale of the hotel. According to reconstructions, Pike drove to the parking lot of a restaurant to meet up with Forti. According to the (second, then we will see why) version of the Italian, the two said goodbye around 7pm. A few hours later, Pike will be killed. The time of death was confirmed to have occurred between 8pm and 10pm.
THE INTERROGATION
A few days after his death, the Miami police questioned Forti as a person informed of the facts. The Italian’s fatal mistake was initially to deny having met Dale Pike before his death< /strong>. In fact, the police soon learned of his relationship with the victim. On February 20, Chico Forti returns to the Miami police offices, without a lawyer, with a series of documents certifying the business relationships he had with the victim. After 14 hours of interrogation, Chico Forti was arrested. In his statements he recanted his first version, admitting that he had met the victim a few hours before his death.
THE SENTENCE
Chico Forti will be sentenced, according to what is reported on the website chicoforti.com “for having personally and/or with other persons still unknown to the State, acting as an instigator and in complicity, each for his own participatory conduct, and/ or in execution of a common pleasure project, brought about, painfully and preordainedly, Dale Pike‘s death.”
“The sentence – we read – left those present and those who had followed the trial hearing astounded, incredulous that a jury was able to issue “beyond a reasonable doubt”, a guilty verdict based only on feeble and confusing circumstantial evidence. Subsequently careful checks and evaluations on the validity of this “circumstantial evidence” have produced such a quantity of doubts, that the suspicion that the facts happened in a completely different way from how they were presented by the prosecution has become a certainty, meticulously evaluating one and all the accusations based on facts and background, an infinite series of tampering with the “circumstantial evidence” by the prosecution was discovered, with the sole aim of obtaining a guilty verdict”.