ITALY: The Moro Tragedy Goes On

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Meanwhile, two false alarms kept Italy on a kind of roller coaster of stage-managed drama. After an anonymous woman phoned a Rome newspaper that Moro had been released on a coastal road south of the city, police launched a ground and air search that lasted four hours. They found nothing. Next day, after another caller said Moro's body had been stuffed into the trunk of a car near his residence in Rome's Trionfale district, police pounced on that area. Again they came up emptyhanded.

The Brigatisti, however, did leave a new trail of blood with two hit-and-run attacks. In the first, Girolamo Mechelli, 54, a Christian Democratic politician, was jumped by two gunmen who pumped five bullets into his legs. In Turin, two men and a woman shot Sergio Palmieri, 41, a Fiat labor relations official, also in the legs, as he left for work. At week's end these terrorists were still at large. Authorities, however, issued arrest warrants for six men and three women who were charged with Moro's abduction and the killing of his five bodyguards. All were suspected members of the Red Brigades or a violence-prone student group called Workers Autonomy.

Like Pope Paul's unprecedented "I beg you on my knees" personal message the week before, Waldheim's appeal on prime-time television gave the Red Brigades a measure of the political recognition they seemed to crave. But it appeared to have no direct effect. Pleas from Moro's family have also come to naught. Throughout the ordeal, the family's tragic situation has often put it at odds with both the Christian Democrats and the government's investigating authorities. The family wants a negotiated release, while the government and the party feel compelled to reject any bargaining.

A psychologist and expert in experimental education, Moro's wife of 33 years, Eleonora, was meeting a group of parents whose children she was preparing for First Communion when she learned of the kidnaping. Since then, she has left her home only three times−to attend the funeral for her husband's police escort, to attend Mass on Easter Sunday, and to visit the Vatican offices of Caritas, the Catholic relief agency that volunteered to act as an intermediary. The rest of the time she has remained in seclusion in the modest yellow brick apartment building in northern Rome where the family has lived for 13 years.

Because of the hordes of sightseers and the press contingent perpetually encamped outside, Mrs. Moro, a devout Roman Catholic like her husband, has had to give up her practice of going to Mass every day. The four Moro children−Maria Fida, 32, a journalist; Anna, 29, a pediatrician; Agnese, 26, a university student and part-time employee of CISL, a labor union confederation; and Giovanni, 20, a law student at the University of Rome−have also kept a low profile.

Friends say the family is still hopeful that Moro's life may be spared. Nonetheless, Caritas last week closed its switchboard at night, no longer seeing the need to listen 24 hours a day for a possible signal from the kidnapers. Its well-advertised phone number had been dialed only by cranks or nameless volunteers offering to replace Moro as a hostage. From the kidnapers, apart from the latest cruel communiqué, there came only silence. ∎