Raffaele's personal service record remains the key document to locate. It could formally establish the dates of his entry into the police, training, assignments, ranks, transfers, any commendations and retirement.

According to his children, from 1950 until his retirement in 1987, Raffaele De Blasio worked as a plain-clothes investigator in Rome and the surrounding areas. They recall that much of his work took place before an arrest: observing, gathering information, reconstructing events and identifying those responsible. The arrests themselves were then carried out by the officers assigned to that task.

Discretion was more than a personality trait. At home, his work remained largely outside family conversations. His son, however, remembers two names particularly clearly: Gennaro Monaco and Pietro Dessì. He knew both men personally and describes Monaco, Dessì and Raffaele as “an inseparable team”.

Independent research provides further evidence. During a parliamentary hearing on 27 March 2025, Maria Vozzi confirmed that Chief Inspector Pietro Dessì belonged to the Homicide Section of Rome's Flying Squad (Squadra Mobile) and explained that its inspectors dealt with the major cases of the day.

Contemporary evidence also comes from the 2 October 1980 edition of l’Unità. Reporting on an arson attack at Rosy's in Via Goito, the newspaper attributed a “meticulous investigation” to Gennaro Monaco, head of the Homicide Squad, and his colleagues Dessì and De Blasio, linking their work to the identification and arrest of those responsible.

This remains the strongest contemporary newspaper evidence identified so far connecting De Blasio by name to the investigative team remembered by his son.

A Life in the Service of the State

For his family, the thread running through Raffaele's entire career was his loyalty to the role he had chosen. They remember him as a public servant in the truest sense: rigorous, dependable, difficult to intimidate and unwilling to compromise his professional integrity for personal advantage.

The word that repeatedly emerges from their recollections is seriousness. Not a cold or distant seriousness — in everyday life he could be cheerful and friendly — but an unwavering sense of duty whenever responsibility and public institutions were involved.

Rome, the City to Observe

Rome became his professional territory. A vast city of different neighbourhoods, social environments and crime stories. For an investigator, knowing the city meant more than recognising streets and addresses: it meant learning to read behaviour, habits, relationships and silences.

From 1950, according to the family's account, Raffaele worked in plain clothes, moving through the city without drawing unnecessary attention to himself. His work required him to observe, understand situations and gather information before others became aware of his presence.

Then there are the names that have become part of Italy's public history: Montesi, Bulgari and Pasolini.

For Raffaele's family, these were not simply newspaper headlines to collect, but fragments of a professional life he had rarely spoken about.

Historical newspapers, archives and records concerning Rome's Squadra Mobile help reconstruct the investigations. They do not always identify individual officers. De Blasio's involvement in these cases is remembered by his family, drawing also on information they later received from colleagues who had worked alongside him.

Montesi, 1953

The body of Wilma Montesi was found on the beach at Torvaianica in April 1953.

Contemporary sources confirm that Rome's Squadra Mobile was involved from the earliest stages of the investigation. At the time, Maglioni was a senior commissioner of the Rome Squadra Mobile, Carella was operating in Ostia Lido, and Barbarino participated in the initial investigative activities.

According to the family chronology, De Blasio had only recently begun his investigative career.

Although the digitised records consulted do not name him in connection with the Montesi case, his family recalls his involvement, based partly on information subsequently received from colleagues in the Squadra Mobile.

THE PHOTOGRAPH THAT REMAINS

When Raffaele's children are asked which photograph best represents their father, they do not choose an image from a crime scene or a newspaper clipping.

They choose a photograph of him in uniform.

In that image, he is still the young police officer, before the years would replace the uniform with plain-clothes investigative work and turn the promise of a career into decades of experience.

For his children, the photograph represents an achievement: a young man from a farming family who found in the police not simply a job, but a tangible expression of his sense of duty.

The major investigations, the long nights, the waiting and the changing face of Rome's criminal world would come later. So would the silences that kept his professional life separate from his family.

But in this photograph, everything still seems to lie ahead.

Perhaps that is why his family chose it. Before the famous cases and newspaper headlines, it captures the man who would remain faithful to himself and to the institution he served.

The major cases were part of his story, but what his children most want to preserve is his integrity: pride in his work, intellectual honesty and the same values carried into family life.

Behind an apparently ordinary man was a life shaped by observation, discretion and work that often remained beyond public view — even from those closest to him.