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The Tattooed Man
According to the few available data, the first of november 1962 had been a quiet day, without anything worth printing in the news, apart from the case of two 11/12 years old caught by the police as they were driving their father's car.
So, when the newspapers were informed, late in the evening, that "a dead man covered in monsters" had just checked-in in the morgue of one of the city's largest hospitals, reporters and photographers were dispatched straight away in search of something printable before closing time.
The following accont is based upon the recollection of the reporter from the now defunct "Gazzetta del Popolo", a local newspaper.
The dead man in the morgue was middle aged, with black hair, wore nondescript clothes and carried no identification papers.
He was the victim of a car accident, having been hit by a small car as he was leaving one of the city's graveyards in the northern suburbs - this fact not being significant, as the first two days of november are traditionally dedicated to the remembrance of the dead.
As soon as his clothes were removed for medical examination, his whole body was found to be totally covered by multi-coloured, weird looking tattoos; this fact led the police constable on duty at the hospital to postulate that the man was some kind of former convict - tattoos being at the time restricted almost totally to either seamen or criminals.
The tattoo represented "exotic demons and buxom naked women" engaged in various activities, most probably obscene given the innuendo-laden reticence of the journalist. The whole seemed to be the work of a highly skilled tattoo artist, and probably the result of a single planned job, rather than a sucessive accumulation of random images.
The tattoo "centerpiece" was a bare breasted woman, wearing jewelry reminiscent of the kind usually adorning indian deities - "A Khali of sorts, judging by her ornaments" - portrayed on the man's chest in the act of taming or subduing two grotesque, green-scaled sea-things "that might have been forefathers to our more pleasant everyday sea-horses".
Among the many weird-looking symbols on the man's body, the only intelligible thing were two lines, reading "M.T.Gay - 1.11.62", tattooed on his arm.
All this was taken down for publication, in the hope that it might help to identify the man.
But as photographs were taken of the body, both for forensic use and for publication, part of the mystery was solved by the arrival of the man's widow, apparently informed by some bystander of her husband's accident.
The man was therefore positively identified as Ramon Navarro (just like the Hollywood actor).
According to the widow, the man had acquired his impressive tattoos during his stay in Australia, between 1939 and 1950, where Navarro had taken various jobs as a hodman and carpenter, the same job he currently held in Italy.
He met his wife in 1950, upon returning home from down-under, and they got married straight away, after a brief courtship.
The marriage had been a reasonably happy one, the only problem being Mr Navarro's predilection for alcoholic drinks - a problem that was growing with the man's age, and also caused violent reactions in some instances.
At this point, for the police the whole businnes was taking a rather predictable turn: a slightly intoxicated Navarro, coming home after a few drinks with his pals down at the bar, on a foggy street, too late seeing the incoming small, dark blue Fiat 500, unable to dodge it...
It all figured, and was generally confirmed by the medical examiner.
Quite a routine assignment for the reporters, after all.
Untill they got the name of the car's driver: a young switchboard operator, 23 years old called Maria Teresa Gay.
Further questioning, of course, led absolutely nowhere.
Maria Teresa Gay had never known the man; she resided about 50 kms outside Turin, and was passing that way that evening by chance.
The police tried to find some elements to connect her to Navarro, but to no avail and, after what was probably the weirdes night in her life, Ms. Gay was finally free to get back home.
The widow, on the other hand, and some old photographs she produced as evidence, confirmed the uncanny fact that Navarro had carried both his killer's name, "M.T. Gay", and the date of his demise "1.11.62" at least since 1950.
No explanations were offered.
