At Lecci, a property dispute had long divided the Furioli and Cirindini families before the Assize Court of Corsica was summoned to try two men for complicity in a double murder. Between that ancient contention and the verdict of May 1899, the account in the Gazette gives voice to narratives that do not entirely coincide: a formal indictment, alibis, the reported words of a dying youth, and witnesses who could not even agree upon the hour when day broke.
The breach, according to the indictment, reached back to a boundary dispute between the two households. On 21 March 1894, the act stated, Marc-Marie Cirindini succumbed to the blows of his adversaries, whilst Martin Cirindini and Jacques Cirindini were wounded. Three Furioli brothers—Vincent, Jean, and Jacques—were subsequently condemned to penal labour for these violent assaults; François was acquitted. The Gazette relates this initial conviction as the point of departure for renewed enmity. Yet, during his interrogation, Martin Cirindini ascribed his wound to an affair in 1895. Both dates belong to the selfsame printed record; nothing in the surviving pages allows them to be reconciled.
The punishment meted out to the Furiolis seemed at first to have quieted passions. The bill maintained, however, that two of the Cirindinis, supported by their kinsmen Marc-Marie and Joseph Nicoli, soon uttered fresh threats, though this clause of the text left them unnamed. Jacques Cirindini subsequently requested an interview of reconciliation with Angelin Furioli. They met at Croce de Lecci in April 1898 and agreed, according to the prosecution, to go about their affairs freely and to live in good harmony. This pact is known here solely through the prosecution’s narrative; that same prosecution imputed to it a deceitful design, alleging that the Cirindinis harboured a settled purpose of revenge.
On the evening of 21 April 1898, François Furioli and his younger brother Baptiste, aged sixteen, set out for Capo di Lecci to take leave of relatives who were about to travel. They spent the night there. In the morning, they took the road back to their home, accompanied by Jacques-André Furioli, a bailiff's man bearing distress warrants. The indictment had them pass by Furnello, where six men were said to have taken up positions behind a wall bordering the road; openings fashioned in the masonry reportedly served them as embrasures. As the three wayfarers drew near, the assailants allegedly fired in a volley.
Both brothers were mortally wounded. The account relates that Baptiste was able to count and recognise the ambushed men. François was found in his death throes, fowling piece in hand; Baptiste survived his wounds for three hours. The Gazette reports that he designated the culprits to the gendarmes encountered during his transport, and later repeated these names to members of his family. These dying words, decisive for the prosecution, reach us solely through the intermediary of the gazette and the depositions: they do not constitute a directly preserved deposition from Baptiste himself.
One must also pause before a printed date that disrupts the sequence. The witness Jacques-André Furioli is represented as having accompanied the victims on “the morning of 22 February,” whereas the preceding paragraphs fix their departure on 21 April and their return on the morrow. We retain this reading without emendation. Other depositions contradict one another regarding the morning light: Michel Poli stated that the sun had not yet risen when he met Baptiste; Clorinde Michelangeli affirmed that it was already up; Paul Poli situated the gunshots at five or half-past five o’clock, then declared that the sun was already risen when he heard them. The exact hour of the firing remains uncertain in this account.
The victims’ father, Angelini Furioli, recounted the ancient enmities, though he could declare nothing material regarding the circumstances of the assault. Jérômine Furioli, their mother, stated that her son had specifically named André Cirindini to her. Dusoline Furioli, the victims’ sister-in-law and André’s cousin, likewise related that Baptiste had pointed to the latter. Neither woman had witnessed the ambush: they merely repeated the words attributed to the wounded lad. Jacques-André, who was walking alongside the brothers, had heard first two shots, then eight or nine; François had reportedly cried out to him: “Salvai!” Baptiste had reportedly faced the shooters. The witness added that he had seen nothing, being wholly occupied with his flight.
Michel Poli, who ran to the scene after hearing the detonations, encountered Baptiste, who reportedly told him that “tutti elli” were his murderers, without naming them individually. François Pietri, a neighbour of the mayor, was dispatched to bring aid to the two youths. He found François dead, then helped carry Baptiste. The gendarmerie halted the procession and, according to the report, took down the deposition of the dying boy, who accused six murderers. Thus, certain voices reported individual names, others a collective accusation; several had heard the shots, but none had caught sight of the gunmen.
At the trial session, only two defendants appeared: Martin Cirindini, aged sixty-five, and André Cirindini, aged twenty-nine, Jacques’s son-in-law. Four other men were implicated in the affair, according to the introduction, but remained absent from the dock. The prosecution contended that the two men present had participated in the joint enterprise, even though their movements might appear to place them elsewhere at the precise moment of the fusillade.
Martin explained that he had travelled from Sainte-Lucie de Porto-Vecchio to Porto-Vecchio by way of Traggio, where Joseph Nicoli had family business to settle. He denied all participation. The Gazette described him as a man without prior convictions and of good antecedents, whilst noting a proud and haughty temper; it further mentioned the wound in his arm, from which the buckshot could never be extracted, leaving his hand difficult to use. André maintained that he had been in Sainte-Lucie at ten o’clock in the evening, and had then set out early for Conca, where his aunt had just arrived. Witnesses had seen him upon that road. The prosecution countered that this journey did not preclude his presence at Furnello prior to his departure.
Both men strenuously protested their innocence and produced witness testimony in support of their alibis. Standing against them were the words attributed to Baptiste, the long-standing enmities, and the theory of a shared design. The victims’ father could shed no physical light upon the assault; the traveling companion had seen no one; the family depositions rested entirely upon the declarations of the dying youth. The strength of the prosecution lay in piecing these elements together, while the alibis rested upon localities where Martin and André had genuinely been seen. The narrative furnishes neither the details of each cross-examination nor the specific responses of the jury to each issue.
Maître Nivaggioli pleaded for Augustin Furioli, the civil party; Advocate General Angeli sustained the indictment; Maîtres Decori and Maestracci defended the accused. The jury found them guilty of complicity in the double assassination committed upon “Baptiste François Furioli”—the judicial verdict printing both forenames without an “and”—and granted them mitigating circumstances. The Court sentenced Martin to twenty years’ solitary confinement and André to twenty years of penal servitude. It likewise ordered them to pay one franc in damages to Angelin Furioli.
The Gazette’s headline spoke of a double murder, and the printed verdict repeated it; yet the formula designating the victims, truncated or singular to modern eyes, remains that of the journal. The sentence concludes these limited columns. They say nothing of an appeal, of a pardon, or of the subsequent fate of the convicts. What remains is a judgment of complicity rendered against two defendants present, at the close of an assize where depositions, memories of a family vendetta, and alibis failed to dispel all the discrepancies of the tale.