The ladies liked Lieut. Gualtiero Gualtierotti, a handsome cavalryman with a toothbrush mustache and a roving eye. Behind his jingling spurs he left a trail of broken hearts. One day in 1936 a pair of black riding boots was delivered to his apartment in Rome. Said an accompanying note, written in a feminine hand: "To Rome's best pair of legs, from an admirer.
In vain Gualtierotti tried to discover who had sent the boots. He was still puzzling three months later when he was promoted to captain and transferred to another regiment in Brescia, 275 miles away, There, for the first time, he pulled on his shiny new boots and marched off to report to his commanding officer. The interview was brief. Gualtierotti sprang to attention, clicked his heels, and was blown to bits.
For 14 years Italian police sought to discover who had sent Gualtierotti a pair of boots with nitroglycerin concealed in the hollowed-out heels. Last week police had their murderer—Gualtierotti's cousin Pier Luigi Tamburlani. Tamburlani confessed after a Rome bootmaker, interviewed by police about another case, recalled making a pair of hollow-heeled boots for Tamburlani in late 1936. Tamburlani told the bootmaker that the heels had to be hollow because the boots were intended for an official who needed a hiding place for secret documents.
Motive for the crime: revenge. Tamburlani blew up Gualtierotti because the heel-clicking captain had seduced Tam-burlani's fiancee, then cast her off. The girl killed herself.