Ronciglione – After a 37-day search, divers from the State Police recovered the body of Luigi Cavallari from Lake Vico. The 84-year-old engineer, husband of Family Minister Eugenia Roccella, had gone missing on June 27 during a boat trip on the crater lake north of Rome. He was found on Tuesday morning at Lido dei Pioppi, about 20 meters from the shore and at a depth of approximately 19 meters—less than a kilometer from the spot where he was last seen.
Cavallari had jumped into the water that afternoon to cool off. According to witnesses, he briefly surfaced and said he wasn’t feeling well; the unmoored boat drifted away, and then he disappeared. His wife raised the alarm late in the afternoon. The Viterbo Public Prosecutor’s Office has ordered an autopsy, which is scheduled for Thursday in Rome. The working hypothesis is circulatory failure resulting from thermal shock; there is no evidence of foul play.
The search was exceptionally complex. It involved divers from the fire departments of several cities, as well as the police, the Carabinieri, and the financial police; side-scan sonar, remotely operated underwater vehicles, and drones were deployed. The search was made more difficult by the conditions in the lake: visibility is practically zero below four to five meters, the bottom is muddy, and the upper meters are densely overgrown with aquatic plants.
A Life Away from the Public Eye
Cavallari was from Abruzzo and taught at the School of Architecture at the University of Chieti-Pescara, where he specialized in construction technology. From 2002 to 2008, he headed an institute, and thereafter served as chair of the civil engineering program for several years. He rarely appeared in public.
Roccella met him when she was 18; she had been introduced to him by her father, the journalist and member of parliament Franco Roccella. The two married in 1976, and in March of this year they celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. The couple had two children and lived in Ronciglione. After the body was recovered, the minister wrote that this marked the end of a period of agonizing waiting; finding Luigi did not ease the pain, she said, but it gave the family the opportunity to say goodbye. Both speakers of parliament expressed their condolences, as did representatives of the government and the opposition. The mayor of Ronciglione, Mario Mengoni, spoke of his deep sorrow after 37 long days of searching.
