Patras, Greece – Italian man who went missing a decade ago, leaving behind a suicide note, has been discovered alive and well in Greece. Adamo Guerra, who disappeared when he was 45 years old, had left his wife and children in Imola, Italy, with a heart-wrenching farewell note to his parents.
In the letter, he wrote, “Goodbye, mom and dad. I don’t have much to tell you, but unfortunately things always went wrong for me. I will try to take this last step in the right way so that you will not experience the pain of my funeral. The time has come for me to put the word end.” Guerra’s family and wife, Rafaella, launched an extensive search for him after his disappearance.
Despite their relentless efforts, his whereabouts remained unknown, prompting an investigation by the Italian public television show “Chi l’ha visto?” (“Who Has Seen?”). To their surprise, they discovered that Adamo Guerra had not taken his own life; instead, he had relocated to Greece. His wife, who had never given up hope of finding him, watched the show’s coverage and expressed her gratitude for solving the mystery.
The investigation revealed that Guerra had not committed suicide but had rather left Italy and settled in Greece. Authorities located his car in the port city of Ancona and discovered that he had purchased a ferry ticket to Greece. A Chi l’ha visto? investigator tracked down the 55-year-old man, living incognito in Patras, Greece, for the past decade. When he realized that his secret had been exposed, Guerra pleaded with the show’s producers not to publicize his whereabouts.
However, his wife’s distress upon seeing the footage on television made it clear that she had endured a decade of uncertainty and grief, leading to a poignant comment: “He’s not a husband, he’s not a father.” Recently, Guerra had requested to be registered in the records of Italian citizens residing permanently abroad.
Italian media likened Guerra’s story to Luigi Pirandello’s classic short story, “Il Fu Mattia Pascal” (“The Late Mattia Pascal”). In the tale, Mattia Pascal experiences a string of misfortunes that lead him to fake his own death and assume a new identity, only to find himself in a complex web of lies and identity crises.
