Death of Benito Mussolini Milan, where he had been based, and tried to escape to the Swiss border. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Mussolini and Petacci were shot the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. The bodies were beaten,
Fall of the Fascist regime in Italy but he refused, since he would have found himself against his allies in the Grand Council. After that, before reaching his wife in Villa Torlonia, he telephoned his mistress, Claretta Petacci, living in her luxury villa called "La Camilluccia", on the slopes of Monte Mario. During his conversation, which was bugged, he told her in desperation: "We arrived to the epilogue, the greatest watershed in history"; "The star darkened"; "It's all over now". Afterwards, Scorza accompanied the Duce to Villa Torlonia: in the car, the dictator exclaimed: "Also Ciano, Albini, Bastianini! Scorza, do you think that good luck has abandoned