In the same basement were found ammunition cartridges of a brand not easy to find on the market (Javelot). Coming from the same lot were four bullets, of the same type and use, which marked them as the ones used for a specific homicide: Carmine Pecorelli, a journalist who had published allegations about Prime minister Giulio Andreotti's ties to the Mafia, and was murdered in 1979. Giulio Andreotti and his leading assistant Claudio Vitalone have been suspected in this assassination: Andreotti was convicted in November 2002 of ordering the murder of Pecorelli, and sentenced to twenty-four years imprisonment. But the eighty-three-year-old Andreotti was immediately released pending an appeal, and on 30 October 2003, an appeals court over-turned the conviction and acquitted Andreotti of the original murder charge.