Italian prosecutors exhumed the body of a popular singer Wednesday and said they had laid to rest suspicions that he had been murdered.
Luigi Tenco, one of Italy's most famous modern singers, was found dead in his hotel room with a single gunshot wound to the head on January 27, 1967, hours after learning that his song had been eliminated from a national music competition.
A hand-written note found near Tenco said he had decided to kill himself as a protest against the jury and members of the public who had voted against him.
Yet doubts over his death have lingered for almost 40 years as no autopsy was carried out at the time and, although a pistol was found next to Tenco, the bullet that killed him was not.
But Mariano Gagliano, the Sanremo magistrate who ordered the exhumation, told reporters Wednesday that an examination of the body proved that Tenco had died of a gunshot wound.
"The Tenco case is definitively closed. Checks have confirmed that it was suicide," Gagliano was quoted as saying by the Italian media.
He did not give any further details, nor explain why he was so certain that the gunshot wound had been self-inflicted. State television said it would take four months to draw up a full report.
The doubts surrounding Tenco's death was a typical Italian controversy in a land where nothing is taken at face value and where mysteries shroud countless tragedies and crimes.
Tenco was only 29 when he died but had already made his name as a headstrong protest singer whose songs were often censored by state broadcaster RAI.
In 2003, an investigation by three journalists highlighted the inconsistencies in the case and called for prosecutors to reopen their probe and consider the possibility of murder.
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