A plea for peace in white goes dark

Bacca might have heard the calls of birds, the skylarks and starlings for which the reserve is known. She might have seen blooms of color at the side of the road, the season's first wildflowers. Bright red. Karatas, the driver who picked up Bacca, had led a troubled life. He had done jail time for theft and a fatal accident while driving his truck. While still married, he had moved in with another woman, into an apartment in a grim concrete-slab building in a run-down district of Gebze.

When the police caught up with him, tracking the phone's signal, Karatas quickly confessed. After picking up Bacca at the truck stop, he told them, he drove her to a remote part of the reserve. He sexually assaulted her. He strangled her when she tried to resist. She was dead, he said, within an hour of encountering him.

The wedding dress that had been torn from Bacca's body during the assault was recovered. Police refused to say whether it was found at the scene or among her killer's effects.

After it was entered as evidence, they said, it would be returned to Bacca's family. In her hometown, Milan, hundreds of people turned out for the funeral at the landmark basilica of San Simpliciano.

Mourners were asked to wear or carry something green -- the color Bacca, a vegetarian and environmentalist, liked to wear. The fabric draped over the casket was green; so were candles and balloons.

Manzoni, her mother, told weeping mourners that the best tribute to her daughter was to treat one another with "openness and friendship."

"Pippa carried, with great happiness, a message for peace," she said. "I would like Pippa to be remembered for her work, not her death."

The family knew that many in Italy, while sympathizing with their pain, believed Bacca had courted death by her actions. Manzoni saw it differently.

"A monster like the one who hurt Pippa can be found anywhere," she said. Her daughter's journey, she said, "was a test of faith in peace, and in the welcoming spirit of people. This tragedy doesn't make us renege on ideals."

In Turkey, Bacca's death came at a sensitive moment, when the country's bid to join the European Union is faltering and there is a hypersensitivity about its image in the outside world.

"Pippa, forgive us," the Sabah newspaper said in Turkish and Italian on a black background.

Moro, Bacca's collaborator, promised that the pair's performance piece, now freighted with somber meaning, would be completed. In early May, she e-mailed artist friends to say that finishing the journey would be the most fitting tribute to Pippa.

Like a ghost in the machine, the photos of the abortive journey's ebullient moments are still posted on the Internet. In one, Moro and Bacca are seated side by side on the deck of a ferry in the waters off Istanbul, wearing their wedding dresses, complete with billowing veils.

The sea wind tugs at the filmy material, and Bacca's face is obscured. But its contours are visible. The curve of a smile can be seen.

She looks happy.

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laura.king@latimes.com

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Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson and researcher Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.