Gamper was born in 1957 and lived near Merano, in the province of Bolzano, an Italian region with a German-speaking majority and a long history of tension over its status.
Between February 8 and March 1, 1996 he shot six people with a .22 pistol, in the street and in their homes, including a carabiniere. The town, a quiet spa resort, effectively shut down. Italian reporting called him the Shepherd of Merano.
The six were Hans Otto Detmering, a German banker, and his Italian fiancee Clorinda Cecchetti; Umberto Marchioro, a farmer; Paolo Vecchiolini, a factory worker; Tullio Melchiori, a bricklayer; and Guerrino Botte, a carabinieri marshal.
He left a written statement claiming the killings for the German-speaking cause and against Italian presence in the province, and the case was reported at the time as neo-Nazi and separatist. South Tyrolean political figures across the spectrum rejected any association with him, and no organisation was ever connected to the killings.
He was cornered on March 1, 1996 and killed in an exchange of fire with police.
There was no trial. What survives is three weeks of shootings and a note, and the entry treats the stated motive as his own claim rather than as an established political act, because a man acting alone who writes down a cause has told you what he wanted the killings to mean and nothing more.
He is the second Bolzano case in this archive, with Marco Bergamo, whose series overlapped his in place and period.