Herbert Kappler was instrumental in carrying out the Ardeatine massacre, one of the worst World War II atrocities on Italian soil. His life imprisonment sentence was largely in relation to that crime. He was eventually transferred to a prison hospital on account of poor health. It was there that he was smuggled out in a suitcase by his wife in 1977 (Kappler weighed less than 105 pounds at the time). He escaped to West Germany, where he died at age 70 in 1978.