Aldo Ghira was a swimmer and water poloist. In the Italian swimming championships before World War II he won two relay titles in 1937 (4x200 freestyle and 3x100 medley) and took first place in the 200 metre breaststroke three years later. He then switched to water polo where he was on the winning 1947 European Champions and one year later won Olympic gold at the London Games.
Ghira was a building contractor in Roma. His name returned indirectly to the spotlight in September 1975 when his son Andrea, alongside two other young men, killed a girl and seriously injured another one in the seaside villa of Aldo. This criminal act passed into Italian crime history with the name Il massacro del Circeo and even today is well remembered by the Italian people for its cruelty, atrocity, and barbarity.