The 5 summer crimes that have marked the collective memory of Italians
Even in Italy, summer is often the setting for crimes that occupy the front pages of newspapers for days, in some cases for years. Here are five that have marked the history of our country.
That trip that never took place On August 4, 1989, none of the neighbors of the Carretta family in Parma found anything strange in seeing the shutters of the house lowered and the courtyard where the deserted camper usually stopped. Giuseppe and Marta Carretta together with their two sons, Ferdinando and Nicola, had warned everyone that they would leave for North Africa. A planned trip that, in Giuseppe's intentions, should also have been an opportunity to get closer to his younger son, Nicola, who had long since entered the drug tunnel and, with difficulty, was trying to get out of it.
Actually, August 4th is the day on which Ferdinando, the eldest son suffering from psychological problems never diagnosed, awaits his family and kills them with a Walther in caliber 6.35 bought on purpose and legally detained. Nobody hears anything, but it is also a small-caliber weapon and the detonations took place inside the house. The blows could easily be confused with other noises. Ferdinand has already cashed a check for five million forging his father's signature and has a plan. After arranging the three corpses in the bathtub, he cleans up the traces of blood on the floor and later, putting the bodies in bags in the dustbin, takes them to a landfill and dumps them. He then leaves the camper in Milan, parked in full view of the ring road and emigrates undisturbed to the United Kingdom. At the end of the month, the relatives are alarmed: the Carrettas, in fact, were expected but have not returned. At work Giuseppe is considered a model employee, but suspicions build up on his professionalism and rumors run wild and malicious: he has stolen funds and fled, with his whole family, to South America. This is the most accredited thesis, so much so that the Italian police forces as well as some journalists, on continuous reports that they want one or all of the members of the Carretta family on some tropical beach, fly to the other side of the world to check. The prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Antonio Di Pietro, continues to say that the culprit is in the family. That no one has emigrated anywhere. Which are all dead. Proof of this is the camper parked in Milan and recognized by a viewer of the show Who has seen it?
The mystery will remain intense for nine years until a policeman stops Ferdinando Carretta for a routine check. He is traveling on his motorcycle in London. To the policeman that name suggests something, he remembers having already heard of it. A check and Scotland Yard is advised. The editorial staff of Who has seen it? he rushes to London and, needless to say, Ferdinando Carretta confesses the three murders in front of the cameras. He killed because he felt inadequate, sidelined, wrong. In London, however, he said that he could go unnoticed, no one asked him questions, no one demanded anything from him. In front of the house he had left a couple of children's bicycles and some toys: for the neighbors and for his co-workers he was a family man who spoke little and worked well.
An ending still open August 7, 1990 , when all the hypotheses were still open on the disappearance of the Carretta family, the twenty-year-old Simonetta Cesaroni is killed in via Poma, in Rome. Her body was found that same evening by her family who, worried that the young woman had not returned home, had gone to look for her in the office apartment where Simonetta worked as an accountant. Despite years of investigation, the culprit was never brought to justice and the murder still remains unsolved today. The hypotheses, for those twenty-nine stab wounds, were many. The weapon used, a knife, brings the perpetrator and victim closer, as well as the significant number of blows suggests that the murderer acted with a ferocious rabbi. Not only. Her body lay on the ground in a suggestive pose and with only a few clothes on. In addition, the culprit had also raged with his teeth on both the neck and chest of the victim. On several occasions and at different times, four men are suspected and investigated in the crime, including Simonetta's boyfriend. However, all were cleared. Or acquitted. Investigations into the case have been reopened.
Twenty years of silence On 10 July of the following year, again in Rome, in the Olgiata residential area, Countess Alberica Filo della Torre was found dead. The woman lies lifeless in the bedroom of the villa that she shares with her husband and with her daughter and son, little more than children at the time. Her death date also marks the 10th anniversary of her marriage to Pietro Mattei, manager of a large company. Precisely the preparations for the party, scheduled for that evening, attract many people to the villa. In addition to babysitters and waiters, there are in fact four workers in charge of assembling the structures in the garden. Countess Filo della Torre was last seen alive by one of her waitresses who served her breakfast. Once they finish eating, around 8.30 in the morning, Alberica goes back to her room. And no one sees her more than she does. Until another of the maids, along with the woman's daughter, knock on the door. It is 9.15 in the morning. The waitress decides not to insist, thinking that the countess may have fallen asleep again. An hour later, always with the child, she tries again. And at this point, her lack of response raises suspicions. Also because the door is closed from the inside. The maid finds a key and opens the door and enters the room with the baby. They both see the countess's corpse lying on the ground, a sheet covers her face, and part of her has absorbed her blood. The investigations start immediately, but the fact that the crime involves a person in sight involves a series of people who, on the scene, would have no reason to be there. It is clear immediately that this is a theft: in fact, many jewels are missing and the woman seems to have been hit in the head and subsequently strangled. It is also true that a thief, in most cases, even if surprised, does not become a murderer. Above all a thief who sneaks into a villa where a party is planned: he would almost certainly have waited for the evening, when the risk of being caught in the house would have been less than in the morning.
The investigations are not going well, so much so that the murder remains unsolved for twenty years, until thanks to the insistence of the widower, Pietro Mattei, the DNA is analyzed again. As a result, Manuel Winston Reyes is investigated who had been butler of the Filo della Torre and, for a variety of reasons, had been fired. The decisive proof, however, are the wiretaps in which Reyes attempts to place the stolen jewels. At the time of the investigation, the wiretapping was not heard. Reyes will confess to the crime by saying that he was being treated badly, and for this he was angry. After killing the woman, he had stolen her jewels to guarantee education for his children. Reyes was released from prison in 2021. Mattei died in 2020.
The house On the morning of August 13, 2007, Chiara Poggi, a 26-year-old employee, was killed with several blows to her head. Her crime takes place in the villa of Garlasco, in the province of Pavia, where she lives with her parents, at the time of the crime on vacation. Her body, dragged into the anteroom, then raised and thrown into the stairs leading to the basement, is found by investigators after her boyfriend, Alberto Stasi, a university student, raises the alarm. With a rather bizarre phone call, she requests the intervention of an ambulance because "maybe they killed a person". To the operator who asks him who this person is, if she is perhaps a relative, a family member, he replies "no, she is my girlfriend". The carabinieri, led by him, arrive in the house. Stasi says in the phone call with 118 that he saw the young woman's body and that "there is blood everywhere". But then he will tell something different, especially because the soles of his shoes are untouched. But the photos taken upon arrival at the crime scene show that some traces of blood are still fresh and that it would have been impossible to see Chiara's body and "blood everywhere" without walking on them.
The judges condemn Alberto Stasi to 16 years in prison for killing Chiara Poggi. The motive, given that States still declares itself innocent, has never emerged, although it is assumed that there was some friction between the two and that their relationship had reached a turning point. The violence with which Chiara was hit, with a heavy object never found, indicates that her killer was very angry and that the crime was committed at the height of anger.
Secrets and lies On August 26, 2010 in Avetrana, in the province of Taranto, fifteen-year-old Sarah Scazzi was expected by her cousin Sabrina and a friend of hers: together in the early afternoon they should have gone to the beach. but Sarah never showed up at the appointment. The search for the girl starts from her private life. The fact that she has more than one social profile, of which her mother was unaware, suggests that she has met someone and that she has voluntarily left the country. On the other hand, it was no secret that Sarah dreamed of a life far from there, perhaps in Milan where her older brother and father lived. As the investigation progresses, suspicions shift to Sarah's family and circle of acquaintances and friends. Almost everyone is older than her, even ten or twelve years. As long as the investigators' attention is focused on the Misseri family. The lives of uncle Michele, who finds some objects belonging to her niece, but also those of Sabrina, the cousin who was waiting for her to go to the beach on the day of her disappearance, and of her mother, Cosima Serrano (sister of Sarah's mother) , went through the microscope. And finally, on 6 October 2010, at the end of a long interrogation, Michele Misseri points to the well in which he concealed Sarah Scazzi's body.
The autopsy reports speak of death by strangulation: someone tightened his neck of the girl a belt or something similar. Misseri takes responsibility for the crime by saying that it was the consequence of an attempted rape. But the investigators go further. And they also arrest his wife and daughter on charges of voluntary murder. In the end, Misseri will be convicted of corpse concealment, but not of murder. While Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano are sentenced to life imprisonment. The motive is to be found in Sabrina's jealousy towards her cousin, younger and more beautiful than her, and for this object of the attention of Ivano Russo, of whom Sabrina was madly in love.
