Key interrogations in the Garlasco case: Sempio uses the right not to answer, listen to the victim’s cousins
After months of static quagmire, in recent days the Garlasco crime has returned to the center of intense judicial activity. the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office listened Paola and Stefania Cappa, cousins of the victimand now it will be the turn of Andrea Sempio, the only suspect in the new investigation, and Marco Poggi, the victim’s brother.
But Sempio’s response to the magistrates was immediate, and in the clearest possible form: total silence. His lawyers, Angela Taccia and Liborio Cataliotti, have categorically communicated that the suspect will avail himself of the right not to respond. The motivation would be technical but substantial: “The investigations are not closed and therefore the evidentiary framework to be confronted with during the interrogation is not complete, especially considering that the investigation file is not only incomplete but cannot yet be viewed.”
Psychological counseling and referral
The defense didn’t stop there. He entrusted a psychotherapist with the task of drawing up a personological consultancy on Sempio, based on the “canonical tests usually used”, rather than on the documentary data of the file. The lawyers reserve the right to ask the prosecutors to reconvene their client only after the outcome of this assessment. A move that lengthens the time and strengthens the defensive position before any direct confrontation with the investigators.
The Cappa twins in front of the police
While Sempio expressed his intention to remain silent, the hearings of Paola and Stefania Cappa were taking place in the Montebello barracks in Milan, in via Vincenzo Monti 58. The first was heard in the morning, the second in the afternoon. Both, their lawyers Antonio Marino, Gabriele Casartelli and Valeria Mettica point out, “they renewed the collaborative spirit demonstrated since the beginning of the investigations”.
The short-lived hearings focused on the personal relationships between the protagonists of the story: in particular, the bond between Chiara Poggi and Andrea Sempio. However, the motive hypothesized in the indictment, or the alleged ones, would not have been addressed advances sexual assaults rejected by the victim, nor the question of the weapon searched in the Tromello canal, evoked by a witness who had called Stefania Cappa into question, without however any concrete confirmation.
The next steps in the investigation into Garlasco
Tomorrow May 6, the magistrates will also have the testimony of Marco Poggi, the victim’s brother. These two days of investigation prefigure the closure of the investigations and the subsequent request for Sempio to be sent to trial.
It is worth remembering the context: for the murder of Chiara Poggi, in the first investigation, Alberto Stasithe girl’s boyfriend at the time, was definitively sentenced to 16 years in prison. Today the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office believes it should reopen the case, focusing on a different track.
What happens next depends largely on what prosecutors manage to construct in the coming weeks. Sempio’s silence is a right, nothing to object to. For now, as good guarantors, we limit ourselves to reporting the facts. The judges will take care of the sentences.
