A bar that never appeared in the first reconstructions, a receipt kept for years, an old video opened on Chiara Poggi’s computer and new comparisons on the fingerprints found in the house in via Pascoli. The Garlasco case is once again filled with details, declarations and alleged revelations, in a plot in which it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish what is really new from what was already contained in the documents or circulated in the previous months.
The impression, observing headlines and television programmes, is that of an investigation which has reached one turning point after another. In reality, the picture is more cautious. Not a single piece of scientific evidence has emerged capable of closing the case and a definitive judicial step has not yet arrived against Andrea Sempio, investigated by the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office for the murder of Chiara Poggi.
The most significant element concerns a conversation from 2022 in which Daniela Ferrari, Sempio’s mother, reconstructed her son’s movements on the morning of 13 August 2007 in a partially different way.
That reference to the bar
In the phone call, transmitted by White ZoneDaniela Ferrari says she asked her son where he was on the morning of the murder. The answer attributed to Andrea Sempio would have been: «In a bar».
The woman then asked him if he had kept the restaurant receipt, receiving a negative response. The following day, according to her story, her husband Giuseppe found the Vigevano parking ticket. It was she who suggested that her son keep him, a choice that in the conversation she defines as “the biggest mistake” of her life.
The passage is relevant because it does not completely coincide with the version provided over the years by Sempio. The suspect always said that he went to Vigevano with the intention of going to a bookshop. Having found it closed, he would have walked in the area before returning to Garlasco.
When questioned about the possible stop in a bar, Sempio instead denied having entered it. The words attributed to him by his mother therefore open up a contradiction that the investigators will be asked to evaluate.
An open room could have offered possible evidence: witnesses, receipts, accounting records or at least a specific location to verify. The bookshop indicated by Sempio, however, was closed that morning.
There also remains a reference to a bottle of water that the suspect purchased during his travels. A detail which, on its own, proves nothing, but which contributes to making the reconstruction of the morning less linear.
The receipt that does not identify who took it
The Vigevano car park ticket shows the time of 10.18am on 13 August 2007. For years it was considered one of the main elements in support of the movements declared by Sempio.
The problem is not determining whether the ticket is authentic. The question is understanding who actually collected it.
The receipt shows that at 10.18 someone paid for parking in Vigevano, but it does not automatically certify that that person was Andrea Sempio. The doubt was also fueled by an environmental interception in which Giuseppe Sempio, speaking with his wife, utters a sentence destined to become one of the most discussed passages in the file: “Because you made the receipt anyway”.
The meaning of those words is disputed. The family and the defense will be able to argue that it is a phrase extrapolated or interpreted incorrectly. For investigators, however, the ticket cannot be considered an independent and conclusive alibi.
The mother’s phone call should also be considered with caution. This is the story of a conversation reported many years after the crime, not a statement collected immediately after the facts. It may highlight a contradiction, but it does not in itself prove that the alibi has been constructed.
The video on Chiara’s computer
Among the elements that have returned to the center of attention there is also a video showing a young Andrea Sempio joking with some friends in a school classroom.
The video, recorded a few months before the crime, was transferred to the computer used by the Poggi family. Its existence, however, does not represent a recent discovery: it had already emerged and had already been the subject of reconstructions and investigations.
At least two different planes have overlapped around the file.
The first concerns the use of the computer in the days preceding the murder. According to some analyses, the video would have been among the last contents opened on the device before it ceased to be used.
From here was born the very suggestive formula according to which Andrea Sempio would have been “the last person seen by Chiara” on the computer before her death. A conclusion which, however, the computer data do not allow to support.
The computer was also used by Chiara’s brother and his friends. Knowing that a file has been opened does not allow us to identify with certainty who was in front of the screen at that moment.
The second aspect concerns the opening of the video after the murder, when the computer was already available to the investigators. An anomaly that may raise questions about the procedures followed in the management of the computer evidence, but which does not demonstrate a direct relationship between Sempio and Chiara in the hours preceding the crime.
The video can be useful for reconstructing how people frequented the house and how they used the computer. It is not, in itself, evidence of a motive, of a meeting or of a presence in the house.
Foot size and footprints
Another front concerns the bloody shoe prints found in the house.
According to the reconstructions circulated, the consultants are also examining the width of Andrea Sempio’s foot, in addition to the simple correspondence with the shoe size.
The measurements acquired would indicate a possible compatibility with shoes between 42 and 43. The defense replies that Sempio wears the 44 and that the shape of his foot would be too wide for a Frau shoe size 42, associated in the past with some traces found in the house.
However, there is no evidence of the publication of a new definitive expert report capable of establishing a certain correspondence.
Then there is a further problem: precisely reconstructing the shape and size of the foot that Sempio had at nineteen through measurements taken almost two decades later.
It is also necessary to distinguish shoe prints from the so-called print 33. The latter is not a trace left by a shoe, but a palm print found on the wall of the stairs leading to the cellar.
The new investigation attributes that trace to Andrea Sempio. The defense disputes the conclusions and the probative value of the element. However, confusing the handprint with those of the shoes risks superimposing different investigations and producing technically incorrect reconstructions.
In fact, a possible incompatibility with a shoe would not automatically eliminate the comparison on the palm track.
The two windows of the crime
The two possible time windows identified by investigators to place the murder have also returned to the debate.
The first would begin at 9.12, when the house alarm was deactivated, and would end at 9.58, the time of a phone call made by Sempio. The second would go from 9.58 to 11.25, when the boy was contacted by his parents.
According to the accusatory hypothesis, both would be compatible with the medico-legal elements relating to Chiara’s digestion and with the reconstructed movements.
Even in this case, however, this is not a newly formulated conclusion. The two time slots were already present in the final information from the Carabinieri and constitute part of the accusatory system developed by the Prosecutor’s Office.
Their return to the media story helps to understand the direction of the investigation, but does not in itself represent new evidence.
A week of contradictions
The investigation into Andrea Sempio has a clear scope. The Pavia Prosecutor’s Office considers the suspect responsible for the murder and has built a framework made up of scientific investigations, fingerprints, printouts, wiretaps, movements and declarations.
The defense disputes the structure and denounces the risk that ambiguous elements, old memories and private phrases are transformed into indications of guilt.
Sempio must be considered innocent until a possible final sentence.
Alberto Stasi, meanwhile, remains the only person definitively convicted for the killing of Chiara Poggi. The existence of a new investigation does not automatically erase that sentence. To modify its effects, a review procedure and a judicial decision capable of overturning the existing procedural framework would be needed.
The latest revelations have therefore not delivered a new truth about the Garlasco crime. However, they made the contradictions surrounding Sempio’s movements and the Vigevano receipt even more evident.
For the Prosecutor’s Office, those passages are part of a broader circumstantial framework. For the defense, these are imprecise memories, interpreted conversations and hypotheses constructed almost twenty years later.
The case thus continues to move on two levels: the judicial one, made up of documents, consultations and evidence to be evaluated; and the media one, in which every sentence can become a turning point and every detail a new truth. The decisive turning point, however, is yet to come.
