No new DNA has arrived, no other fingerprint has appeared and no one has found the weapon that has been missing for nineteen years. Yet, in the space of just three days, the Garlasco case has once again changed its skin. This time the battle ground is not the house on Via Pascoli, but everything that has been built in recent months around the new investigations into the murder of Chiara Poggi: documents, wiretaps, television stations, lawyers, journalists and dozens of complaints.
The starting point is Monday 24 August, when the content of a 24-page complaint presented by Stefania Cappa to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office is made public. A document that does not accuse anyone of Chiara’s murder, but supports the existence of an alleged “media direction” built around the reopening of the case, with the aim, according to the thesis contained in the document, of directing public opinion and investigative attention towards people unrelated to the crime.
And from that moment a story within the story opens.
Stefania Cappa’s complaint and the alleged “direction” behind Garlasco
The complaint was filed last April 22nd and contains, as shown by Hidden Truths – The Diaryreconstructions, audio recordings and the work carried out by a private investigator. Antonio De Rensis, Alberto Stasi’s lawyer, and Alessandro De Giuseppe, de correspondent, are indicated in the viewfinder The Hyenasand Francesco Marchetto, former commander of the Garlasco Carabinieri station.
The thesis supported by the Cappa family is weighty: a media representation would have been built over time aimed at supporting Stasi’s innocence and shifting attention towards other subjects, including the Cappas themselves. Accusations which will naturally have to be evaluated by the judiciary and which do not amount to the establishment of any responsibility.
Furthermore, the Milanese file did not arise this week. Already in recent months the Milan Prosecutor’s Office had opened proceedings following the complaints presented by the family and Antonio De Rensis, De Giuseppe and Marchetto were under investigation for defamation in one of the files. According to what Ansa reported in June, dozens of complaints linked to the gigantic media exposure of the Garlasco case had converged on the desk of the prosecutor Antonio Pansa.
The news on Monday is that those papers have become public.
De Rensis counterattacks: «One of the greatest own goals»
Antonio De Rensis reacted immediately. Stasi’s lawyer defined the complaint as “one of the greatest own goals” ever seen and rejected the idea of having participated in a strategy aimed at directing the investigations or targeting the Cappa family.
The document also reconstructs what would have happened starting from the summer of 2022, when De Rensis entered Alberto Stasi’s defense team. According to the complaint, around that moment contacts and initiatives began to develop and were then interpreted by the Cappa family as part of the alleged strategy.
De Rensis offers an opposite reading. Already in recent months he had said that, after having taken on Stasi’s defence, Stefania Cappa had contacted him offering him participation in some sports conferences. An element that the lawyer considers incompatible with the reconstruction according to which he had already acted against her.
In short, the case increasingly becomes a battle between opposing reconstructions.
Stefania Cappa’s wiretap made public on Tuesday
On Tuesday 25 August the match moved to another card. Hidden Truths broadcast an interception between Stefania Cappa and her father Ermanno, indicated by the program as a conversation from 16 March 2025.
The choice to report material from the court papers on television has further raised the level of the conflict. Because at that point the question was no longer just what was written in the Cappa family’s complaint, but also how that document had reached the press and whether it could be disclosed.
This is where the probably most sensational passage of the week comes from.
Stefania Cappa reports Milo Infante for receiving stolen goods
Milo Infante opened on Wednesday 26 August Hidden Truths – The Diary announcing that he had been reported by Stefania Cappa for receiving stolen goods after having shown on broadcast the contents of the document filed by Chiara’s cousin.
According to Stefania Cappa’s lawyer, the problem concerns the origin and dissemination of a document linked to an investigation still underway. Naturally, the judiciary will establish whether criminally relevant profiles exist or not.
Infante reacted harshly on air, defining the accusation as serious and claiming to see it as intimidation with respect to his journalistic work. He also said that he had informed Mauro Crippa, general director of Mediaset Information, and reported that he had received the company’s support.
The paradox is evident: a story born from a complaint denouncing an alleged media machine around Garlasco has generated, within forty-eight hours, a new media and judicial case.
The complaints become an investigation parallel to the investigation
Wednesday’s episode also addressed the topic of the numerous legal initiatives launched in recent months by the Cappa family. The program summarized them with the formula of “one hundred complaints”, while the documents of the Milan Prosecutor’s Office already in the previous months photographed an exceptional situation: dozens of proceedings resulting from complaints by Chiara’s family members against journalists, bloggers, YouTubers and other subjects who intervened publicly on the matter.
It is anything but a secondary element. Because today Garlasco is no longer just a proceeding on the murder of 13 August 2007. A second judicial level has been formed around the main investigation which concerns the way in which the case was told and the accusations, insinuations and reconstructions circulated publicly.
And this risks being one of the most complicated legacies of the new investigative season.
The clash between Milo Infante and Roberta Bruzzone
In the last few hours, a further front has also opened between Milo Infante and Roberta Bruzzone. At the center there is a passage from the Cappa complaint relating to a reconstruction attributed to the criminologist and to some alleged statements by De Rensis towards Stefania Cappa.
Infante publicly contested that reconstruction. Bruzzone, when asked about the matter, announced that she will evaluate legal initiatives once she returns to Italy. The host responded by saying he was ready to confront himself even in front of a judge.
Another piece of a story in which almost every reconstruction now produces a dispute, and almost every dispute risks producing a new file.
Alberto Stasi, meanwhile, prepares the revision
While the media front occupies televisions and newspapers, there is however a much more important game that continues to be played away from the cameras: that of Alberto Stasi.
On Wednesday Antonio De Rensis confirmed again that the request for review of the sentence will arrive. My colleague Giada Bocellari appears to have been concentrating much of her work in recent weeks on preparing the application.
It’s not a sudden decision. The defense has been working on the revision since the new Pavia investigation indicated Andrea Sempio as responsible for the murder according to the prosecution’s hypothesis. The Pavia Prosecutor’s Office itself forwarded the documents to the Milan Prosecutor’s Office so that it can independently evaluate whether to request a review of the trial which ended with Stasi’s final conviction.
But the passage of these hours is significant because the summer is ending and the announced application has not yet been filed. De Rensis assures that it will arrive.
When it happens, the Court of Appeal of Brescia will have to evaluate whether the elements collected in the new investigation have sufficient strength to allow the reopening of the judgement.
And Andrea Sempio?
In the midst of all this Andrea Sempio remains the only suspect in the new investigation by the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office into the murder of Chiara Poggi and continues to declare himself innocent.
The proceedings have not yet reached the request for committal to trial. After the notice of conclusion of the investigations notified on May 7, the Prosecutor’s Office ordered further investigations in response to the advice filed by the defence. The deadlines for the preliminary investigations are set at September 28, 2026.
It is a fundamental distinction, especially after days in which the media side of the story almost overshadowed the trial one.
Because the accusations contained in the Cappa complaint, the complaint against Infante, the clash with Bruzzone and the television battle between the different reconstructions do not change, at least for now, the judicial framework on the murder: Alberto Stasi remains definitively convicted and Andrea Sempio remains under investigation, not convicted, in the new investigation.
Garlasco, now the battle is over who controls the story
And this is probably the real news of the week. For months the question was who killed Chiara Poggi. Then what elements could call into question the conviction of Alberto Stasi. Then again how solid the evidence collected against Andrea Sempio was.
Now another one has been added: Who constructed Garlasco’s story and with what objective?
This is the question posed by Stefania Cappa’s complaint. But it is also the one that, inevitably, comes back like a boomerang when the same complaint is published, commented on, contested and in turn becomes the origin of a complaint against a journalist.
In less than seventy-two hours Garlasco thus produced new papers without producing a new truth about the murder. And perhaps this is precisely the point to keep in mind. Nineteen years after the death of Chiara Poggi, while Pavia continues to work on the scientific elements and the Stasi defense prepares the review, another battle is being fought around the trial.
Not only that to decide what happenedbut also who has the right to tell it and with what words.
