The Garlasco case also reopens on the work of the Ris: four folders, 359 documents, incomplete analyzes and materials never delivered to Alberto Stasi’s defense. The new papers from the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office raise questions about the management of scientific evidence.
There appears to be a black hole in Garlasco’s scientific evidence. And 19 years later the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office decided to get involved. Because the laboratories (but above all the archives) of the Ris seem to have retained more than what reached the courtrooms.
A funnel in reverse: a wealth of data, photographs and analyzes entered; on the other hand, only what the coats with the stars, at the time, thought they wanted to make known were released. Photographs not recovered, data produced by the instruments but not all attached to the reports, samples kept only for possible future checks and others destroyed in advance, a technical note that goes so far as to record a “possible mix” between samples.
This time under the lens of the investigator is the work of the Ris. An investigation within the investigation. Which starts from a document dated January 2026: a certification that the documents and documentation requested by Alberto Stasi’s defense had been deposited by the department at the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office on 6 November of the previous year. It is from this mountain of papers (four folders containing 359 documents) that prosecutor Stefano Civardi starts again. The judges of the Court of Assizes of Appeal had already come to distinguish the documents of the trial from the «internal acts or documents (…) of the RIS».
In short, in the department offices, there was a documentary heritage that did not entirely coincide with that which ended up in the trial file. But this, which went unnoticed, is only the first trace. When, at the end of the trial, the game of goose begins, everything comes to the surface. The defense wants access to the documentation. The judges authorize the release of documents relating to the investigations.
But the RIS raises the problem of its internal documents, replying, in essence, that it cannot govern what is not found in the file. And it believes that it cannot process those data other than their “mere custody” without a legal provision or authorization from the judicial authority.
So he doesn’t deliver them. The defense returns to the charge. The RIS still asks for guidance. The problem escalates to the Legislative Office of the Army. And there the dog ends up biting its own tail. Because the opinion explains that, once the procedure is concluded and in the absence of a judicial authority formally invested with the matter, it is precisely the department that holds the documents that has to evaluate whether the conditions exist to satisfy the request.
It is suggested to consult the magistrate originally in charge of the investigation and the defense is even shown the path of the administrative judge in case of failure to make a decision. Among the attached documents there is a circular from the General Command which warns of the need to prevent the judicial police from ending up in the position of refusing documents to the defense, provoking the intervention of a judge.
More or less the labyrinth into which the Garlasco case had just managed to slip. Yet, looking back through the documents, we discover that the problem does not arise with the access requests presented years later. A warning light had come on when the scientific investigations were still underway.
On 25 September 2007, the lawyers Angelo Giarda and Giuseppe Colli wrote that their consultant, Matteo Fabbri, had received “only a copy of the DVD”, some reports and “copies of the DNA profiles that were acquired” from the public prosecutor’s expert witnesses (i.e. two RIS soldiers). The defenders reach an even more explicit conclusion: Stasi “was not able to know all the results”.
A difference already emerges between what the laboratory produces and what the defense manages to obtain. The mechanism also emerges from another document. Four days earlier, on 21 September, the Ris had sent to the Prosecutor’s Office copies of two hard disks seized from Stasi. But the communication ended with a formula that was anything but definitive: «We reserve the right to transmit the remaining copies, as required by the authorization issued».
At that moment, therefore, the material requested was broader than that actually transmitted. And if for years we discussed above all the results of the analyses, the papers acquired now force us to also deal with their backroom: what was produced during the manufacturing process, what remained in the laboratories, what was delivered and what instead ended up in the department archives.
Then there is the chapter on “comparison fingerprints”, those used by the Garofano Team to establish whether the papillary marks found could belong to the people who had accessed the house. That is, fingerprints to check fingerprints. Here too the result ends up in the documents, but not necessarily everything that allowed it to be obtained.
In December 2017, Stasi’s defense complained about it: «The comparison fingerprints are not attached to any document of the RIS». And he adds in parentheses: «As practice». In short, the comparisons had been carried out, but the fingerprints used to carry them out were not attached. This is no small detail, so much so that the lawyers Giarda and Giada Bocellari expressly ask to obtain “all the fingerprints used for the comparisons”, including them in the list of documentation of which they request copies.
And they also explain the more general problem: «Part of the material, although kept available to the parties, was not sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Vigevano». When the request reaches the RIS, however, the papers are not sent. On 13 November 2017 the department announced that it “is awaiting any decisions from the competent judicial authority”.
A rubber wall. Which the investigating office must also have clashed with at times. On 7 January 2008, prosecutor Rosa Muscio ordered the department to transmit “the entire contents of the file (status-file.txt)” and a second file relating to the Windows user registry of Stasi’s laptop, requesting that they be provided “possibly also on computer support”.
Material which is attached by the Ris with a supplementary report dated 13 February 2008. And here we also discover what at least one of the requested documents contained: «Status-file.txt» was «a partial report of the downloads in progress at the time of the closure of “Morpheus”». But integration also serves to correct what was already on paper.
In fact, the RIS warns that in the previous report the wording relating to the log files of some duplicate hard disks had been “incorrectly” reported and replaces that passage with the correct one: “HE4.LOG: four bad sectors recovered and two non-recovered sectors, HE5.LOG all six bad sectors recovered”.
First the report arrives, then it is the Prosecutor’s Office that requests that two files be transmitted “in full”, finally the RIS files an addition which also brings with it a correction of what was previously written. Another piece that needed a second call to enter the file.
