For almost twenty years the name of Alberto Stasi remained linked to that of Chiara Poggi and the Garlasco crime. He was the boyfriend of the young woman killed in the family’s villa and it was he who became the main defendant in a long and complex legal case, which ended in 2015 with a final sentence of 16 years in prison, pronounced in an abbreviated manner.
This is the judicial reality from which we must still start today. Stasi was definitively convicted of the murder of Chiara Poggi and that sentence remains valid. The new investigations by the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office into Andrea Sempio did not cancel the conviction nor did they automatically change the position of the victim’s ex-boyfriend.
However, they have reopened a question that now seemed closed: how much do some of the elements that in 2015 led the judges to consider Stasi responsible for the murder hold up, in light of the new findings?
The relationship with Chiara Poggi
Stasi knew Chiara deeply, her home and her habits. It is one of the elements that played a role in the reconstruction of the crime.
According to the sentence, Chiara had been killed by a known person, someone who could enter the house without arousing suspicion and who knew how to move inside the house.
For the judges, Stasi’s profile was compatible with this reconstruction: he was the victim’s boyfriend, he frequented the house and had a very close relationship with her.
Today, however, the new investigation introduces a different element. According to the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office, it would not be possible to establish with certainty that Chiara voluntarily opened the door to her murderer. Furthermore, Andrea Sempio, a friend of Marco Poggi, the victim’s brother, was not an absolute stranger to the family and had frequented the house.
The alibi for the morning of the crime
One of the central issues of Stasi’s position has always been that of the alibi.
On the morning of the murder he had turned on the computer to work on his degree thesis. In the reconstruction that led to the conviction, however, there was a time window in which the alibi was not considered sufficient to exclude the possibility that he could have been at the crime scene.
The judges placed that window between 9.12 and 9.35.
The new investigations, however, call into question the exact time of death. A consultation by the pathologist Cristina Cattaneo places the death in a later range, between 9.45 and 12.30, substantially in line with a previous assessment by the medical examiner Marco Ballardini, who had indicated a greater centering between 11 and 11.30.
The black bicycle
In the Garlasco case, the bicycle became one of the best-known elements of the entire investigation.
Some testimonies reported the presence of a black women’s bicycle near the Poggi house and Stasi owned more bicycles. The sentence considered one of the bikes attributable to him compatible with the “macro description” provided by the witnesses.
However, the new Pavia Prosecutor’s Office looks at that data differently.
The testimonies are not unequivocal either on the characteristics of the bicycle or on the certainty that it had been seen on the morning of the crime. Furthermore, the black bicycle seized from the Stasi family did not fully correspond to the descriptions collected.
For the magistrates conducting the investigation today it would therefore not be possible to state with certainty that that bicycle was actually linked to the murder.
The discovery of Chiara’s body
Stasi’s behavior when he said he had found Chiara also played an important role in the sentence.
The ex-boyfriend said he entered the house and went through various rooms looking for the girl.
The judges considered it problematic that no traces of blood were found on his shoes, despite the presence of blood on the floor. No traces had been found even on the floor mats of the car in which Stasi said he got into immediately afterwards.
In the new investigations, however, this element is also reconsidered.
According to the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office, in the photographs taken by forensics, footprints that had never been registered would be visible and would present a pattern similar to that of the Lacostes worn that day by Stasi.
Furthermore, the shoes were not seized immediately but approximately 18 hours later. According to the new reconstruction, any traces present on the soles could therefore have disappeared in the meantime.
The soap dispenser
Among the elements considered in the sentence there were also Stasi’s fingerprints on the soap dispenser of the house.
According to the Court of Cassation, the position of the footprints could be compatible with the hypothesis that the murderer had used the sink after the crime and had then cleaned some surfaces.
The new investigation, however, disputes this interpretation.
In the images of the time, long dark hairs would be visible in the sink tub, a detail that magistrates consider unlikely to be compatible with thorough cleaning. Furthermore, no traces of hemoglobin were found in the analyzes carried out on the waste.
There were also other fingerprints and traces of dry soap on the dispenser. And Stasi, being Chiara’s boyfriend, regularly frequented the house and had also been in the house the previous evening.
Chiara’s alleged DNA on the pedals
One of the most delicate elements concerns the DNA attributed to Chiara Poggi which was allegedly found on the pedals of a bicycle belonging to Stasi.
The sentence considered this a significant element.
The new investigations, however, have brought to light data that could completely change the interpretation of that assessment.
According to what emerged from the analysis of the raw data and laboratory equipment records, the first checks on the pedals had given zero results. After a purification, however, a very high value appeared, while two further tests carried out subsequently would have once again given a zero result.
According to the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office, it could therefore have been an error in the analysis of the samples.
Shoe prints
Another element of the conviction was represented by the footprints found in the house.
According to the judges, the killer would have worn size 42 shoes and Stasi used shoes of the same size.
The new investigation, however, claims that there is no certainty that Stasi owned exactly the type of shoes attributed to the attacker and that the prints could also be compatible with different and larger sizes.
Because Alberto Stasi is still at the center of the Garlasco case
Alberto Stasi therefore remains a central figure for a very simple reason: he is the man who Italian justice definitively convicted of the murder of Chiara Poggi.
But the Garlasco case is back in motion.
The new investigations into Andrea Sempio have brought under examination elements that seemed definitively crystallized in the 2015 sentence: the time of death, the bicycle, the shoes, the dispenser, the traces of blood and above all the alleged DNA on the pedals.
This does not mean that Stasi has been exonerated or that his conviction has been quashed. It means that some of the data used to arrive at that conviction are today interpreted differently by the investigators of the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office.
And it is precisely this overlap between a final sentence and a new investigation still underway that makes the Garlasco case, even today, one of the most delicate and complex judicial proceedings in Italian news.
