Judge Vitelli returns to the Garlasco crime: reasonable doubt, one-way investigations and the fingerprint on the soap dispenser
In a case like Garlasco’s, “reasonable doubt” is probably the smartest path to follow. Otherwise we risk having an innocent person who unjustly serves his sentence in prison, a new suspect (perhaps also innocent) whose life has been ruined and many, many investigative and judicial errors that weigh like boulders on people’s trust in the judiciary and in the police.
Because investigating is legitimate, of course, but judging and condemning (even at a media level) before having irrefutable evidence, that’s not. The stakes are too high. It is in this intricate picture that one of the “refutable pieces of evidence” is inserted which contributed to condemning the man who is still today (with more than reasonable doubts) considered the only guilty party. Alberto Stasi’s footprint in the bathroom of the Poggi houseaccording to the judge who acquitted him in the first instance, does not serve to demonstrate that he washed away Chiara’s blood. If anything, it serves to demonstrate the opposite. He supports it Stefano Vitellimagistrate today at the Turin Review Court, in an interview with The Day on the occasion of the release of his book Garlasco’s reasonable doubtwritten with the journalist Giuseppe Legato and published by Piemme.
Vitelli’s reasonable doubts
The accusatory reconstruction is well known: the murderer would have entered the bathroom of the house to clean himself up after the crime. Stasi would have left that fingerprint on the dispenser while washing his blood-stained hands. Vitelli dismantles the reasoning point by point. «There was no blood in the sink, there wasn’t even any in the drain»remember. The sink was that of a normal, lived-in house. Nothing more.
So when was that footprint left? The night before, the judge replies, when Stasi had eaten a pizza with Chiara and worked on his thesis. “It is reasonable to believe that his fingerprint on the dispenser was left when he washed his hands, which were dirty not with blood but with tomato.” A small detail, apparently, but which in the logic of reasonable doubt weighs as much as a sentence, because that is where the (massive) difference between a conviction and an acquittal lies.
“One-way” investigations
Vitelli does not question the guilt of anyone in particular. He questions the method. From the beginning, he claims, the investigation focused almost exclusively on Stasi, neglecting other leads. «In Garlasco there were other people who knew Chiara», he says. The idea that the girl would not have opened the door to a stranger, an argument often cited to strengthen the accusatory thesis against her boyfriend, is “weak” for him. «It is a suggestive reconstruction, based on probabilities. But that’s not the case.”
There is also the issue of the IT alibi. Stasi was working on the computer that morning: an element that could have redefine the timing of the investigation. «If he had been discovered immediately, perhaps Stasi would have remained among the suspects but he would not have been the only one»observes Vitelli. Instead it took a year and a half. In the meantime, the investigative perimeter had already crystallized around him.
Here, Vitelli’s book is based entirely on doubt (even from a philosophical point of view). If the facts don’t add up, if there are no certainties, it’s better to be cautious. How cautious (reasonably) Vitelli was when he acquitted Stasi in the first instance. And then we must continue to investigate until incontrovertible evidence is found. So yes it can be condemned. Beyond any reasonable doubt, in fact.
