Years after the murder of Chiara Poggi, the conviction of Alberto Stasi is not enough to close the public story. Unresolved issues, media reinterpretations and new tensions continue to fuel doubts and mistrust
The case of Chiara Poggi continues to live in a now structural fracture: that between the formally ascertained judicial truth and the collective perception which, years later, appears less and less aligned with that conclusion. The final conviction of Alberto Stasi represents a firm point in terms of law, but it did not produce the sedimentation effect that normally accompanies the end of such a long and complex trial.
On the contrary, time has ended up amplifying the doubts, not so much on a strictly procedural level but on a narrative and symbolic one. The public narrative of Garlasco’s murder has progressively stratified, fueled by rereadings, perceived omissions, questions left unanswered and by a continuous oscillation between established facts and suggestions. In this ambiguous space, the sentence exists, but it is no longer enough to close the story.
The unresolved issues and the continuous rereading of the investigation
One of the elements that contribute to this persistent instability is the continuous re-emergence of issues considered unresolved. Seemingly marginal details cyclically return to the center of attention, as if time had never really absorbed them. Telephones, times, movements, testimonies: each element seems to be able to be reread in the light of an alternative hypothesis, even when that rereading does not produce formal consequences on a judicial level.
This context includes the return of figures already known to the investigators, such as Andrea Sempio, whose name reappears not as an accused but as a symbol of a gray area that continues to be perceived as such. His presence in the debate does not represent an investigative turning point, but contributes to strengthening the idea of an investigation which, in the eyes of public opinion, never appears definitively concluded. It is a typical dynamic of large unsolved cases in the collective perception: even when the law closes, the story remains open.
What makes the balance of the case even more fragile is the role played by the media dimension. Over the years, Garlasco has become much more than a news story: it has transformed into a serial story, in which each new element – true, presumed or simply reinterpreted – is inserted into an already overloaded plot.
The risk, in this dynamic, is that of a progressive confusion between assessment and interpretation. Media reinterpretations, often disconnected from real judicial developments, end up producing a sense of permanent instability. Not so much because new evidence emerges, but because the very perimeter of history continues to be questioned, fueling the idea that something has always been missed, that something has never been fully said.
Massimo Lovati and the transition to the legal battle
In this already complex picture, Massimo Lovati, former lawyer of Andrea Sempio, is now himself a protagonist of the post-Garlasco period: the Milan Prosecutor’s Office has directly sued him for aggravated defamation against the lawyers Fabio and Enrico Giarda, the firm that defended Alberto Stasi in the trials for the murder of Chiara Poggi.
At the center of the file are the sentences pronounced on 13 March 2025 in front of the cameras, when the criminal lawyer spoke of a “machination” orchestrated by the Giarda defense behind the 2017 investigation into Sempio, accusing his colleagues of having manipulated the investigation and even the DNA sampling. Now Lovati will have to answer for those words before the third criminal section of the Court of Milan, in a trial that risks turning her theories on the “hitman” and the alleged misdirections, relaunched on TV and on social media in recent months and already denied several times by the prosecutors involved, into a new judicial case
The paradox of a closed case that continues to reopen
The paradox of the Garlasco case lies here. On the one hand, a definitive sentence which should represent the final act of a judicial matter. On the other, a widespread feeling of incompleteness that continues to fuel mistrust, suspicions and reinterpretations.
This gap produces a broader corrosive effect: it not only concerns the protagonists of the story, but affects the very relationship between citizens and institutions. When a story remains suspended in the public narrative, even after its formal closure, the idea that judicial truth is never truly sufficient, or that it is never entirely convincing, is reinforced.
