New medical-legal reports and DNA anomalies in bicycle pedals: here are the elements that could lead to a review of the trial for Alberto Stasi.
The case of Alberto Stasiconvicted with a final sentence after a tortuous trial a 16 years in prisonreturns to the table of justice with a load of documents that seems to rewrite the history of crime fiction Garlasco. There Pavia Prosecutor’s Officehowever, despite the fact that in these months of investigations he has taken care of the collection of expert reports, consultancy and interceptions, from now on he is out of the game.
Technically he cannot ask for the review of the judgment against Stasis. The ball passes to General Prosecutor’s Office of Milan or, alternatively, to the defense. It is within this scheme that the meeting between the prosecutor of Pavia, Fabius Napoleonand the Attorney General of Milan, Francesca Nanni. Forty-five minute meeting. With a single public moment that announced that there will be no escape forward. “It won’t be a quick or easy study,” he said Nanni. Weeks, maybe months. And a question that is worth almost 20 years of investigations, trials, sentences and then investigations again: is there really new evidence inside those papers?
Sempio’s shadow and the exculpatory evidence
An evaluation can be made starting from the meeting between the Prosecutor’s Office and the Attorney General’s Office. Most likely, the prosecutor Napoleon was determined to request a meeting with the highest ranking prosecuting magistrate in the district because in the course of the investigation on Andrea Sempiofriend of Marco Poggi (brother of the victim), who was 19 years old at the time and who is the only suspect in the new proceedings (after having received two dismissals, one of which ended up before the Brescia Prosecutor’s Office), exculpatory evidence must have emerged on Stasis. Because this is the obligatory step. Doubts, suggestions or alternative reconstructions are not enough. New elements are needed which, alone or together with those already evaluated in the five trials, demonstrate that the convicted person should have been acquitted. To overcome this threshold it is necessary to undermine what are defined as the “serious, precise and consistent” indications on which the sentence which in 2015 mandated Stasis behind bars.
The first obstacle is time: 23 minutesbetween 9.12 and 9.35, the window in which the death of Chiara Poggi. That’s where Stasisdespite having demonstrated that he was at home on the computer to write his degree thesis, he did not have an alibi considered credible. That time window, however, would today have been put into crisis by the new technical consultancy. The questions asked by the prosecutors a Cristina Cattaneoa forensic anthropologist, aimed to redefine the time of death. But also to reread the wounds on Chiara’s body. A double track: chronology and dynamics. If both change, the whole scenario changes.
The crime scene and the clean shoe knot
Then there’s the crime scene. The story of Stasisthat of the discovery of the body on the staircase leading to the basement, had been branded as “illogical and false”. The key is always the same: clean shoes. How do you get through a blood-soaked scene without getting dirty? In the second appeal, the experts had translated the doubt into numbers: 0.00038% probability of avoiding blood by stopping on the first step, 0.00002% on the second. Virtually zero. But today that assumption is being put back under scrutiny. The investigation on Example has clearly reopened the chapter of traces. The new analyzes on Bpa (literally Bloodstain pattern analysisor the analysis of bloodstains) were entrusted to Ris of Cagliari and for now they remain secret. But there is a hypothesis that filters through: possible footprints never detected at the time. If they emerge, the narrative that didn’t add up may now hold. The objects found remain another junction: the imprint of Stasis on the soap dispenser which, at the time, had been interpreted as a sign of a wash and the bloody imprint of the dot shoe on the carpet. Elements that have been part of the accusatory frame for years. That mechanism is now being reopened: trace formation methods, timing and compatibility are back under scrutiny.
The DNA anomaly and bicycle pedals
Then there is the most controversial chapter: bicycles. The black women’s bike seen by a witness outside Via Pascoli at 9.10, never mentioned by Stasis in 2007 but recalled by parents in conflicting versions. A detail that has never found a definitive location. With the Umberto Deiluxury bikes of the Stasisentered into the trial in the appeal bis. The pedals were “dissonant” compared to the standard ones. Replaced, modified or, in any case, different. Chiara’s DNA was found on those pedals, defined as “highly cellular”. Eight microtraces, all positive tests. On the right pedal at least two leukocytes photographed under the microscope. It is one of the heaviest elements of the sentence. And it is also one of those that are reread today: methods of transfer, conservation, scientific interpretation. With a disturbing coincidence considered scientifically almost impossible which has only now emerged clearly: the quantity of DNA detected on a car pedal Umberto Dei (2.78 nanograms) it would be the same as exhibit 29, i.e. the teaspoon left in the sink. A measurement which, by its nature, should be the result of different processes: transfer methods, surfaces, times, environmental conditions. And instead it replicates itself.
The point, however, is the whole. The condemnation is not based on a single element, but on a system. On an evaluation of the evidence not taken individually but evaluated as a whole. And today it is precisely that evaluation process that is being put to the test. If one piece gives way, the overall balance can be thrown off. The investigation on Example has a deadline in the summer (that of the deadlines for preliminary investigations). But the decision on the review could come sooner. It all depends on what he finds there General Prosecutor’s Office of Milan inside those thousands of pages. Nanni he certainly already has experience with revisions. In Cagliari, where he held the same position, he reviewed the trial for the Sinnai massacre (8 January 1991) which resulted in the life sentence of Beniamino Zuncheddu for three murders and one attempted murder. After 32 years in prison, thanks to that review, Zuncheddu turned out to be innocent.
