The Poggis’ lawyers reject the new investigations into Sempio: according to them too many elements against Stasi to reopen an already closed case
Nineteen years were not enough to close Garlasco. And we will see how much longer it will take, because the case of the murder of Chiara Poggi – which occurred on 13 August 2007 in that small villa in Via Pascoli that the whole of Italy has come to know as an icon of its own judicial restlessness – has found a second life in the courtrooms of the Pavia prosecutor’s office, with a new suspect, Andrea Sempio, and a new investigation that closed after just over a year pointing the finger in the opposite direction to the final ruling of the 2015 Supreme Court.
Yet, the Poggi family has no doubts: the person responsible for Chiara Poggi’s murder is Alberto Stasi, sentenced by the Supreme Court in 2015 to 16 years in prison. To reiterate this, firmly, is thelawyer Gian Luigi Tizzonilawyer for the victim’s parents: “Humanly, they lost a daughter and that is the drama that they live and will live for their lives. They know that Stasi is guilty and that, in some way, they want to try to take this role away from him. I would say that the situation is unique, perhaps, in the Italian judicial panorama”.
Sempio “has no relevance to the crime”
Andrea Sempio, a long-time friend of his brother Marco Poggi, is according to the family’s lawyers “a person who really seems to have no connection with the crime”. Yet, the Pavia prosecutor’s office – which closed the new investigation after just over a year – believes him to be the culprit. The prosecutors are believed to have also identified the motive: Sempio, then 19 years old, was allegedly rejected after an advance, and subsequently incriminated himself with disjointed sentences captured by a bug installed in his car.
What Marco Poggi’s lawyers think
The lawyer Francesco Compagna, Marco Poggi’s lawyer, disputes the solidity of this evidence. “It is certainly not possible to change the reality of the facts with media suggestions,” he states. “Now it happens with recordings from a year ago of the suspect’s soliloquies while he was listening to broadcasts or podcasts and honestly everything seems to me to be anything but confessional data”. Compagna uses a cinematic image: “Let’s talk about a boy who is hunted down and intercepted like Jim Carrey in the famous The Truman Show“.
The lawyer then lists the elements that, in his opinion, make the case solid condemnation of Stasi: “The false discovery of Chiara’s body under the stairs, the hiding of the black women’s bike seen by two witnesses that morning, the moving of the pedals with the DNA on another bike, the Frau 42, the fingerprints on the sink dispenser. Everything that needed to be ascertained has already been ascertained.”
Marco Poggi witness to the Garlasco crime
Marco Poggi was heard three times as a witness in the new investigations – the last hearing took place yesterday. He has always maintained that Sempio “could not have been” the person responsible for his sister’s death, specifying that he had “never seen Chiara and Stasi’s intimate videos with Andrea”. According to what was reported by the social profiles of Tg1, in the investigation papers the carabinieri describe the victim’s brother as “hostile” and engaged in a “constant official defense” of Sempio. Marco Poggi responded in the interrogation of May 20, 2025: “I understand that you do your job, but in this situation you are influencing me.”
The crux of Garlasco’s procedural review
However, the judicial framework remains very intricate. The Pavia prosecutor’s office, before requesting Sempio’s indictment, will probably have to wait for the conclusion of the process for reviewing the Stasi trial: it would not be possible to bring an alleged culprit before a preliminary hearing judge while there is a definitive judgment on another convicted of the same crime. The lawyers underline that the correct sequence would have been first the review, and then – possibly – a new investigation.
