Thousands of posts published on a seduction site turn the spotlight back on the Garlasco case and on Andrea Sempio, expected in the prosecutor’s office on May 6th. But there are three aspects that perhaps have been less frequented. The investigative journalist helps us highlight them Fulvio Benelliauthor of the investigation The whole truth about the murder of Chiara Poggi, created with Cristiano Barbarossa and broadcast on Nove in 2019.
«Given that Andrea Sempio’s guilt has yet to be proven – and that’s what the courts are for – in a murder case in which the motive is still mysterious tracing an identikit is a must», says Benelli. «And what comes out is not exactly reassuring, because more than a profile, a world, a subculture emerges».
Fulvio Benelli, investigative journalist
There is a fact about the posts that no one is really focusing on: «Andreas’s messages – this is the user’s nickname – are not isolated interventions, but an archive. That would be 3,355 messages in seven years on the Italian Seduction Club forum, more than one a day. The attribution to Andrea Sempio has not been definitively confirmed, but even his lawyers have not ruled out that at least part of those messages can actually be traced back to their client. And it doesn’t end there: from the diaries seized in Voghera in May 2025 it would appear that Sempio had paid for courses in seduction techniques and also attended a group that dealt with the same topics”.
«A methodical, long practice, in which time and money were invested. Andreas was clearly on the hunt for a “training”. At twenty-two he described himself like this: “With women I’ve only gotten to a few kisses at most. My main obstacle is physical contact”. Hence the search for a method, for a language: in the jargon of those forums an obsession for a woman is called one-itis – an “illness”. The Italian galaxy of seduction gurus – coaches, manuals, courses, bootcamps – is the local translation of the American Pickup Artist culture that has colonized the bedrooms of an entire male generation. And he acted as a bridge to the incel galaxy, those of the Adolescence series, so to speak.”
Then there is a second detail that Benelli underlines. «Among the last things published by the profile, there would be a message dated 14 September 2016 on the suicide of Tiziana Cantone, the young Neapolitan who died after some of her intimate videos had been spread online. Andreas would have written that the videos will continue to circulate “not to watch porn, but to see the one who died”. I don’t give them readings, because the precise meaning of those words lends itself to different interpretations, even “absolute ones”. I point it out because it exists, and because anyone who wants to form their own idea of the case, before May 6, has the right to know that it is part of that enormous deposit of writing.”
And again. «In June 2011 Andreas published a post about his Krav Maga training – the Israeli martial art which, as we know, Sempio has been practicing for years as an instructor. He would have written that after the most intense sessions he feels “more male, more man”a sensation close to “post-sex calm”, and wonders what it depends on: “adrenaline? testosterone? repressed personality of an Israeli serial killer?”. Be careful, it may just be a joke – in very poor taste perhaps, but a joke. It remains that, in those seven years of daily writing, at a given moment the subject would have questioned his own potential homicidal streak. I think it’s right to know about this too today.”
Then there is the element which in his opinion is most “suggestive” for the judicial investigation. «Andreas, after years, stopped writing on November 1, 2016 — less than two months before Sempio was registered in the register of suspects. Read through the lens of the accusation, it seems more like a surgical caesura than a coincidence. Perhaps one could even hypothesize that he had been informed of an investigative activity already underway – after all, the Brescia Prosecutor’s Office is working on other alleged leaks to Sempio’s advantage in the following months, in a line connected to the Clean 2 investigation of the Pavia Prosecutor’s Office. Or not, it’s just a coincidence. It is up to the courts alone to ascertain this – I repeat -.
