The journalist Fulvio Benelli
At eighteen years later, numerous appraisals, several processes from the opposite outcome between them there is still no definitive word on the crime of garlasco. The Pavia Prosecutor’s Office, on the impulse of the defense of Alberto Stasi, sentenced in 2015 definitively to 16 years of imprisonment as the only person responsible for the murder of Chiara Poggi, Then his girlfriend, he turned on again the spotlight on the murder that took place on 13 August 2007. And for the second time he investigates the friend of the victim’s brother, Andrea Semplio, Subjected on Thursday in Milan to the salivary buffer in an co -raet way by the investigating judge, since a week before he had refused to do so voluntarily.
Fulvio Benelli, Investigative journalist, deals with mafias, crime, immigration, black news and judicial. For a few weeks he has been in the bookstore with the Memoir, Once upon a time – the many lives of Antonino Belnome the godfather footballer (Fandango Libri), written with Cristiano Barbarossa and in which the exclusive testimony of one of the main Italian justice collaborators is collected in detail. Benelli is also co -author and director of the program for nine All the trutha series of counter -investigation into the main cases of judicial news, such as the massacre of Erba, the crime of Avetrana, the yellow of Marco Pantani, the monster of Florence and, also, crime of garlasco To which in 2019 he dedicated an investigation documentary made with Cristiano Barbarossa and the collaboration of Gianluca De Martino, who traces the salient phases of the investigations of one of the most heinous and media murders of Italian history.
Benelli, are you surprised by these new developments 18 years after the facts and while the sentence that is serving Alberto Stasi is starting towards the end?
«I am surprised and at the same time they are not. As a citizen, I cannot fail to experience a certain dismay in the face of these processes that never end, a fact that objectively destabilizes some certainties of common living. In one case like this, then, one is led to ask yourself: how is it possible that all the checks have not already been made? And now, after all this time, how can you be sure that a new eventual test is reliable? As an investigative reporter, however, I am not surprised at all because, having studied the case in depth, I am convinced that every survey supplement carried out seriously and rigorously is a good and right thing. I’m not saying that I consider innocent stasis. But it was certainly the only suspect, and many other slopes have been left out. In addition, the first investigations carried out by the Carabinieri of Garlasco were not up to such a delicate case. Just think that Marshal Francesco Marchetto who carried out the first surveys was sentenced for false testimony. And it also emerged that the crime scene was trampled on by many people. This is the original sin of all the processes that have followed each other ».
In 2019 you edited a documentary that lined up the facts and also the many doubts of this crime. Among the various people interviewed who has struck you most?
«We confronted us practically with all the people involved in this story. A person who certainly affected us was the first instance judge of the Vigevano court, Stefano Vitelli. At the time of the facts, Vitelli was a young provincial judge who found himself catapulted into the light of the spotlight inside a very difficult case. By understanding that the first investigations had been incomplete and inaccurate, he established an investigation supplement that he himself carried out on the field. Animated by a great love for the code, he dismantled the accusations against Stasi one by one, a bit like in the film There Word to the jurors by Sidney Lumet. The most touching moment of his story was when he went to Chiara Poggi’s bedroom that – let’s remember – was a 26 -year -old girl, just graduated. And that’s where, in the midst of those plush, in the midst of those smiling photos, Vitelli touched the terrible weight of having to give an answer to Chiara’s parents, stopped in their enormous composure and dignity, but also in their irredexisible pain. The judge in the end kept faith with his vocation and, believing that he had not been able to collect precise and concordant elements, he acquitted Stasi for not having committed the fact ».
As a reporter, what idea did you do on the double acquittal and then on the double condemnation of Stasi?
«This case represents one of the most striking examples of how the interpretation of the tests can lead to opposite verdicts. The two acquittals were based on the absence of biological traces of stasis on the crime scene, the lack of motive and on its computer alibi. The Cassation overturned everything, considering the absence of those tracks suspect, since Stasi had been there the night before and said he had discovered the body the next day. To this must be added the analyzes on its shoes, considered washed after the crime; the discovery of the victim’s DNA on his bicycle; and the hypothesis that the pedals had been replaced. All these hypotheses were interpreted as attempts to conceal tests. After this tortuous judicial process, with times that first do not match and then yes, non -existent motives, the weapon of the crime that has never been found, the idea that I made is similar to that of the attorney general of the Court of Cassation, Oscar Cedrangolo. A long -term magistrate, close to the pension, which in the indictment, after eight years of investigations and five processes, widening his arms disconsolate and said: “I am unable to establish whether Alberto Stasi is guilty or not”. But at this point, as Masterly explained Gianrico Carofiglio in our documentary, the polar star can only be article 527 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that resumes the famous Latin. Digesto Giustinianeo: “In Dubio Pro Reo”.
How much has influenced, and how, the clamor and media pressure on this case?
“Much. The hasty and thirsty media system of novelties often has the compulsion of slamming a monster on the front page. But in doing so, not only ruin whole lives but also influences the progress of the processes. Let’s not forget that even the judges watch TV and read the newspapers, not to mention the Court of Assizes where 6 out of 8 judges are popular, that is, ordinary citizens chosen by the electoral lists. And in the case of Alberto Stasi it was the Court of Assizes of Milan the first to condemn him. For this reason, spectacularization is never prudent. We, to make our documentary, took months to study the cards, meet the protagonists and make the necessary feedback. In the meantime there were broadcasts on generalist TV which, with all due respect, had already made twenty episodes on the case. But the search for truth is a slow, patient, silent and without expiry date. It takes a lot of caution to those who have been killed and his relatives. But also towards the accused. Alberto Stasi’s father eventually died of crack. And I dare not imagine what the family of Andrea Semplio is now passing, the boy investigated following the new investigations on the unknown DNA found under the nails of Chiara Poggi ».
Andrea Semplio had already entered the investigation and then was acquitted. What are the elements against you who will have to analyze again?
«During the first investigations for the crime, he was heard only as a person informed of the facts, being a great friend of Chiara’s brother, Marco. At the time, he presented a receipt that placed him in Vigevano in the time of the murder and his position was not deepened. The investigators, already focused on stasis, did not look for other possible guilty. Potentially relevant elements were thus neglected: long hair hair, compatible with those of a young woman seen near the Poggi house; his bicycle, similar to that noticed by the witness Franca Bermani near the house; Three short phone calls made by Semia at home Poggi the day before the murder, despite knowing that Chiara’s brother had started on vacation with his parents and was not in Garlasco. In addition, a more scrupulous analysis of the receipt times did not exclude its possible involvement. The turning point came ten years later when Stasi’s defense independently picked up genetic champions of semium, following it in a bar and recovering the spoon used for coffee. The comparison with the unknown DNA found under the nails of Chiara showed, according to the defense experts, significant compatibility. After a first request for revision of the trial, rejected by the Court of Appeal of Brescia, the Pavia prosecutor of Pavia has decided to enroll in the register of suspects. Advanced forensic techniques would in fact allow a reliable comparison between the Semium DNA and the genetic champions found under the nails of the victim, so far declared degraded and unusable. It should be emphasized that this is a due act and does not yet imply concrete evidence against him; The investigations are in progress and semium is innocent until proven otherwise ».
Does ordinary mechanisms are unrelated to ordinary people, don’t you risk being disoriented in the face of a series of sentences in stark contrast to each other?
“People are frightened. The fact is that true justice is of divine inspiration and if no opportunities are created to dialogue with it there will never be justice on earth. This basically passes through ethics: the judges, lawyers, journalists, viewers. Today there is little, at the best of the hypotheses it is confused with morality and moralisms. In what the philosophers of the past called the world of causes, the error is foreseen and also forgiven. But then, after forgiveness, the error must be amended. Humanity has always made a journey to improvement. As Thomas Edison wrote, “I didn’t fail, I discovered ten thousand methods that don’t work.” Therefore, if in a process there was a mistake, and new methods can help to correct it, it is right to do it. And this does not only concern the judicial sphere, it also passes through a journalism that becomes guardian of the sustainability of the narration in progress and, where a crack emerges, it is a meticulous analysis of the elements collected as evidence and worries about tracing alternative elements that may be neglected. I am convinced that the work of the investigative reporter is a precious ally in the search for truth, which is always the only destination for everyone to be achieved ».
