Anyone who watched Le Iene’s episodes about the Erba massacre already knows what the basic thesis of this book is. Those who, however, as this article writes, only knew the procedural truth, will be left literally speechless. Is it really possible that Olindo and Rosa are two innocent people who have been unjustly imprisoned for seventeen years? That they are victims of a sensational error perpetrated on three levels of judgment? Antonino Monteleone and Francesco Priano, who with their journalistic investigations contributed decisively to rekindling media attention on the case, are convinced of this. In Erba (Piemme editions, 240 pages) they painstakingly and painstakingly reconstruct all the obscure points of the trial: the evidence never evaluated, the missing wiretaps, the forced interrogations, the contradictory confessions. «There are dozens of reasons why the killers» of Raffaella Castagna, her two-year-old son Youssef Marzouk, the child’s grandmother Paola Galli and neighbor Valeria Cherubini, «cannot be Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romano, and we want to align them them down, once again,” the authors write.
Even those most skeptical about the innocent thesis, once they have finished reading, cannot help but have some doubts. And they cannot help but think of a cornerstone of the criminal procedure code: “The judge pronounces the sentence if the defendant is found guilty of the crime charged beyond any reasonable doubt”. The question therefore arises spontaneously: how is it possible that 26 judges, before whom the case was referred, made such a huge mistake?
Let’s go in order. The sentence of life imprisonment for Roman spouses is based on three pillars that the Judiciary, at the three levels of judgment, considered rock solid. 1) The testimony of Mario Frigerio, husband of Valeria Cherubini, the only survivor of the massacre despite a potentially fatal stab wound to the throat (he was saved thanks to a malformation of the carotid artery). 2) The trace of Valeria Cherubini’s blood which, 14 days after the massacre, was found on the doorstep of Olindo’s car. 3) What the authors cite is the “key evidence”: the confessions released by Olindo and Rosa on January 10, 2007, a month after the massacre, which occurred on December 11, 2006. However, “looking closely at these pillars, it is easy to see their obvious weaknesses, obvious defects, structural defects”, write Monteleone and Priano.
Small aside: the innocent thesis is not new. At another time, shortly before the convictions, there was another investigative journalist who was the first to collect the “forgotten” evidence, highlighting some obscure points never analyzed during the trial. His name is Eduardo Montolli. His work is contained in another book with an emblematic title: The Great Error. It was he, first, who instilled the seed of doubt. Without going into too much detail, so as not to spoil Erba’s twists and turns, we can say that, first of all, the reason why we cannot believe that Valeria Cherubini, the neighbor on the second floor of the via Diaz building, managed to drag rose eighteen steps despite being pierced by 47 stab wounds and hit violently in the head. And, despite having her throat and tongue cut, in her attempt to escape she did not spread blood on the stairs and managed to scream for help when she reached her apartment on the top floor. Another decisive and still unanswered question: how is it possible that there is not a single piece of material evidence that leads to the presence of Olindo and Rosa at the scene of the crime? There is not a strand of hair, a drop of blood, a fragment of their DNA under the victims’ fingernails. Anything.
In fact, there is a sign of a bloody hand in Raffaella Castagna’s apartment that does not belong to the Roman couple. It is not known who it belongs to. Nobody bothered to find out. But the real surprise will be knowing how the measurements were taken on Olindo’s car and how the Luminol test was carried out. Excerpts from interviews with former RIS commander Luciano Garofalo are also particularly interesting. Last but not least, two last aspects. The way in which the testimony of Frigerio, the superwitness who decisively pointed the finger at Olindo in the trial room, was reconstructed in a completely new way. And previously unpublished elements of the confessions, later retracted, of the two convicts are revealed. Without forgetting the exclusive interviews with Rosa and Olindo in Bollate and Opera prisons. Monteleone and Priano are aware that “years of legitimate questions” have often “fallen on deaf ears, treated with mistrust and suspicion.” But they assure that they were moved only “by the love of the truth”. A book resulting from journalistic investigations certainly cannot subvert procedural truth, but it can be a stimulus for reflection. While we wait to find out whether or not the new requests for review of the trial presented by magistrate Cuno Tarfusser and Rosa and Olindo’s lawyers will be accepted.
Source: IL Tempo
Emma Fitzgerald is an accomplished political journalist and author at The Nation View. With a background in political science and international relations, she has a deep understanding of the political landscape and the forces that shape it.
