Chara Poggi was killed by Andrea Sempio "after a rejected sexual approach" .
This, according to the prosecutors accusing Sempio, is the motive for the Garlasco crime. According to the reconstruction by the Pavia prosecutors and the Carabinieri of the Milan Investigative Unit, the victim was attacked in multiple stages and struck at least twelve times in the head . The fatal blows were apparently delivered along the stairs leading to the cellar.
The reconstruction of the crime is summarised in the new charge contained in the summons to appear for Sempio , who will be questioned on 6 May in Pavia.
The charge against the 38-year-old, a friend of the victim's brother, Marco Poggi, has changed from initial charges of complicity in murder to voluntary manslaughter. Alberto Stasi, who is currently serving his final sentence for the crime, has been completely excluded from the crime scene .
The reconstruction
According to investigators, a rejected sexual advances triggered Sempio's fury. "After an initial struggle," according to the investigators' reconstruction, "he repeatedly struck the victim, knocking her to the floor." Then he dragged her toward the cellar, and when Chiara "tried to fight back by getting on all fours, he struck her again with at least three or four blows, knocking her unconscious." The killer then allegedly pushed the body down the stairs, and when Chiara was unconscious, he struck her again, causing her death.
Sempio is accused of two aggravating circumstances: that of cruelty due to the brutality of the action and the number of wounds inflicted, and that of having committed the act for abject motives, "attributable to hatred following the rejection of his sexual approach" .
Example
Andrea Sempio "can't understand this sexual motive." He repeats: "But if I didn't have a relationship with this girl, it's not clear where they deduce a sexual motive from, given that I didn't frequent her, I didn't see her often, and when I was at the Poggi house, she was at work."
This was reported by Angela Taccia, lawyer and friend of the 38-year-old, together with Liborio Cataliotti, the other lawyer assisting the suspect.
However, utmost caution is required while awaiting the final documents: "Sempio remains calm; we are still in the preliminary investigation phase. What leaves us quite astonished is the fact that not only has the involvement been removed, but the aggravating circumstance of cruelty, which had been removed from Stasi, has also been added. It's unclear why, after 19 years, while the injuries are inevitably still the same, this aggravating circumstance has been added ."
Liborio Cataliotti, Sempio's other lawyer, calls the motive "phantasmagorical." "Never before during the investigation had such a hypothesis emerged. We're curious to see what evidence supports it."
The Poggi family
"The sequence of events outlined in the indictment presents elements that, in my opinion, are not objectively supported by the crime scene as documented during the inspections by the Carabinieri of the territorial police and the Parma RIS." This is how Dario Redaelli, consultant for the Poggis, commented on the reconstruction of the Pavia Prosecutor's Office in the summons served on Andrea Sempio, considered solely responsible for the murder of Chiara, who was killed in Garlasco on August 13, 2007.
"We're talking about a body being pushed down the cellar stairs, but on the first two steps there are only drips, no traces of dragging," explained Redaelli, an expert in crime scene analysis. "We're talking about 4-5 blows delivered with such force that they caused a large skull fracture in the left parietal-occipital area, but along the stairs there are no traces of blood due to the swinging of the blunt instrument used, other than the presence of limited spatter."
"Therefore, there are several doubts about the reconstruction," the expert concludes, "but we must exercise the utmost caution and absolutely see the investigative-technical material collected by the Prosecutor's Office."
(Unioneonline/L)