The Carabinieri of the Parma RIS knew that the DNA test on Alberto Stasi's bicycle pedals was negative, but they hid the results that proved the young man's innocence . This is the sensational accusation advanced by the Pavia prosecutors led by Fabio Napoleone and the Carabinieri of the Milan Investigative Unit, who are rewriting the story of the Chiara Poggi murder, which took place in Garlasco in 2007.

Stasi's innocence, therefore, the prosecutors believe, was already evident before his arrest in 2007, when two tests on the material—presumed to be blood—found on the boy's bike came back negative . That was one of the main factors that led to Stasi's conviction. The results of those negative counter-analyses were never mentioned in the investigative records, nor were they ever discussed during Stasi's five trials.

Genetic counselors from the Prosecutor's Office analyzed the raw data, namely the "logs" from the machines used in the laboratory to perform the tests . In those files, which cannot be modified, they found traces of the two negative counter-analyses. For this reason , in recent days they questioned several Carabinieri from the RIS who carried out the analyses and the then-commander Luciano Garofano .

This is how the Corriere reconstructs what happened in 2007: geneticists at the RIS performed an initial negative test on the pedals on September 16, 2007. Three days later, a second test found 2.78 nanograms, an "enormous" amount of DNA compared to the first negative test. The DNA was compatible with that of Chiara Poggi. The next day, however, someone at the RIS in Parma (perhaps not entirely convinced by the positive test, which had yielded a result too different from the first) secretly performed two new verification tests: both were negative, but the traces of those tests never appeared in the investigation file, nor were they ever given to the Prosecutor's Office . Therefore, those 2.78 nanograms, the investigators believe, were the result of a mix-up of test tubes or an error in recording the data. Or, even better, a complete misdirection.