A new appeal trial will be held in the femicide of Giulia Tramontano, who was stabbed to death with 37 wounds in May 2023 when she was seven months pregnant. Judges from the first criminal section of the Court of Cassation have ordered a new trial for Alessandro Impagnatiello, the former bartender and partner of the woman, who was already sentenced to life imprisonment in the first two instances. The second appeal, which will be heard in Milan before judges from another section, will only concern the recognition of the aggravating circumstance of premeditation, which was dismissed in the second instance trial. The supreme courts upheld the request of the Milan Prosecutor General's Office, which argued that on May 27, three years ago, the defendant carried out a veritable ambush against his partner, an "organized and premeditated" murder.
The murder took place in the apartment where the two lived in Senago, near Milan. Investigations revealed that Impagnatiello—currently incarcerated in Pavia prison— had already administered rat poison to his partner, not with the intent to kill her, the judges argue in their appeal, but to induce a miscarriage. In requesting a new trial, prosecutor Elisabetta Ceniccola stated that "the Prosecutor General's Office cannot understand why the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Milan has debased the concept of an ambush, the weapon already chosen, the removal of the carpet, elements emphasized in the first-instance ruling when premeditation was recognized. " According to the prosecution, "between the planning of the murder and the actual execution, there was plenty of time to reflect, to evaluate how much to carry out. The defendant had reached the conclusion of what would be his own murderous act."
The decision was welcomed by the victim's family. "A decision that, from a technical standpoint, should be welcomed because the defendant is a man lacking empathy, characterized by evident inner coldness ," commented Nicodemo Gentile, lawyer for Franco Tramontano, Giulia's father. "He killed out of a spirit of retribution: a carefully planned elimination of his partner and the child she was carrying."
