She kidnapped a newborn baby from a private clinic in Cosenza to fake a pregnancy, deceiving everyone—family, friends, and even her husband—by leveraging her robust build.
Today, just over a year after the crime, she was sentenced to 5 years and 4 months and ordered to pay a provisional sum of €15,000 to the family of little Sofia. At the conclusion of the fast-track trial and after a psychiatric evaluation that declared her competent, the preliminary hearing judge handed down a lighter sentence than the prosecutor's request—8 years—due to mitigating circumstances. This sentence, however, satisfied everyone, both the defense and the plaintiff. "We are very satisfied," said her lawyer Teresa Gallucci, "especially considering the very high price we were expecting, given the whole set of circumstances."
Even Chiara Penna, the lawyer representing the little girl's parents, had no objections, "because it's a fair and balanced ruling. For the parents, it's the end of a nightmare. Now we await the ongoing proceedings regarding the clinic's potential liability."
Rosa Vespa did not listen to the preliminary hearing judge's reading of the ruling. She was at home under house arrest. Sofia's parents, however, were present.
Last January, after deceiving everyone with her false pregnancy and a birth—from which, she claimed, Ansel was born—she managed alone, making various excuses, the woman went to the Sacro Cuore clinic on the evening of the 21st with her husband, Moses Omogo, 44, whose case has been archived, to pick up their son. In reality, Rosa Vespa entered a newborn's room and, posing as a nurse, took Sofia from her mother's arms.
So they and her husband left in the man's car. It was child's play for the police to trace the couple from the license plate number captured by the security cameras. But when the officers burst into their apartment, a surreal scene unfolded before their eyes: around a table set entirely in light blue and surrounded by balloons, they found family and friends intent on celebrating Ansel's arrival at home. The officers took less than a moment to verify that under the baby's light blue onesie, it wasn't Ansel but Sofia, dressed in blue by Rosa Vespa to continue to make people believe she had a son.
(Unioneonline)
