Life imprisonment with one year of daytime isolation and no sentence reduction.
This is the sentence handed down by the Court of Assizes of Cagliari to Igor Sollai, accused of the murder of his wife Francesca Deidda, at the end of a three-hour deliberation. The judges fully accepted the request of the public prosecutor Marco Cocco who coordinated the investigations of the Carabinieri into the disappearance of the woman, the discovery of the femicide and the discovery of the body thrown inside a bag in the woods along the former Orientale Sarda.
The defendant was present in the courtroom, the 43-year-old currently in prison on charges of aggravated voluntary homicide and concealment of a corpse: after having maintained for months that his wife had left voluntarily, once the evidence was overwhelming he decided to confess, but he never found either the legal weapon (a bricklayer's hammer) or his wife's cell phone.
Francesca Deidda had vanished into thin air from San Sperate on May 10 of last year. After long and complex investigations, her remains were found on July 18 in a duffel bag in the countryside between Sinnai and San Vito, near the old state road 125.
The investigations of the RIS, the ROS and the Carabinieri of Iglesias had also ascertained frequent searches by Sollai on the internet that for the prosecution would have demonstrated the premeditation of the femicide: the accused would have looked for indications on how to quickly hide a body, how to dig a grave and what reaction a victim would have if hit violently on the head. There were also searches on how to buy cyanide.
It later emerged that Sollai had also filled out the online form for dismissal on his wife's behalf, using the woman's phone for a long time to convince everyone that she had left voluntarily. But her friends and colleagues immediately became very suspicious, setting a trap and eventually notifying her brother who filed a complaint at the end of December. The investigation then made great strides when it was discovered that the defendant's work vehicle was tracked without his knowledge by GPS: in this way the investigators reconstructed all the frequent movements of the truck driver, defended by lawyers Carlo Demurtas and Laura Pirarba, until they discovered where he had thrown the body of his wife, who had been killed with a hammer the same day she disappeared, while she was resting on the sofa.
During the trial, the defense tried to dismiss the premeditation and other aggravating circumstances punishable by life imprisonment, but the public prosecutor Cocco argued that Sollai's behavior and the many different versions provided do not allow for the granting of mitigating circumstances. The truck driver listened to the sentence in silence, escorted by prison police officers. The court was crowded with relatives of the victim and ordinary citizens. Presiding over the court was Judge Lucia Perra, supported by her colleague Roberto Cau.
"My sister will not return, but I am satisfied with justice," commented the victim's brother, Andrea, after the sentence was read.
Next to him is the lawyer Gianfranco Piscitelli.
Sollai's lawyers are waiting to read the reasons for the sentence before filing a possible appeal: "He expected a heavy sentence," they reveal.
