Italian prosecutors have summoned Andrea Sempio for questioning on Wednesday over the 2007 killing of Chiara Poggi, reopening doubts about a conviction that sent her boyfriend to prison for 16 years. The Garlasco murder investigation could overturn Alberto Stasi's conviction after more than a decade behind bars and almost 19 years of scrutiny.
DNA Tests Put Andrea Sempio Under Investigation
Poggi, a 26-year-old economics graduate, was killed at her family home in Garlasco, a small town near Milan in northern Italy, on 13 August 2007. Prosecutors allege Sempio attacked her after she rejected his sexual advances, striking her head and face at least 12 times with a blunt object. Originally reported by The Guardian.
Sempio denies all allegations. His lawyers told the Italian press he "will exercise his right to remain silent" when appearing before prosecutors in Pavia because the investigation hasn't concluded. They declined an interview on Tuesday.
Investigators reopened the case last year after fresh testing found DNA traces beneath Poggi's fingernails compatible with Sempio, a friend of her brother Marco. An earlier investigation into him was shelved in 2017 because prosecutors considered the evidence insufficient.
Authorities initially considered whether Sempio acted with others, potentially including Stasi. They now allege he acted alone and have formally charged him with voluntary manslaughter with aggravating circumstances of cruelty. Prosecutors are moving to have Stasi's conviction overturned.
Separately, Sempio's father and a Pavia prosecutor face scrutiny over an alleged exchange of bribes intended to secure the earlier investigation's closure. Both deny the allegations. That inquiry runs alongside the renewed investigation into Poggi's death.
Two Acquittals Before Alberto Stasi's Conviction
Stasi was a 24-year-old university student when he found Poggi's body in a pool of blood on the staircase. Police immediately treated him as the prime suspect, arguing his shoes were too clean for someone who had approached the body. They suspected he'd washed them after killing her.
Detectives also reasoned that Poggi knew her attacker because she answered the door in her pyjamas. No murder weapon has ever been recovered.
After two acquittals, Stasi was convicted in 2015 on circumstantial evidence, including traces of Poggi's DNA on the wheels of a bicycle belonging to his family. Now 42, he has consistently maintained his innocence, while public opinion remains divided.
Giada Bocellari, one of Stasi's lawyers, said: "Alberto was ultimately convicted not so much because of the evidence, but because of the fundamental question posed in this trial: if he didn't do it, then who did? Since there are no reasonable alternatives, it must have been him."
Bocellari remains cautious but believes the case could represent Italy's gravest miscarriage of justice. To her knowledge, it's the first reopened murder inquiry involving someone already imprisoned for the crime. Her team wants evidence definitively excluding Stasi.
A Family's Verdict Amid Italy's Crime Coverage
Known as the "delitto di Garlasco", the Garlasco murder has filled Italian newspapers, television crime talkshows and, lately, podcasts. Bocellari said Poggi, like Meredith Kercher, had been forgotten amid "the media circus".
Errors early in the investigation recall the killing of Kercher, a 21-year-old British exchange student found stabbed to death at her home in Perugia, in Umbria, in November 2007, months after Poggi died.
American Amanda Knox and her then-boyfriend, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, spent four years in prison following their initial convictions for Kercher's murder. Both were definitively acquitted in 2015. Rudy Guede, convicted of complicity in that killing, was released in 2021 after serving 13 years of a 16-year sentence.
Poggi's family, however, opposes reopening her case. Gianluca Zanella, a journalist and author of Nel Sangue di Garlasco, said: "The Poggi family is completely aligned with the Italian justice system, in that the final verdict is that Stasi is the culprit".
"They are sceptical about new investigations." That assessment, from Gianluca Zanella, underscores the divide between a family standing by a final judgment and a defence team seeking to dismantle it.
Prosecutors expect to conclude their investigation soon, with Sempio likely to face trial. Stasi's lawyers are waiting for the complete evidence before deciding how it supports their effort to overturn his conviction in the Garlasco murder.
Originally reported by The Guardian. View original.