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The original was posted on /r/unresolvedmysteries by /u/Far_Hope_6349 on 2024-01-11 10:47:09+00:00.
The events
On the evening of December 11, 2006, at about 8:20 pm, a fire broke out inside one of the apartments at via Armando Diaz 25 in Erba (Lombardy, Italy). Two neighbors, one of whom was a volunteer firefighter, entered the building by climbing the stairs to the second floor where the apartment on fire was located. On the landing, they found an injured but still alive man (Mario Frigerio) and dragged him by the ankles to the spot farthest from the fire. The door to the dwelling was ajar, so the rescuers entered immediately discovering the lifeless, burned body of Raffaella Castagna.
The woman’s body was immediately transported out of the apartment. As the smoke increased, rescuers had to leave Castagna and Frigerio outside the structure and call for reinforcements to carry out the other interventions. After Erba firefighters arrived and extinguished the fire, three more bodies were found inside the burned-down apartment – the victims were Paola Galli (Raffaella’s mother), little Youssef Marzouk (Raffaella’s son), and neighbor Valeria Cherubini (Mario’s wife). Thus, a total of four victims, including a very young child.
The findings during the investigation showed that Castagna and the other adult victims had been attacked and struck repeatedly with a bar. The killer had also stabbed Raffaella 12 times and then slit her throat. As maintained by the investigators, there were two assailants, one of whom was left-handed.
Who were the victims
Raffaella Castagna was 30 years old. She came from a well-known family in the area and worked part-time in a care community for people with disabilities. For the past two years, she had been the mother of little Youssef, born from her relationship with Azouz Marzouk. Raffaella’s mother Paola Galli was a housewife who often visited her daughter’s home to spend time with her grandson and help with household management. The fourth victim, Valeria Cherubini, lived in the apartment upstairs with her husband Mario Frigerio, the only survivor of the massacre (thanks to a carotid artery malformation that prevented his throat from being slit).
The investigation
At an early stage of the investigation (when Mario had not yet awakened from his coma), investigators focused on Azouz Marzouk, Raffaella’s husband and father of her 2-year-old son. The man had previously been in trouble with the justice system for alleged drug dealing – at the time of the events, however, the man was in Tunisia visiting his parents. Upon his return to Italy, he voluntarily submitted to interrogation by LEOs, who confirmed his alibi and began investigations into a possible settling of scores carried out against him by North African criminal organizations.
Another lead that was followed, however, was the involvement of some neighbors with whom Raffaella had had more than a few disagreements in the past, to the point of going through legal action: spouses Rosa Bazzi and Olindo Romano, who lived in the apartment downstairs. They were described by neighbors as isolated and withdrawn, morbidly attached to each other. At the time of their arrest, they had severed relations with all family members, even their closest ones. Olindo and Rosa often complained about the noises coming from the apartment where Raffaella, Azouz, and Youssef lived. Raffaella’s father recalled that he had cork flooring installed in the flat so that the couple would no longer complain, but it was all in vain – they kept complaining and even subtly threatening Raffaella.
On December 26, 2007, Mario, after waking up from the coma and initially describing a different person, pointed to Olindo as the perpetrator of the attack. On January 8, 2008, Rosa and Olindo were detained and then arrested. Two days later, they admitted to having carried out the crime but after a few months recanted their confession. The Romanos were sentenced by the Como Assize court to life imprisonment. The sentence was upheld by the Milan court of appeals and finally by the Supreme Court. After retracting their confessions, the two have always maintained their innocence; even Azouz, after previously calling for the conviction of Olindo and Rosa and even invoking the death penalty, changed his mind and today says he is convinced of their innocence.
To request a review of the trial can be, according to Article 632 of the Italian Criminal Code, either the convicted person or a relative through the defense team, or the attorney general at the court of appeals in whose district the conviction was pronounced. In this case, the request was initiated both by the defense team and by prosecutor Cuno Tarfusser, who submitted a 58-page document asking his office (the Milan prosecutor’s office) to request a review of the trial. Since the trial was originally held in other districts than Milan, and although Tarfusser’s request will be analyzed by the Brescia court of appeals, his behavior has been deemed “inappropriate” by the Milan prosecutor’s office, for it is usually the attorney general who initiates this kind of request for trial reviews. Tarfusser is now being subjected to disciplinary proceedings for his involvement in the case.
The evidence against Olindo and Rosa
The most relevant piece of evidence against Olindo and Rosa is probably related to motive. It was known to all of Raffaella’s family how much the couple’s behavior upset her. One day, during an argument, Raffaella even sustained injuries and had to go to the hospital to get checked out; in another incident, a few months before the murder, Rosa and Olindo had followed by car the train that Raffaella had boarded, from Erba to the Canzo-Asso stop, making themselves very visible to put fear into her – Raffaella contacted the local police with no effects. A neighbor recounted that Olindo and Rosa protested for everything, that Olindo was always outside and controlled everything, and that the couple often unplugged the electricity meter of Raffaella’s apartment.
This is consistent with another detail about the crime, that is, the power was out in the apartment that night, and in his original confession, Olindo admitted to disconnecting the electricity meter.
Then there is the issue of the “constructed alibi.” When the police knocked on the Romano family’s apartment (who had strangely not come out, curious about the noises made by all the people there) on the night of the murder, Rosa immediately presented a McDonald’s receipt, as if to certify that the couple had an alibi, even if it was not asked to them and even if they used to eat rather early and at home.
Another inference made by the judges who convicted Olindo and Rosa is that no one – other than a resident of the building or a person close to the victim – would have wasted time in killing the neighbors, since there would have been no need to protect one’s identity.
Rosa and Olindo gave the same version about the weapons used, the dynamics, the ignition points of the fire, and even the color of the lighter used. The ignition points were: the corner of the duvet, Paola’s skirt, and the duvet in Youssef’s room. They also both said that some books had been placed on the bed to facilitate the development of the fire. These details were not disclosed to the press.
They also confessed that they reached the apartment building’s laundry room immediately after the murder, took off all their clothes, and threw them away along with the mat on which they had changed. Olindo was a garbage collector and knew in which bins to throw the incriminated items (which were not found).
Another detail often unnoticed is that in the Bible he possessed in prison in the months following the murder, Olindo wrote: “Accept into your kingdom little Youssef his mother Castagna Raffaella his grandmother G. Paola and C. Valeria from whom we took your gift, life.” (There are a lot of similar self-inculpatory annotations in Olindo’s Bible.)
Then there is the fact of the left-handedness of one of the perpetrators: Rosa was, in fact, left-handed. It seemed like she was the one who attacked little Youssef, but again the defense team argues against this view, mentioning Rosa’s asthma and how it would have been impossible, given her condition, to participate in the murder and especially in the subsequent arson.
There’s forensic evidence, although it is little and controversial. A bloodstain belonging to Valeria Cherubini was found on the doorsill of Olindo’s car. The defense and Tarfusser argue that, since the officer who retrieved the bloodstain had been at the crime scene without wearing protective equipment on his shoes (I don’t know how it’s called in English!), the bloodstain could have been the by-product of contamination.
Finally, and most importantly, one should consider Mario Frigerio’s testimony, who accused Olindo of being the attacker. This is also contested by the pro-innocence folks, who hold that he shouldn’t be deemed reliable because he initially accused someone else with a darker complexion than Olindo and different hair (the subtext from the defense is that he was pointing to someone of different ethnicity, possibly involved in drug disputes with Azouz).
Aftermath
After their final conviction in 2011, Olindo and Rosa’s defense team tried (to no avail) to appeal to the ECHR, mentioning procedural violations in all three degrees of judgment.
The possibility of requesting a review of the trial in the It...
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