Erba Massacre
The Erba Massacre is a notorious case of multiple homicide that occurred in Erba, in the province of Como, Italy on 11 December 2006.
The massacre was carried out by the married couple Olindo Romano and his wife Rosa Angela Bazzi. The couple used a knife and crowbar to kill their neighbours Raffaella Castagna, her young son Youssef Marzouk and her mother Paola Galli. Also killed was their other neighbour Valeria Cherubini. Her husband, Mario Frigerio was slashed in the throat and was believed dead by the attackers. He managed to save himself thanks to a congenital malformation of the carotid artery which prevented him from dying from blood loss. The massacre took place at the home of Raffaella Castagna, in a renovated courtyard in the centre of the town. The apartment was set on fire immediately after the crime was committed.
The high profile trial was reported across the country and internationally. BBC News reported the surprise confessions as a "dramatic twist to the murder mystery that gripped Italy".
On 3 May 2011, the Supreme Court of Cassation rejected the appeals, making the appeal sentence definitive which recognised the couple, already sentenced to life imprisonment in the first instance, as the perpetrators of the massacre.
The crime
On the evening of 11 December 2006, at around 8:20 p.m., at number 25 of via Armando Diaz in Erba, a fire broke out inside one of the apartments of one of the buildings that compose it, known as the Ice condominium. Two neighbours, one of whom was a volunteer firefighter, entered the building first to rescue any people trapped inside. Near the landing they found an injured man, sixty-five-year-old Mario Frigerio, and dragged him by the ankles away from the fire. Upon entering the apartment, the rescuers found the lifeless and burning body of Raffaella Castagna, a thirty-year-old part-time employee in a community for the disabled. They managed to carry him to the landing and then tried to assist the injured elderly man.At a certain point, the rescuers heard a woman's cries for help and Frigerio managed to communicate in a faint voice to the rescuers that his wife was on the upper floor; however, due to the smoke, those present were forced to abandon the building. Subsequently, the firefighters arrived, put out the fire and found three more bodies. They were Paola Galli, a fifty-seven-year-old housewife and mother of Raffaella; Youssef Marzouk, the woman's young son and Valeria Cherubini, Frigerio's fifty-five-year-old wife.
The investigations reported the causes of death as follows. Raffaella Castagna, surprised in the hallway in front of her front door, was repeatedly hit with a crowbar and stabbed twelve times before finally having her throat slit. She died from severe head injuries, including a fractured skull, caused by blows from the crowbar. Her mother Paola Galli was attacked in the hallway of the home and suffered six stab wounds and six crowbar blows. The youngest victim two-year-old Youssef Marzouk died on the sofa in the living room from blood loss after receiving two stab wounds, one of which was fatal to the throat that severed the carotid artery.
To hide the traces of the crime, the apartment was then set on fire, but the amount smoke that developed inside forced the attackers to flee the apartment towards the condominium stairs from which the Frigerio-Cherubini couple were coming down. They had been attracted to the Castagna apartment by the smoke that was coming out from under the door.
Valeria Cherubini was found in her apartment which was located in the attic of the building. After having rushed to a lower floor, on the condominium stairs she had a prolonged altercation with the attacker and was seriously injured by thirty-four stab wounds and eight blows from a crowbar However, the injuries were not as damaging as for Castagna and Galli, allowing her to go back upstairs to the upper floor. She was still alive when the first aid arrived brought by the neighbours, and she had tried to attract their attention with calls for help, but the rescuers were unable to intervene due to the smoke rising from the fire downstairs in the Castagna apartment. She then died, together with the family dog, due to the inhalation of carbon monoxide, which had by-then concentrated in her apartment.
Her husband Mario Frigerio was also the victim of an attack on the condominium stairs, being beaten and stabbed in the throat, but managed to survive thanks to a birth defect of his carotid artery which preserved him from fatal bleeding.
The forensic evidence revealed that there had been two attackers, one of whom was left-handed. They were each armed with two short-and long-bladed knives, as well as a crowbar.
Investigations
Azouz Marzouk
The police investigations initially focused on Azouz Marzouk, a native of Zaghouan, Tunisia, husband of Raffaella Castagna and father of Youssef. Marzouk, who according to the press had a criminal record for drug dealing and had been released from prison thanks to the 2006 pardon. He was in Tunisia visiting his parents at the time of the crime, and after having hastily returned to Italy, he was interrogated by the Carabinieri. The investigators confirmed his alibi and began to suspect that a settling of scores had been carried out against him.Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi
Among the other leads followed, the anomalous behaviour of two neighbours of Raffaella Castagna, who in the past had legal disputes with the Castagna household, was immediately noted. Despite the disconcerting events that had occurred, already from the first hours after the murders the Romano couple showed themselves disinterested in the events and, unlike the other inhabitants of the courtyard and the condominiums, did not ask for reassurance from the police. These suspicions led the investigators to seize some of the couple's clothing and to put the house and the car under surveillance. Already in the first night after the massacre, other facts attracted the attention of the investigators. Both of them had injuries consistent with a fight. Furthermore, when asked the usual questions immediately after the massacre, the two showed a McDonald's receipt. This was rather suspicious, as it showed an immediate attempt to appear at all costs to be extraneous to the incident, when the police had not asked any questions about it.The couple were accosted by police on 8 January 2007 and arrested after a long interrogation the following day. They were described as two very closed and isolated people, morbidly attached to each other. During the investigations, some of Rosa Bazzi's relatives claimed that the woman had been sexually abused by an acquaintance at the age of ten, without ever receiving any kind of assistance or support following this. Investigating Olindo Romano's past, however, revealed a complaint filed against him by his father and brother at the beginning of the eighties, following a fight for family reasons. In fact, at the time of their arrest, Romano and Bazzi had already cut off any relationship even with their closest relatives for years; a psychiatrist, a consultant for the defense, later claimed that it was appropriate to evaluate Bazzi's IQ, in order to establish her capacity to understand and want.
Romano was charged with aggravated multiple homicide, his wife with complicity. It was then the RIS findings that indicated the presence of a second person in the massacre, left-handed like Bazzi.
The investigators traced the frequent disagreements between the Romanos and Raffaella Castagna, which also resulted in an argument on New Year's Eve 2005 and in a civil case between the parties. A hearing of which was supposed to take place two days after the massacre. On that occasion, the Romanos allegedly attacked and beat Castagna, who filed a complaint against them for insults and injuries after an argument that broke out that evening, even though she offered to withdraw it in exchange for financial compensation. The episode, however, was only the latest in a long list of hostility and rudeness between the tenants, which frequently resulted in arguments and fights. The spouses reiterated their innocence and declared that they had spent the evening in a McDonald's in Como, for which they also kept the receipt. This time however, was two hours before the massacre, and the usual dinner time of the couple. The investigators immediately suspected a clumsy attempt by the couple to obtain an alibi.
On 10 January 2007, before the magistrates, the Romanos admitted, taking full responsibility separately, to being the perpetrators of the massacre, describing in detail the individual acts, the type of wounds, the positions of the victims' bodies and the type of weapons used. The confession was reiterated during the validation of the arrest by the GIP and the details described were considered decisive since they could only be known by those who had experienced the crime scene. In particular, the initial position of the victims' bodies at the end of the assault, later confirmed by scientific investigations, could only have been known by the material perpetrators. The testimony of Mario Frigerio, the only survivor, was also used against them.
The processes
Preliminary hearings
On 10 October, in front of the who had to decide whether or not to open the trial, Olindo declared himself innocent and retracted his confession. His wife Rosa also retracted her statements. The relatives of the victims rebelled in the courtroom,and the judge was forced to suspend the session. Azouz Marzouk asked for the death penalty for the two defendants, even though it is not provided for in the Italian legal system. The prosecution, represented by the PM Massimo Astori, considered the Romanos' retractions as a simple variation of the defence strategy.On 12 October, Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi were.