Murder of Chiara Poggi
On 13 August 2007, 26-year-old Chiara Poggi was murdered in Garlasco, Pavia, Italy. The crime had extensive media coverage in Italy, with a succession of news reports, television programmes and interviews dedicated to the case.
On 12 December 2015, the Supreme Court of Cassation definitively recognized the victim's boyfriend Alberto Stasi, then an economics student, as the only person guilty of the crime. Stasi was sentenced to 16 years of imprisonment, and his repeated requests for a review of the trial have been rejected. In January 2023, he entered a work release program. He continues to maintain his innocence.
In March 2025, the case was reopened by investigators after forensic analysis of previously untested DNA evidence.
Events
Chiara Poggi was born in Vigevano on 31 March 1981. Her parents were Giuseppe Poggi and Rita Preda. Alberto Stasi was born in Sesto San Giovanni on 6 July 1983.On the morning of Monday 13 August 2007, Chiara Poggi, an economics graduate, was fatally stabbed with a blunt object that was never identified or found. She was found in the villa where she lived with her family in Garlasco. According to investigators, she knew her attacker, having opened the door to her house in her pyjamas. The attack was thought to be spontaneous, given that no signs of forced entry were found inside the house. At the time of the crime, Poggi was alone in the house, as her parents and brother were on holiday.
Alberto Stasi reported Poggi's body to police. He was an economics student at Bocconi University in Milan and later an accountant. He had no criminal record. Poggi's body was found lying on the stairs leading to the cellar of the villa, lying on the ninth step in a pool of blood.
Suspicions immediately focused on Stasi because of the excessive cleanliness of his shoes, as if he had polished or changed them after walking on the blood-stained floor, the absence of blood on his clothes and some inconsistencies in his story. Stasi was arrested on 24 September 2007, with an order from the Vigevano prosecutor's office, but released four days later by the investigating judge Giulia Pravon due to insufficient evidence.
Investigation
Time of the crime
According to the alibi provided from the start, Stasi was working on the computer on the morning of the crime, writing his thesis. The computer was handed over to the Carabinieri agents the following day. However, some inappropriate operations by the investigators would have altered and cancelled the access to the computer's storage memory. Only thanks to a much more in-depth computer expertise was it ascertained that Stasi used it from 9:35 to 12:20. This did not, however, clarify what happened in a 23-minute time window, from 9:12, the time at which it is known that Chiara Poggi definitely deactivated the burglar alarm in the villa, the last proof of her being alive, until 9:35, the time at which Stasi was certainly in front of his computer.Stasi's shoes
Stasi's shoes, the ones he was wearing when he entered the villa, would have walked along the blood-stained corridors until the discovery of the body. They were analyzed by a forensic expert in 2007 and did not appear to contain even the slightest trace of blood. According to the RIS expert report in 2014, they should have "captured blood particles", at least minimally, so they could not have been completely clean. The same is said about the car mat he would have used to go to the villa and leave after the discovery of the crime. According to the prosecution's hypothesis, Stasi would not have actually entered the villa to discover the crime, a crime he already knew about because he would have been the one to commit it. The defence instead argued that Stasi walked around the villa avoiding the pools of blood and that, due to the time that had passed since the crime, the smaller splashes of blood that covered the entire floor were already dry. In fact, particles of the victim's DNA were found already in 2007 on the carpet of the car he used, but there was uncertainty as to whether they were blood and they were discarded by the GUP. According to the new analyses, however, at least the traces on the carpet are blood.Bicycles
Two witnesses considered reliable noticed that morning, around 9:10, a black women's bicycle leaning against the perimeter wall of the Poggi villa, which was immediately linked to Chiara's murderer. Stasi instead owned a burgundy men's bicycle of the "Umberto Dei" brand, which was immediately seized. On the pedals of this bicycle, biological traces of Chiara Poggi were found, although not blood. Stasi also had at his disposal a black family bicycle for women of the "Luxury" brand, which was examined by the Carabinieri Marshal Francesco Marchetto but not seized, because it was considered incompatible with the description of a witness, who described it as having a black luggage rack.An expert report conducted 7 years later by the civil party, lawyer Tizzoni, ascertained that the Stasi family's black women's bicycle was equipped with "Union" pedals, which were also fitted as standard on Stasi's personal burgundy men's "Umberto Dei" bicycle. On the other hand, this bicycle, seized at the time of the investigation, was equipped with non-original Wellgo pedals, on which traces of the victim's DNA were found. It is therefore assumed that there may have been an exchange of pedals between the two bicycles of the Stasi family. According to this reconstruction, Stasi, having learned that some witnesses had noticed a black bicycle outside the villa, in the week following the crime exchanged the pedals of the black bicycle, dirty with biological traces of Chiara Poggi, with those of his burgundy bicycle, with the aim of confusing the evidence.
At the second appeal trial in 2014, however, it was the prosecution's representative, the deputy attorney general of Milan Laura Barbaini, who maintained that "It is mathematically excluded that there was an exchange between the pedals" of the two bicycles available to Alberto Stasi. She excluded the exchange of pedals on the basis of a consultancy "on the manufacturing date of the various components and on any modifications" entrusted to experts during the investigative activities carried out in the context of the second appeal trial. In the request in which she asked the judges of the Court of Assizes of Appeal to carry out further investigative activities, Barbaini explained that the seized black bicycle "is consistent in all its components which have congruent manufacturing dates". In reality - the magistrate clarified - no exchange of pedals ever occurred between Stasi's burgundy "Umberto Dei" and the seized black women's bicycle.
Genetic material under the victim's fingernails and hair
At the crime scene, a light brown hair was found, which turned out to be devoid of a bulb and therefore of DNA. Under the victim's nails there were organic residues that contained male markers compatible, but not attributable with certainty, to the accused: according to leaks to the media, they also corresponded with at least two unknown male profiles and not identifiable or comparable due to the deterioration of the material.Alleged scratch on Stasi
There is also a photograph of Stasi with a presumed scratch on his arm, which however is not probative because it is grainy. The first investigators who questioned Stasi did not detect any scratch at the time, nor was it recorded in any preliminary document.Processes
The only person ever under investigation for the murder was the victim's, boyfriend Alberto Stasi, who was acquitted of the charges with an abbreviated trial, both in the first and second degree, while the Court of Cassation, on 18 April 2013, overturned the acquittal.According to lawyers, Alberto Stasi could not have stained himself since the blood was already dry; the forensic medical report indicated a time of death consistent with this hypothesis and the computer one gave an alibi to the young man, who was working on the computer to prepare his thesis. According to the defence, the crime, after having suggested investigating the family and work environment, could be attributed to a violent robbery, in which the thief had initially tricked the victim into opening the door. This hypothesis was also rejected by the acquittal sentences.
In the first instance on 17 December 2009 at the Court of Vigevano, the GUP Stefano Vitelli, acting as sole judge, acquitted Alberto Stasi for not having committed the crime.
On appeal on 7 December 2011, before the with lay judges and with the trial moved to Milan, a new expert report moved the time of death, thus denying Stasi an alibi and the plausibility of the fact that he had no involvement, without however leading to a conviction. The sentence was one of acquittal "for not having committed the crime".
The Court of Cassation, among the reasons for the annulment, ordered DNA tests on the hair found in the victim's hands and on DNA residues under the nails, collected and never analysed. Despite the annulment with postponement of the acquittal, the Supreme Court reiterated that it was, in its opinion, difficult "to reach a result, of acquittal or conviction, marked by coherence, credibility and reasonableness" and therefore "impossible to condemn or acquit Alberto Stasi", preferring however not to confirm the acquittal, pending new scientific tests.
At the adjourned on 17 December 2014, following the new computerised assessment of his gait and some inconsistencies in his story and despite the lack of evidence in the new DNA tests, Stasi was found guilty and sentenced to twenty-four years in prison for voluntary homicide, with the exclusion, however, of the aggravating circumstances of cruelty and premeditation. Subsequently filing an appeal with the Supreme Court, the PM requested confirmation of the sentence and the addition of the aggravating circumstance of cruelty, while the defence requested annulment without adjournment or a new trial, referring to the doubts previously expressed by the Supreme Court itself on the impossibility of determining guilt or innocence with certainty.
The prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Cassation surprisingly requested the annulment of the sentence, with a preference for referral. On 12 December 2015, however, the Court of Cassation confirmed the second sentence of the Court of Appeal of Milan, definitively sentencing Alberto Stasi to 16 years of imprisonment, although without outlining a motive, speaking of an attack of rage by Stasi.