The disappearance of Sarah Scazzi #3

August 26, 2010. The reconstruction

For to the Court, “decisive and definitive proof of the correctness of [this] reconstruction” of the relationship between Sabrina and Ivano and between the former and the victim, comes from a “datum of extraordinary genuineness” – Sarah’s last diary entry:

• August 26: “Today had the sweet awakening with the drill, last night then I went out for a while with Sabrina and her friend Mariangela, we went to the brewery for a quick red bull, then we came home and Sabrina as usual got mad because she says that when Ivano is there I’m always with him, and I believe you at least he cuddles me unlike her, I could have 1 boyfriend like that! But whatever, I’m used to it anyway.....By Buffy Rock 95”

According to all the testimonial evidence, on both the morning and afternoon of August 26, Sarah (once she’d returned from San Pancrazio) went to Sabrina’s house; but why would she do so if the relationship had broken down? The Court considers this issue, advanced by the defense, and replies that

once her brother had left, hanging out with Sabrina represented, for young Sarah, hungry for life and leisure, the only opportunity to get out, to escape from a family environment that appeared to her to be rigid and, at that time, with her grandfather dying and her mother busy caring for him, certainly bleak and oppressive.

Anna Pisanò’s testimony sheds light on the underlying conflict between the cousins, although her account of the morning – as well as the other portions of her testimony – has been rejected by the defense, who argued that Pisanò’s role as a “super-witness” (more on this later) was the by-product of her resentment towards Sabrina, of “her willingness to create misunderstandings” and of the shared religious beliefs with Concetta. The Court rejected this argument reporting that Pisanò and Sabrina were quite intimate friends before the disappearance and the religious practices Pisanò participated to still don’t explain why she would have falsely accused Sabrina. In any case, Pisanò was a client of Sabrina; she said she was close with her, although the latter contradicted her in court.

7:55-9:30 am: Pisanò said to the investigators and later to the judges that, on the morning of August 26, she went to Sabrina’s for a session (she worked as a beautician off the books); after like an hour, Sarah arrived. Pisanò noticed that she looked unhappy and that she didn’t greet her as usual. The prosecution used this episode to argue the confrontation of the night before continued on August 26, but the defense replied that either a) Pisanò was disliked by Sarah because two years before she had said to Sarah that her father was a womanizer or b) the story narrated by Pisanò was false since the other witnesses who saw Sarah that morning don’t report anything unusual about her. Make of that what you will.

12-12:30 pm: Once she had returned to her own home, coming from the Misseris, Sarah informed her mother that she was “probably” going to the beach with Sabrina and that, in any case, she would have to wait for confirmation by her cousin. Immediately thereafter, Sarah had asked to accompany her father, who was headed for meat and fruit shopping.

1:45-2 pm: Sarah left her house and headed for Sabrina’s without having received the confirmation message from Sabrina. This is corroborated by

• testimonial evidence (Sarah’s housekeeper Pantir, since the first time she was heard by the investigators, on September 1, 2010, but also later, on December 14, has always maintained that Sarah left the house to go to her cousin’s approximately shortly before 2 pm, after having quickly eaten a chicken cutlet; Antonio Petarra, an Avetrana resident and neighbor of Sarah, saw her walking down the street around 1:45 pm; likewise, a young couple;
• forensic-pathological evidence (medical examiner Strada calculated the ToD considering that Sarah had eaten precooked and homogenized food around 1:30 pm; this was contested by the defense for two reasons: a) the first, methodological, is based on the failure of the state’s forensic pathologist to analyze separately gastric content and b) the scientific questionability of the consequences of stress on the digestive phenomenon);
• cell tower evidence (the first worrying contact someone had with Sarah’s phone was Sabrina’s call at 2:42 pm – the call went to voicemail, apparently making Sabrina go in hyperventilation – and from the analysis of cell towers we know that, during this call, Sarah’s terminal pinged off the tower 40067-60241-TA-AVETRANA-Via Ludovico Ariosto-Sett.1, serving Michele’s garage, while, in the previous contacts from her schoolmate and Sabrina, the tower used was the one serving the Scazzis and the Misseris. This tells us that either Sarah was killed shortly before 2:42 pm by Michele in the garage or that Sarah’s corpse was moved in the garage by someone after she had been killed inside the house. If we hold forensic pathologist Strada’s conclusion that Sarah was strangled with a belt as true, the second hypothesis seems the more likely narration. If we additionally take into account that Sarah didn’t reply to her schoolmate messages and rings – and she was used to respond instantly according to the latter – we can conclude that Sarah was already dead at 2:25 pm and that moves the clock back also for Sarah’s departure from her house).

The Court stated that the reconstruction advanced by the defense – according to which Sarah waited for the 2:25 pm confirmation message in order to go to Sabrina’s – can’t be accepted also because it didn’t make sense for Sarah not to reply to her schoolmate Francesca’s messages if she was really waiting for the confirmation message and wasn’t engaged in any housework. The most plausible reasons why she left before receiving the message are to be identified with the fact that Sarah didn’t want to participate in the house renovations and was anxious to go to the beach.

The defense also attacked the testimony of Pantir indirectly arguing that the “young couple” – that’s the name media used to describe Giuseppina Nardelli and Fedele Giangrande – since a week after the disappearance have always said that they’d seen Sarah walking down the street after 2 pm. The Court countered that Sabrina had tried to influence the memories of the people involved in the case and that’s the distal cause of the young couple’s testimony:

[I]t is well understood how the imprimatur of a certain time indication that placed Sarah’s disappearance around 2:30 pm and, in any case, before 2:42 pm, the time when the search for her began, was provided precisely by Sabrina Misseri in the course of the interviews she gave, with the effect of conditioning not only, as already seen, the memories of Sarah’s family members, but also the information disseminated by the media.

That would explain why the missing person report compiled by Concetta mentioned 2:30 pm as the time of disappearance – Sarah’s mother had simply taken at face value Sabrina’s indication that she’d sent the confirmation message around that time. Moreover, in at least another occasion, Sabrina tried to influence directly a person informed about the facts surrounding the disappearance, namely Mariangela. This is an excerpt from an intercepted conversation between two on September 30, 2010 in the Carabinieri headquarters:

• S: “If… sitting under the porch I was, you know”
• M: “No, Sabri”
• S: “Look, you’re misremembering…”
• M: “No, Sabri”
• S: “That… that if I was sitting…”
• M: “No… you were sitting, last time you were sitting, when I came you were… And you had even closed the gate and I said, ‘what about Sarah?’”

It’s also a fact that the after-2-pm version was initially accredited because everyone thought the last movements of Sarah’s cell phone were genuine and not the result of post-mortem manipulation (more on this later), so it’s not illogical to think that the young couple could have “aligned” their memories with what they deemed to be true. Still, I think the defense raises a good point; ultimately, it’s likely that Giangrande and Nardelli misremembered or made a bad estimation because their original memory (in the later versions they admit it could have been also 2 pm) simply doesn’t fit with all the other evidence, especially Pantir’s testimony, who talked about 2 pm as the time of Sarah leaving the house when everyone else thought the correct time was another.

1:50-2:05 pm: Sarah arrived at Sabrina’s. Testifying to this there are Cosima’s intercepted words: “it would have been better if lightning had fallen on the house, electrocuting us all that day… electrocuting us all before the girl came”. It’s unlikely that she went to the garage as hypothesized by the defense since, even according to Sabrina, she wasn’t used to hang out alone there at all. Moreover,

It is utterly implausible that Sarah Scazzi – if previously molested, as the Defenses assume – could have decided, for no plausible reason, to voluntarily descend into the dark garage, into the clutches of her molesting uncle (as will be said shortly, just as the latter, enraged by the failure to start the tractor, was shouting and “swearing” like a possessed).

Sabrina testified in court that around this time (when, for example, she received her cousin Adamaria’s call and didn’t respond to it) she was resting in the double bed of her parents, though this is contradicted by Michele even when the latter was offering a completely self-accusatory version: he said that he’d talked to Sabrina in the house before Sarah arrived. On the other hand, Cosima – who according to Sabrina was lying next to her in the double bed – never mentioned the numerous calls, messages and rings her daughter had received in those minutes. Why would she lie about this, in any case?

There was, in fact, a need to defer the moment of her exit to the porch, in order to exclude the possibility of a meeting with Sarah at the moment when the latter – according to the defense version, which saw her leaving the house after receiving confirmation text messages from her cousin – was arriving at the Misseri house.

It’s difficult to understand, moreover, why Sabrina would send the message, “I’m trying [to poo] in the bathroom :)”, to Mariangela if, as she testified in court, the “attempt” lasted only a few seconds. But there are lots of contradictions in Sabrina’s accounts of the events. The shower that, according to previous statements, she had taken once she got out of bed, in the trial statements became a “rinse” of her private parts; regarding the message of 2:39:27 pm to Mariangela (“Ready”), Sabrina, in her statements of October 15, said she’d typed it when she was on the porch, but – faced with the contestation that she had stated that, 55 seconds earlier, when she had received the message from Angela Cimino, she was with certainty in the bathroom – she argued at trial that this message had been sent when she “was going out on the porch”. Concerning these details, the defense tried to deflect holding that Sabrina was in a state of “mental confusion” caused by her cousin’s – to whom she was very close – disappearance. The Court replied that

The detectable contradictions cannot be the result of mnemonic deficits, especially since, most of the time, this is not the explanation that was given by the defendant to justify the narrative inconsistencies.

At this point, though, we have to introduce a crucial witness who showed up quite late but was deemed genuine (at least in his first deposition) by the prosecution and then by the Court; his name is Giovanni Buccolieri and he was a florist in Avetrana.

The kidnapping: the dream of the florist and Cosima’s motive

The finding of kidnapping, contested in complicity to Cosima Serrano and Sabrina Misseri, in the reconstruction of the criminal facts constitutes the logical and factual antecedent of the murder of Sarah Scazzi: the young girl, shortly after entering the house, hastily left [Sabrina’s house], heading on foot toward her home; however, she was chased and immediately tracked down by Cosima Serrano who, together with Sabrina Misseri, forced her to board the Opel Astra car and, placing herself in the driver’s seat again, drove her back to her home in Via Deledda, where she was strangled.

The path by which the information about the kidnapping reached investigators was tortuous. On April 5, 2011, super-witness Anna Pisanò talked with the investigators to report that, in September 2010, she’d heard by her daughter Vanessa Cerra that “someone” she knew had seen Cosima grab Sarah by the hair, snatch her and throw her in the Misseri car on the afternoon of August 26, 2010. Pisanò had asked many times to Cerra who was this mysterious individual, but she decided to make his name only when she left for a job in Germany (saying that, if questioned, he would have said that it was only a dream). When Pisanò discovered the identity of the witness, she went to the investigators.

April 9, 2011 is the day Buccolieri appeared before prosecutors to offer information about Sarah’s disappearance. Only two days later, however, he requested another interview to retract what he’d already told, justifying himself by saying that he wasn’t sure it was real – it could have been a very vivid dream. The prosecutors immediately charged him with perjury, since either the first or the second interview contained false information. Then, in court, Buccolieri used his right to remain silent, although the content of the first interview was mentioned in the motivation report that sentenced Cosima (and Sabrina) to life in prison.

The florist’s dream is one of the most contested points of the sentence. The Supreme Court observed that Buccolieri retracting his testimony about having seen the kidnapping has to be explained in terms of an “attempt to evade the judicial responsibilities incumbent on him”. On the contrary, Cosima’s and especially Sabrina’s defenses argued that only Anna Pisanò reported the incident by talking about a real fact and not a dream, and that she cannot be trusted for the reasons described above.

Concerning the validity of the testimony, the Court considered firstly the discrepancy between Buccolieri’s preoccupation with the incident and it supposedly being just a vivid dream:

that Buccolieri continued, in the days and months that followed, to talk about the affair, albeit representing it as a “dream”, to relatives, relatives-in-law and friends while showing agitation and disturbance, however, makes it quite clear that he – aware of the seriousness of the episode and its significance as an essential junction in the reconstruction of the murder – could not help but think about it and, therefore, talk about it.

Mention has already been made of Pisanò’s credibility, which again becomes an important point here. The woman reported to investigators that her daughter had told her about the incident in terms of a real fact, while the daughter claimed that Buccolieri had only ever told her about a very vivid dream that made it difficult to understand whether it was real or not. Cerra said in court that, when she had asked again Buccolieri to go talk with the investigators, he replied, “If they call me, I deny everything”.

This is probably the strangest piece of evidence pertaining to this case, the only one directly implicating Cosima and it’s quite difficult to assess its validity. The Court considered the issue and tried to justify its reasoning in more than 100 pages. There are reasons both to believe and not to believe that it was a vivid dream.

Firstly, we know for a fact that Buccolieri did have a flower delivery to do on that day. Interestingly, his description of the abduction temporally preceded the discovery of Sarah’s body; this suggests that he may have been truthful insofar as he would have anticipated other evidence emerging from the trial. Another reasoning in favor of the theory that the kidnapping was real is that Cerra wouldn’t have asked Buccolieri to talk with the Carabinieri if his narrative had been really told in the terms of a dream; at the same time, Cerra wouldn’t have refused to tell her mother the name of the dreamer. It would also have been strange for Pisanò – if she had falsely said that the kidnapping was real – to have been able to predict that Buccolieri would speak in the terms of a real fact in his first interview. Finally, the Court considered that the fact Buccolieri said to Cerra that only she knew how things went proved that what he said to his wife and mother-in-law (namely, that it was all a dream) was false – in other words, only Cerra was able to listen to the “true” account of the events; Pisanò then managed to discover it and told about it to the investigators.

On the other hand, it would be dishonest not to acknowledge that Buccolieri to this day maintains that the prosecutors somehow convinced him that the episode was factual, when in reality, according to him, it was only a dream. Other bits of intercepted conversation suggest either that Buccolieri was truthful when he accredited the dream version or that he was trying to impose it to Cerra: “The two of us, when we talked, we talked about a dream and that’s all… we didn’t talk about anything else”. Others again seem to imply that there was a common preoccupation, between Buccolieri and Cerra, with not being involved in the case: “You have to say that… the right things, Va”, “But I said the right things”. In court, Buccolieri’s wife Giuseppina Scredo testified that her husband seemed worried about the “dream” because at the same time he told her about it circumstantial items against Cosima had emerged – but prosecutors replied that, in reality, Cosima became a suspect only in 2011, so it’d have been exaggerated for Buccolieri to be worried about the dream:

[Buccolieri], however, would have had no reason to feel such dismay if it was merely a dream going back in time or if he was in doubt between dream and reality, and even less so if [the story about the kidnapping] was the result of popular suggestion or a “collective dream” of the Avetranese who disliked Serrano. […] Unless we want to attribute to Buccolieri premonitory powers and divinatory abilities, it is not possible that, immediately after Michele Misseri’s arrest, he could have already had suspicions – based, it should be assumed, solely on the unjustifiable dislike he felt for a fellow citizen with a “strong” character whom he saw appearing on television – about Cosima Serrano, so much so that he became convinced of her guilt and “dreamed” of her involvement in the victim’s kidnapping.

It’s also important to ask what would be Cosima’s motive. The Court considered that

The attention that the entire family paid to the aspect of public consideration is further evidenced by Valentina Misseri’s statement at trial about the reasons underlying the reproaches that she and her sister Sabrina used to address to the young Sarah because of the young girl’s affectionate attitudes – which they considered excessive and out of place – to people of the opposite sex, or the makeup that was too “heavy” for her age, which could have, in the older cousins’ view, aroused the gossip of the Avetranese community (“people who talk and are gossipy”) by having the minor girl ‘labeled’ as a ‘no-good’.

Cosima was therefore greatly concerned about what might be said about her daughter if her failed intercourse and on-and-off relationship with Ivano were discovered and especially held Sarah responsible for the humiliation her daughter suffered. As for why she decided to follow Sarah back to her house like the florist had described, the Court considers that the news of the argument was not supposed to reach the Scazzi home – if it had happened, Sarah’s parents would’ve been outraged at Cosima and Sabrina for everything “improper” for a 15-year-old Sarah had discovered or participated to (especially in a rural, tight-knit community as Avetrana is): from knowing about the intercourse to being photographed in pajamas with Sabrina by a shirtless Ivano late one night in May 2010.

It is also shown that the defendant [Cosima] Serrano paid extreme attention to the profile of family respectability, opposing conduct of her daughter that appeared to her, in terms of mentality, age, and culture, to be excessively uninhibited – so much so that she regularly called Sabrina insulting epithets alluding to her sexual mores (“bitch”, “whore”). […] The affront suffered at the hands of the little girl, her rebellion against the authority of her aunt and the fear that she would reveal facts that would compromise the honorability of the Misseri family, generated a strong emotional reaction in the woman that induced her to commit the kidnapping and, once the little girl was brought back home, to commit the crime of murder.

Cosima Serrano

The murder and the weapon

According to the Court that convicted the defendants, Sarah entered the Misseri’s house and stayed there for only a few minutes before leaving abruptly. The fight that broke out that afternoon had to be different from the typical altercations between the two girls, having required the intervention of Cosima.

Sarah, who was attacked and reprimanded, did not suffer supinely this time: she must have experienced those reprimands, those accusations as so undeserved, disproportionate and unjust that she reacted harshly toward her aunt in harsh tones, and with accusations, certainly serious and unexpected, that affected not only her cousin, but also her aunt because of the seriousness of them. […] The questioning of the authority of the two women, Serrano’s outrage at what must have seemed to her to be intolerable accusations made by Sarah and an inadmissible act of rebellion, as well as a show of ingratitude on the part of the little girl who had been welcomed and raised “like a daughter” in that home, the realization that Sarah had grown up and was no longer the shy and submissive child who could be “managed”, but a person capable of reacting, responding in kind, questioning the authority of the two “parental” figures, even rivaling her older cousin and revealing her habits and secrets, shaming her before her mother’s eyes, all these things triggered the reaction of Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano.

After they had returned to the Misseri’s house on the Opel Astra, Sabrina and Cosima strangled Sarah with a belt, one holding her down and the other tightening her grip around the neck. This is also corroborated by the forensic-pathological evidence: according to prof. Strada’s autopsy, “a flat, ribbon-like furrow in the front of the neck is clearly visible [on Sarah’s neck], even to the layman”, while “excluding the mode of strangulation hypothesized by the defense [i.e. a kind of complete hanging] is the absence of signs of fracture of the hyoid bone and cricothyroid cartilages”. Strada concluded therefore that the murder weapon was a belt, the seams of which produced the furrow present on Sarah’s neck.

Against the objections of Sabrina's and Cosima’s defense – which argued that the indication of the murder weapon was intended to shift the blame towards the two defendants – there is the fact that the autopsy was filed on November 11, 2010, when Michele was still the only suspect: Strada could not have known that Sabrina and Cosima would be investigated shortly thereafter.

It is therefore clear that the indication of a belt, not a rope, as the murder weapon preceded the reconstruction that, only later, by virtue of an unambiguous circumstantial framework, came to identify the Misseri family home as the scene of the murder.

The Court noted that “the defense counsel ultimately failed to provide a plausible alternative explanation for the presence of the whitish furrow ‘averaging 2.6 cm wide’ found on the front of the victim’s neck, nor did he effectively explain the origin and nature of the repetitive segmented, in-line impressions present at the edges of said furrow”. In response to the argument that the weapon may have been a rope (such as the one indicated by Michele), the Court underlined that Strada argued extensively that the furrow couldn’t have been produced by such a constraining means.

In addition to that, the Court holds that – since on Sarah’s neck “a sharp, smudge-free pattern was detected” and “the victim did not put up any resistance, especially since it was found that there was no further injury to the ‘structures’ of the neck” – the perpetrators of the vicious attack must have been two, namely Sabrina and Cosima. It was also argued that, if Cosima should be held responsible for kidnapping Sarah and make her go back to the Misseri house, then it becomes quite hard to explain how she didn’t also participate to the actual murder. If the florist’s story is not a dream, Cosima is responsible for killing her niece.

The disappearance of Sarah Scazzi #2

4. The relationship between Sarah and Sabrina

The Court that sentenced Sabrina started from a “fixed point” in its reconstruction of the events that led to Sarah’s death:

When Sabrina Misseri was heard by the Carabinieri of Avetrana [...] Sarah’s body had not been found and, therefore, it was still legitimate to hope for a voluntary departure that precisely a quarrel, a contrast, an argument with her cousin could have explained and justified. Yet Sabrina Misseri, while appearing active and proactive in the search for her missing cousin through both public initiatives and collaboration with the Carabinieri, thought it counterproductive to reveal an apparently insignificant detail – a girl-on-girl argument – which, however, could have uncovered a ‘Pandora’s box’, shedding light on what later turned out to be the motive for the murderous action.

It’s necessary to better introduce the individuals who are involved in this story. It’s not contested by the defense that in the summer of 2010 the two girls – since Sarah’s school was closed and she had a relationship of close kinship and living proximity with her cousin – attended each other assiduously; in particular, Sarah went almost daily at the cousin’s house. The two girls were also part of the same group of friends, Sabrina having introduced the young Sarah to the others in December 2009. The group included Ivano Russo, Alessio Pisello, Mariangela Spagnoletti and, in the summer period, Angela Cimino and Claudio Scazzi, as well as Giovanni Copertino and Antonio Forte. Together the aforementioned frequented the same clubs, exchanged messages and phone calls, went to the beach moving in the same cars. It’s relevant to note that Sarah was only allowed to go out in the evenings with her older cousin on whom, therefore, she depended for all opportunities for recreation.

According to the Court, Sarah’s secret diary is really important to understand what happened because it testifies to the onset of a growing enthusiasm for a new friendship and the emergence of a feeling that troubles and confuses the teenager: that for Ivano, that boy so much older than she is and whom Sarah knows well how much her cousin Sabrina also likes. Some significant entries are the following:

• June 4, 2010 at 3:30 pm: “hi......in this time I am having so much fun you know Ivano is really nice I love him so much only he is 27 years old almost 30 whatever I kind of miss the shit I used to do in school with my friends you know....”
• June 9 at 11:07 am: “hi..........so yesterday I went to the beach with Sabrina and Ivano I had a great time only Sabrina then told me that next time she wants to be alone with Ivano and I have to stay home, it sucks when she does that it gets on my nerves. I can’t wait for my brother and my dad to arrive ah I forgot to tell you that Saturday and Sunday I have to go to the beach but not with Ivano....”
• July 28 at 6:30 pm: “...hello my name is Sarah, in this period I am very attached to I boy who is 27 years old, I am only 15 but he is very sweet with me and he always cuddles me, his name is Ivano, and my cousin Sabrina also likes him but I don’t understand if I like him or if I just love him as a friend...I AM CONFUSED”
• July 30: “hi, yesterday Ivano cuddled me...I love him so much...but tonight I’m not gonna see him uff.…”

Although Sabrina refused to describe her relationship with Ivano in terms of a romantic one, saying she was only physically attracted to him, her friends contradicted her in their testimonies (Claudio Scazzi goes so far as to speak of a “fixation”). Moreover, one inescapable objective fact is the text messages with which Sabrina “bombarded” her friends to find out where Ivano was, whether he was at one club rather than another, whether he had gone out and who she took home first and who last, even going so far as to check on the boy through actual stakeouts and sending messages from unknown phones. It is unclear why Sabrina would want to “project” onto her friend Mariangela her obsession with Ivano (as she did in the November 20, 2012 hearing) when all testimony converged in another direction. According to the Court,

Sabrina was dominated by her anxiety to establish a stable and exclusive romantic and sexual relationship with Russo, rather than a relationship of mere friendship, so that her conduct became even more insistent where Ivano proved detached and annoyed by her intrusiveness.

Clearly tracing the development of the story between the two are the 4500 messages exchanged over the months by Sabrina and Ivano. For the Court, “[t]he incursion into the sexual sphere of the two isn’t dictated by morbid curiosity, nor is it intended to land on unacceptable moralistic evaluations of their behavior, but it serves to fully understand how the evolution of that relationship and the inevitable estrangement from the young man, due to the differing expectations of the two, generated in Sabrina a very strong sense of frustration”. This frustration was then exacerbated by the fact that although Sarah played (unintentionally) a role in the breakup between Sabrina and Ivano, she did not stop hanging out with him, and this must have been considered a real betrayal on Sabrina’s part. These are some significant messages sent by Sabrina testifying to her interest/obsession:

• May 2, 2010 at 6:02 pm: “You see I am mocking you, I see you as a big puppy:-)”
• May 2 at 6:08 pm: “Come on admit it, you like cuddling at the end who doesn't, then you are so deep…”
• May 2 at 11:40 pm: “Don’t joke, I mean it I envy you I wish I was as beautiful as you and a special and unique character like yours... to me you are like a god :)”
• May 4 at 3:20 pm: “you are a beautiful vision just as you are... understand God Ivano?”
• May 4 at 11:54 pm: “Sweet night, I hope you have recovered, the nice thing about you [is] that you make me feel useful for something...”
• June 6 at 11:17 am: “I’m right, Liala came today and told me Ivano [is] even more gorgeous with glasses but just so much and I answered ‘I know’ and I told them you could tell him”
• June 8 at 1:53 pm: “The client I said hello earlier sent me an SMS to say you are handsome if you don’t believe me I’ll show you the message I saved it:)”
• June 8 at 1:59 pm: “I don't want to hear you complain anymore so far I haven’t heard anyone say otherwise it has nothing to do with taste you can’t deny the evidence the one who has to complain is me and not you, even my brother-in-law says you’re handsome”

On the other hand, Ivano didn’t seem to reciprocate. He wrote, “Sabri I don’t want you to talk to me like that...the other day that thing shouldn’t have happened, I knew it would end like that.” And again, “But why did you fall in love with me? If you want sex that’s fine, but I don’t fall in love:)”. Hence the profound frustration of Sabrina who, after vainly trying to establish a “real” relationship, had to give up in the face of the indifference of the young man, who in a clear manner, finally told her that he did not conceive, between them, anything other than a loveless sex relationship.

Claudio testified that he tried to talk with Sabrina about her relationship with Ivano, asking her why she continued to hang out with him even if he wasn’t really that interested:

Sabrina made it clear to me that she would rather maybe even be teased, let’s say, even teased in a sense, by Ivano, than lose him altogether.

Concetta was also aware of the relationship between the two, having overheard a telephone conversation between Sarah and Sabrina in which the former said, “If I were in your place, I would kick him. Why do you stand behind him, why do you let him treat you this way?”

Ivano Russo

5. The August 25 argument at the “102” brewery

Sabrina was extremely upset and annoyed by the fact that, in her view, Sarah was diverting Ivano’s attention from her – this is a “fact peacefully acquired at the trial”, according to the Court, just as it’s established that this was the reason for the argument that took place on the evening of August 25, 2010. Here is what Stefania De Luca, an older friend of Sabrina’s, testifies:

I was sitting at a table near the front door of the club. After a while, I remember, Mariangela Spagnoletti, Sabrina Misseri and Sarah Scazzi came in. They entered the club, we greeted each other, and immediately Sabrina said, “This time it’s really over”, referring to the relationship she had with Ivano. In particular, already for some time Sabrina had told me several times about her interest in Ivano, her infatuation with him. She herself told me on several occasions that Ivano’s behaviors gave her hope. Evidently during the day of August 25 something had happened for which she had decided to sever this situation with Ivano. After this initial approach, Sabrina and Mariangela entered the bar to get a drink while Sarah stayed close to me. I then noticed that Sarah was very upset and her eyes were glazed over, so much so that I asked her what had happened. Sarah did not answer, shrugging her shoulders and bowing her head.

De Luca confirmed that Sabrina told her she had had a fight with Ivano, adding ironically that he was now only talking to Sarah. “That one sells herself, sells herself for two cuddles, even her mother says so”, Sabrina allegedly repeated twice, referring to Sarah. At that moment Sarah literally went pale and bowed her head almost crying.

Mariangela Spagnoletti – the girl with whom Sarah and Sabrina were supposed to go to the beach – essentially corroborated this version in court:

PROSECUTOR BUCCOLIERO – Here, but these words you said earlier, about Sarah’s and Ivano’s relationship, Sabrina also said them in the car while talking to you? SPAGNOLETTI – Yes. That he was cuddling Sara more than her. […] PROSECUTOR BUCCOLIERO – Listen, was Sabrina jealous of Sarah with regard to Ivano? SPAGNOLETTI – I don’t know if she was jealous, however, with some phrases she made it clear that she was.

Spagnoletti’s trustworthiness was questioned by Sabrina’s defense, which noted how the girl was attracted to Ivano and therefore would turn out to be emotionally involved in the affair; needless to say that De Luca’s testimony still stands and it’s difficult to understand why Spagnoletti would make such serious accusations… just because. The Court also noted that the reasoning of the defense doesn’t make much sense “in light of the little interest Sabrina had managed to arouse in [Ivano]” and since Spagnoletti mentioned the August 25 altercation only when the prosecutor talked about it.

6. Other episodes corroborating the motive: obsession & desire

Another significant episode that supports the idea of a catastrophic “rupture” between the girls is narrated by Angela Cimino, another friend of the group:

One evening in August, certainly after the 15th, we were in Torre Colimena with Sabrina, Ivano, Claudio and Sarah. With the same, aboard Ivano’s car we returned to Avetrana. I remember that Ivano left Sabrina at home first, only because it was on the way, and, while Ivano dropped Claudio and Sarah, the latter received a message from Sabrina. Sarah read it aloud, “Let me know who [Ivano] drop off home first.” None of those present commented on the message, and I made some reflections. The reading [of the message] took place just before Sarah and Claudio got out of the car as having arrived at their home, [so] Ivano and I, left alone in the car commented on what had happened. I told him that I felt it was time for him to clarify with Sabrina the nature of their relationship beyond a simple friendship. Ivano told me that he would talk to her.

The investigators therefore discovered that Sarah had been indirectly responsible for Ivano deciding to end his “friendship with benefits” with Sabrina, so to speak – but even if it were not for this fact, it would still have happened, as one can see considering the next episode corroborating the motive hypothesized by the Court.

Some days before August 4, 2010, one evening, Sabrina and Ivano drove away from Avetrana, secluded themselves and began to have sex; however, they didn’t complete the intercourse, because Ivano said he didn’t want to ruin the friendship. Sabrina later confided about what happened to Mariangela; Sarah was listening. Without much time passing, the entire group learned of the “failed intercourse” between Sabrina and Ivano. The former stopped going outside and seeing her friends for a while. On August 16, 2010, starting from midnight and going on for the whole day, the two also exchanged some glacial messages:

• August 16 at 0:49 am, Ivano: “I have told you a million times that you are a friend to me, but I prefer to keep my distance if only now I am sure that you don’t want just a friendship” […]
• Sabrina: “Listen dummy what I told you before friendship is fine, but hands off remember what you say to me, the universe does not revolve around you, that’s enough now, out of your mouth must not come my name anymore”
• Ivano: “Thank you for telling everyone about what happened”
• Ivano: “I am leaning towards a friendship but, if you have other ideas, then each on their own way”
• Sabrina: “Don’t worry anyway I’ve decided not to go out anymore, so you don’t say that I’m always looking for you, that I’m always texting you, which isn’t true because lately you were almost always initiating, if I have to pass as the one I’m not I stay at my house”
• Ivano: “Oh listen you're breaking my balls you're doing everything, and fuck off I didn’t tell you anything in fact you said I harass you”

On August 21 there was a face-to-face clarification, arranged by Ivano and not Sabrina, which – it is really hard to understand why, although the Court had its hypotheses – Sarah also attended. Ivano recalled in court:

I told Sabrina what Claudio had reported to me and, after telling her that I was very annoyed, I asked her if she had been the one to report the episode. Sabrina told me that it had not been her and was also annoyed. Confirming that she had not told anyone, she reported to me that Claudio had certainly tried to find out something without having any information, I took the opportunity to reiterate to her that I did not intend to establish a relationship that was anything other than friendship, and I took the opportunity to apologize to her if my behavior had engendered any expectations in her.

According to the Court that sentenced Sabrina, “after making inquiries in the circle of friends, Misseri could only trace the origin of the disclosure of the episode that will lead to the termination of relations with Ivano back to her cousin Sarah”.

Sabrina’s defense attempted to downplay the extent of such feelings by pointing out that the relationship between the two young women was the same: the two girls loved each other “like sisters” and were inseparable, none of those who hung out with them had ever perceived a feeling of jealousy on the part of Sabrina toward Sarah, and, therefore, there was no rivalry or jealousy between the two cousins, so much so that after their conversation with Ivano on August 21, the two girls had continued their evening together, going to the Spizzico club to play karaoke.

Contradicting these theories there is Liala Nigro’s testimony; she was a friend of Sabrina and she testified that, about mid-August, Sabrina arrived angrily at the pub accusing her of telling Ivano about the incident. Some days later, but certainly before August 21, Sabrina apologized to her, telling her that she had identified the person responsible in Claudio. This whole episode corroborates the idea that Sabrina was very angry at whoever had propagated the story of the failed intercourse. Also the fact that Sarah participated in the August 21 face-to-face confrontation can be seen as compatible with the theory that Sabrina had finally identified the “real culprit”, namely Sarah, and had wanted her to be present because she was as involved as the other two.

The relationship between Sabrina and Ivano had therefore broken down irremediably. The former wrote the latter a burst of angry messages:

• August 23, 2010 at 9:04 am: “Btw on Saturday [August 21] when you left I had to tell you that you are good at humiliating people in front of everyone, ‘psychopath, apathetic,’ I at least if I have something to say I say it to you and not in front of everyone like you did to Mariangela, saying heavy sentences in front of people you don’t know, make an examination of conscience. A 27-year-old does not behave like that, you are immature. From what you told me about a certain person you are the one who behaves like this and not me and not that you want to be good, I can accompany you and you keep saying heavy words, I in front of others never allowed myself..., you don’t appreciate things, you don’t know respect, because the night before you didn’t feel like talking, however humiliating in front of others yes, bravo, congratulations.”

The Court notes that it is therefore a fact that the relationship between the two cousins broke down after the August 21 confrontation. Testifying to this, again, there is Sarah going to San Pancrazio Salentino (a nearby town where another cousin of hers lived) from August 23 to 25: “Sarah, no longer having a chance to go out in Avetrana, her brother Claudio having departed, therefore took the first opportunity that came her way to get away from the village”. In these two days, Sarah contacted nevertheless many times Sabrina through calls or rings, but the latter never responded. In court she explained her actions saying that she was “displeased”, i.e. she was missing Sarah (it doesn’t make much sense really).

The disappearance of Sarah Scazzi #1

Avetrana is a small rural town – in beautiful Apulia, overlooking the gulf of Taranto – that comes alive especially during the summer season due to the influx of tourists looking for low-priced accommodation compared to the trendier resorts in the region. In the early 1980s, Avetrana was the site of demonstrations by the anti-nuclear movement in opposition to the desire of the national government to plant a nuclear power plant in the territory, though nowadays if you ask an Italian what is the first thing that comes to their mind when you say “Avetrana”, sadly they will almost certainly think of Sarah Scazzi.

Avetrana

Sarah’s case also arguably represents one of the latest examples of the “dark tourism” that has led hundreds of people to travel to the places where the most heinous crimes in recent Italian history – from the murder of Samuele Lorenzi to that of Meredith Kercher and Chiara Poggi – were committed. In the initial months following Sarah’s disappearance, the media has shone a spotlight on the small town from which Sarah disappeared and on its sometimes strange inhabitants. TV stations “dramatized” the whole affair and turned it almost into a soap opera for their loyal viewers. The lowest point in this story was finally reached when, on October 6, 2010, a reporter broke the news of Sarah’s body’s discovery to her mother on live television. This is how journalist Stefano Nazzi describes what happened in Avetrana in the days following Sarah’s disappearance:

From the end of August 2010 and for many months it became one of the most famous places in Italy. A place where an ugly crime had happened turned into a TV set where all rules were skipped, where reporters competed to grab exclusive interviews with those who perhaps had nothing to say.

It should be noted that – despite the fact that the criminal cases mentioned here have occupied the front pages of newspapers and news programs for a long time – it has become much more difficult in recent years for similar events to be treated so obsessively and morbidly by the mass media. Of course, TV programs that unabashedly eviscerate every aspect of a said murder still exist, but traditional news channels now seem to adhere to more careful guidelines on how to treat crime cases.

1. The disappearance

On the afternoon of August 26, 2010, at the Carabinieri Station Headquarters in Avetrana, 15-year-old Sarah Scazzi was reported missing, having left home – as her mother Concetta Serrano Spagnolo declared – in the early afternoon to go to the house of her cousin Sabrina Misseri, with whom she was supposed to take a trip to the beach. Sarah had on a pink T-shirt, pink shorts, and flip-flops, carried a black fabric backpack with writing on it, as well as the inseparable cell phone, recently received as a gift from her older brother and which she always held in her hand.

Who was the 15-year-old and what can be said more precisely about the hours surrounding her disappearance? Sarah reportedly had a strong character, was a bit lazy, liked Avril Lavigne and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She suffered from being away from her father and especially her brother, to whom she was very close (the two men were working in Milan at the time of the incident). She probably resented her mother’s strictness and saw her cousin Sabrina’s family as a safe haven, to the point of asking to be “adopted” by her aunt Cosima Serrano and her uncle Michele Misseri (at least this is what Cosima and Sabrina will say later).

Concerning what happened in the hours around Sarah’s disappearance, her mother Concetta reported that Sarah had left the house around 9 am; she had returned briefly during the course of the morning to get some money needed to buy some cream on behalf of her cousin Sabrina, and then she had gone home to go, almost immediately, in the company of her father to do the groceries around 12:30 pm; the two had returned home shortly before 1 pm. What happened next is a point of contention, but the most likely conclusion is that Sarah left her house to go to the Misseris between 1:55 pm and 2:00 pm – as indicated by Sarah’s housekeeper Maria Ecaterina Pantir – lying to her mother by saying that she had received Sabrina’s message telling her to go to her house.

Then, at 2:23 pm, Sabrina received a text message from her friend Mariangela Spagnoletti (“[give me] the time to put on the costume and I’m coming”) and immediately afterward notified her cousin (2:25:08 text message from Sabrina to Sarah “put on the costume fast and come”). Sarah, who had no cell phone credit, answered with a ring at 2:28:46 – this is her last alleged communication.

In an email sent to the editor of a local magazine in late August and made public in early September, psychic Rosemary Laboragine wrote:

I see a house but also a kind of garage. I don’t know, unfortunately I have a feeling of death. I feel her buried in the nearby countryside. I see wood and water.

Sarah

2. The investigation

The search for Sarah begins a few days late by virtue of the fact that her disappearance was initially thought to be a voluntary departure. Sabrina suggests investigating Sarah’s father’s hometown and his unsavory acquaintances there. A man from Lecce who had sent a message to Sabrina pretending to be Sarah is heard by the Carabinieri. It also turns out that the 15-year-old had three Facebook profiles and had recently communicated with a married man, but this trail leads nowhere. On September 7, 2010, Carabinieri from the Taranto Investigative Unit handed prosecutors a report in which they requested (and obtained) an urgent wiretap of Claudio’s cell phone, since it was “suspicious that the young man did not feel the need to return to Apulia to inquire directly about his sister’s fate”.

An initial breakthrough in the investigation came with the discovery of the victim’s cell phone by Michele Misseri on September 29, 2010, the day after he was interrogated by the investigators in this case. Misseri recounted that he had gone, with the intent of retrieving a lost screwdriver, to a plot of land where, the previous day, he had done some cleanup work with a friend. There, in a burned pile of olive leaves, he had found the cell phone.

On October 4, 2010, at 4:20 pm, Michele Misseri was served an invitation to appear in the afternoon of October 6 at the Taranto Carabinieri Provincial Command. On the same evening, at 9:58 pm, a phone call between Sabrina Misseri and her ex-boyfriend Andrea Merico was intercepted, in which Sabrina was concerned about the fingerprints left by her father and herself on Sarah’s phone, admitting that she had touched the device on the very day of Sarah’s disappearance.

On October 5, a soliloquy of Michele Misseri in his car was recorded at 5:59 am. Misseri closed the door but did not start the engine and, after standing still and in silence for about a minute, spoke to himself, uttering the following words: “I feel sorry for my family... if they go... I will find them out [sic]”.

On October 6, Michele, his wife Cosima and their daughter Valentina went together to Taranto for their interrogations. At 7:59 am, a conversation was recorded in their car: Cosima advised her husband not to be specific about the times when, on the morning the cell phone was found, he had left home. At 15:46 am, Giuseppe Serrano, colleague and brother-in-law of Michele, tells the investigators that, on August 26, the latter arrived at work “way behind schedule”, 45 minutes later than when he was supposed to be there. Finally, in the evening, after 9 hours of interrogation,

As the search for the little girl continued unabated, Michele Antonio Misseri confessed to having killed his niece, strangling her, and to having suppressed her corpse; he, reserving the right to clarify at a later date the reasons and modalities of that insane act, led investigators to a well located in contrada Mosca in the countryside of Avetrana and allowed the discovery, following laborious digging operations that lasted all night, of Scazzi’s lifeless body and some of her personal belongings. Misseri’s confession was recorded in the presence of his defense counsel.

Misseri confessed that, the day Sarah disappeared, he was working in the garage to fix the tractor that wouldn’t start. At 2:25 pm, Sarah had suddenly arrived and, coming down to the garage, had told him “Uncle...” without adding anything else. The moment the little girl had then turned again to leave, Misseri had taken a piece of rope and twisted it around her neck twice, tightening about five to six minutes, even after Sarah had fallen to the ground. Misseri claimed that he had been seized by an “inexplicable rapture”, by a burst of nerves caused by the tractor not starting, but that it was not at all his intention to rape his niece, toward whom he had no sexual attraction.

The following day, during the hearing for the confirmation of the provisional arrest, Misseri changed drastically his account. To the judge’s and prosecutor’s questions about the possible sexual nature of the cause of his attack, he answered enigmatically: “It may be as well”. He confided that he had sexually assaulted Sarah on August 26, that she had reacted and he had had to kill her.

On October 15, 2010, Misseri was heard again and that consisted of a turning point in the case. In the morning interrogation, he confirmed the self-accusatory version already set forth in the two previous ones, but enriched it with details: he claimed that Sabrina had looked out onto the garage ramp immediately after her cousin’s killing, while Sarah’s body lay covered by a piece of cardboard; to the prosecutor’s objection that, in that case, Sabrina could not have failed to notice at the very least Sarah’s beach slippers, which had been left out of that hastily organized cover, Misseri further modified his account, asserting that Sabrina had arrived at the garage entrance to warn her father that she was going to the beach, and she had noticed Sarah’s body covered by the cardboard. Sabrina had exclaimed: “Daddy, what have you done?” and had burst into tears.

The “glaring inconsistencies” inherent in this version led prosecutors to suspend the interrogation at 11:35 am. Three hours later, at 2:26 pm, a new interrogation began:

Misseri claimed that Sabrina had forcibly dragged Sarah into the garage, where he was already standing, in order to verify, in a three-way confrontation, whether it was true that he had molested Sarah, as she had reported to her cousin. Upon Scazzi’s confirmation, Sabrina Misseri had pinned her down, encircling her around the waist with her arms and demanding that she tell the truth in front of her father; the latter, at that point, becoming impatient, had strangled his niece with a rope he was holding, twisting it around her neck, while his daughter held her cousin down.

From the left: Sabrina Misseri, Sarah and Michele Misseri

3. Sabrina’s detention and Michele’s accusatory statements against her

On October 18, 2010, Sabrina Misseri was questioned by the preliminary hearing judge, denying any involvement in the killing of her cousin. Four days later, a conversation that took place in prison between Michele Misseri and his daughter Valentina was intercepted and filmed. After an initial moment of emotion upon seeing his daughter again, who immediately reminded him of Sabrina’s status, detained because of his accusatory statements (“Daddy, but look I love you anyway, you know? Sabrina loves you too, of course she can’t come now, she knows you’re here, right?”), Michele, shaking his hands, told her in dialect: “The fact... Which Sabrina is hiding… [I wish] she would talk about it”.

On November 3, criminologist Roberta Bruzzone was appointed as a consultant to Michele through his defense lawyer Daniele Galoppa. Two days later, in jail, Misseri had a conversation with Galoppa and Bruzzone; he began to cry and, quite unexpectedly – after he had until then described the incident by reverting to the initial exclusively self-accusatory version – declared that he was not the one who killed Sarah, but his daughter Sabrina. For that reason, with the consent of Misseri himself, a request was made by his defense attorney for investigators to come in for questioning.

At 3:32 pm, before prosecutors, Misseri articulated a version in which he declared himself to be completely uninvolved in the murderous action, which he attributed to Sabrina. Misseri declared that after he had finished eating, at about 1 pm, he had been called by his daughter who had told him, “Daddy, come to the garage ‘cause something happened”. He had then gone there and found Sarah on the floor, with her arms towards the door and with a rope (a meter long, not too tight and with many knots) twisted around her neck; Sabrina had said that her cousin had fallen while they were playing. “[Sabrina] says they were playing in the garage… she says she slipped and fell [...] however, in my opinion, to show that it was suicide she put the rope around her neck…”

Prosecutors deemed this story illogical because of the weapon used, the dynamics of the murder, and the justification given by Sabrina, so they stopped the questioning at 4:10 pm, at the request of the defense counsel, and resumed at 5:04 pm (after Misseri had conferred with attorney Galoppa and consultant Bruzzone). At this point,

Misseri mutated his account by reporting that the murder weapon was a “belt”, not a rope, and claimed that he had been awakened, while he was asleep in the deck chair, by his daughter Sabrina who, in a state of agitation, had said to him: “Dad, come here for a moment ‘cause something has happened”; following his daughter, he had run into the garage and had seen Sarah lying on the floor upright on the right side of the slide, with her head down facing the entrance; he had then exclaimed “But what is it that you have done?” and his daughter had told him “Yeah, anyway she was bothering me as well”. Misseri later specified that to the question “What happened?”, his daughter had said “I was playing with Sarah… she slipped, she fell”, and to his further question “And the belt around her neck, why does she have it?”, Sabrina had replied, “She was bothering me anyway”.

November 19, 2010 was the day of the special evidence pre-trial hearing (whose function is to “anticipate the acquisition and formation of evidence during the preliminary investigation”). These are the salient points:

• Michele essentially reaffirmed the heteroaccusatory version against Sabrina, but also reintroduced the theme of the “game” that allegedly led to Sarah's death;
• he admitted he had confessed the truth (i.e. Sabrina’s responsability in the murder) to a priest two days after he was arrested, and that happened significantly earlier than his first version mentioning Sabrina;
• he specified that he had never asked Sabrina why she had killed Sarah being able only to speculate that the reason was jealousy for Ivano, since he had heard from others that she liked him and, from Sabrina herself, after Sarah’s death, that the young girl had become “too attached” to Ivano;
• when asked why he had accrued the decision to accuse his daughter Sabrina, he replied, “Why did I have to do so many years if I did not do that thing?”;
• Michele added that while he was searching with his daughter for Sarah’s SIM card, Sabrina had only asked him if Sarah was in a safe place, and he had answered in the affirmative, that is, that the body was in a safe place, where only he could find it; his daughter had also asked him about Sarah’s cell phone, and he had told her he had destroyed it.