Alberto Stasi, eight years of trials for the Garlasco murder

Alberto Stasi spent almost eight years in and out of courtrooms before knowing how it would end. Innocent twice, then guilty. It is one of the most tortuous legal journeys in Italian crime history, and today, with the new investigation into Andrea Sempio, it is being questioned all over again.

If you don’t know the story from the beginning, I suggest you start from the main article on the Garlasco murder. Here we focus on the trials.

The Bocconi student

In August 2007 Alberto Stasi is 24, a Bocconi University student writing his thesis. He comes from a well-off Garlasco family and has been dating Chiara for a few years. He is the one who finds her, in the early afternoon of 13 August, and investigators immediately focus on him: his shoes are clean, even though he would have walked through a house full of blood, and his account does not seem to add up.

On 24 September 2007 he is detained. DNA thought to be Chiara’s is found on the pedals of one of his bicycles. Four days later, however, a judge releases him: the evidence is not solid enough.

First instance, the judge who wanted to see clearly

Stasi chooses the fast-track procedure, which means a reduced sentence if convicted. The preliminary hearing judge in Vigevano, Stefano Vitelli, is not satisfied with the paperwork and orders new expert reports: on the computer, on the time of death, on the “walk” through the house.

The computer report is decisive. The Carabinieri’s first checks on Stasi’s laptop had been so clumsy that they altered the data, but the experts appointed by the judge manage to reconstruct that he worked on his thesis that morning from 9:35 to 12:20. On 17 December 2009 Stasi is acquitted.

The appeal and the Cassation

On 6 December 2011 the Milan Court of Assizes of Appeal confirms the acquittal. It seems to be over.

Instead, on 18 April 2013 the Court of Cassation overturns the ruling and sends the case back to Milan for a new trial: according to the supreme judges, the clues had been assessed one by one, separately, rather than all together.

The second appeal and the seven clues

In the second appeal trial new expert reports are ordered, and the picture changes. In the end the judges line up a series of clues they consider “serious, precise and consistent”:

• The clean shoes. A new simulation of the “walk”, extended to the first cellar steps, concludes that Stasi had a one-in-a-million chance of not getting his soles dirty when entering the house.
• The shoe print. A bloody print left by the killer is found to be compatible with a size 42 (EU) sole, Stasi’s size.
• The soap dispenser. In the bathroom, where according to the judges the killer washed his hands, there are two prints of Stasi’s right ring finger on the dispenser.
• The black bicycle. Two witnesses had mentioned a black women’s bike in front of the gate. The Stasi family owned one, which however had not been seized straight away and which he had never mentioned among his bikes.
• The pedals. On the pedals of the burgundy bike seized in 2007, which were not the original ones, there was Chiara’s DNA. The theory that the pedals had been swapped between the two bikes, put forward by the victim’s family, was however ruled out by the prosecution itself.
• The timing and his account. With the death placed between 9:12 and 9:35, Stasi had no alibi, and his account of finding the body was judged not credible.

On 17 December 2014 the Court of Assizes of Appeal sentences him to 16 years for murder. The prosecution had asked for 30 years with the aggravating circumstance of cruelty, but the judges rule it out and apply the fast-track reduction. When the verdict is read, Chiara’s mother says that there is finally truth for her daughter.

The final conviction

On 12 December 2015 the Cassation upholds the 16 years. Stasi turns himself in that same evening at Bollate prison, just outside Milan. A precise motive, however, was never established: the rulings speak only of a fit of rage.

From prison to the review request

In Bollate Stasi worked, and in recent years he was granted alternative measures: today he is serving the last part of his sentence outside prison. Meanwhile his defence never stopped looking for new evidence. Already in 2016 it had presented the expert report on the DNA under Chiara’s fingernails that gave rise to the Andrea Sempio line of inquiry, and in 2020 it had tried to obtain a review of the trial, without success.

With the reopening of the investigation in 2025, many of the 2014 clues have been called into question: from the prints on the dispenser to the “walk” and the time of the murder. On 20 May 2025 Stasi was heard as a witness in the new inquiry. Now that Pavia prosecutors have asked for Sempio to stand trial as the sole perpetrator, his lawyers, Giada Bocellari and Antonio De Rensis, have announced that in mid-November 2026 they will file a request for review with the Brescia Court of Appeal.

If the review were granted and the new trial ended in an acquittal, it would be one of the most striking miscarriages of justice in Italian history. If it were rejected, there would remain a paradox that is hard to explain: one man convicted by a final ruling and another accused of the same crime. For now, as far as the law is concerned, the person guilty of murdering Chiara Poggi is Alberto Stasi.

Sources

• Wikipedia – Murder of Chiara Poggi
• Il Giorno – Garlasco, quanti colpi di scena in quasi 20 anni (Italian)
• AGI – Garlasco, Stasi condannato a 16 anni (Italian)
• Panorama – Garlasco, anatomia di un processo indiziario (Italian)
• Il Post – La storia del delitto di Garlasco, dall’inizio (Italian)
• MilanoToday – Chiesto il rinvio a giudizio per Sempio (Italian)