Alessandro Gilioli: “The first person to whom Alessia Pifferi lied is herself is herself”

We should go to Ponte Lambro, extreme south-east suburbs of Milan, to understand the context in which he lived Alessia Pifferi, the 38 -year -old mother who let her daughter Diana die of hardshipone year and a half, abandoning her in her bed during a suffocating July, while she was outside the city from her partner.

To go into this affair, you have to walk in that “very built vertical rectangle” – not far from the hydroscalo and the Linate airport – set between the ring road and the river from which it takes its name, one of the most polluted in Italy.

He did it Alessandro Giliolilong experience journalist (former deputy director of theExpressed and director of Popular radio), which for its investigation, which has become the book A joyful future in front (Nutrimenti), he studied the folders of the court and collected the testimonies of all the people involved, despite themselves, in this bleak story. Almost all of them live in that neighborhood, a sort of urban cage that recalls a theatrical stage: a small space where the inhabitants move separate only by a few tens of meters, immersed in a social isolation that is being made.

Understanding what happened in Alessia Pifferi’s mind is not easy, not even for those who have the task of doing it for profession. The second instance judges did not consider themselves able to decide on its imputability: sentenced to life imprisonment at first instancethe woman will be subjected to one New psychiatric report To evaluate his ability to understand and want. The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Milan has in fact accepted the request for the lawyer of pifferi, Alessia Pontenani, arranging a new advice that at first instance had been excluded from the judging college chaired by Ilio Mannucci Pacini, since it is considered superfluous compared to the expertise ex officio entrusted to the psychiatrist Elvezio Pirfo. According to the sentence of condemnation, piffers was perfectly able to understand and want: it was not a “abandonment of minor” with fatal consequences, but of a “voluntary murder” with direct malice.

What prompted you to tell this story?
«I met this story through the newspapers and news, but the more I deepened it, the more I understood that it was not only a black news. It was much more: a case that intertwined psychology and psychiatry, solitude and social unease, forgotten suburbs and the role of the media in polarizing the debate. The idea of ​​the book was born from the awareness of how difficult it was to really understand what had happened in Alessia Pifferi’s mind and how much her environment had affected her story ».

Why do you think the piffer case goes beyond the crime news and is also a mirror of social transformations?
«The Pifferi case is not only the tragic story of a mother who abandoned her daughter. It is also the portrait of a fragmented sub-rider, of three different migratory waves (from Lombardy-Veneto, from Southern Italy and from the South of the world) that have populated the Italian suburbs. It is the photograph of an idea of ​​emancipation changed over time: once a collective path towards the middle class, today an individual aspiration, often modeled on successful images and ephemeral wealth, between limousine and influencers. And then there is the gap between Milan Cool and Milan forgotten, between the center and neighborhoods such as Ponte Lambro, where degradation is not only economic, but also cultural and social “.

The debate on this case was strongly polarized. There are those who see Alessia Pifferi like a murderer without mitigating and those who consider her a fragile woman, victim of herself.
«The media have amplified the dualism between murderous mother and fragile mother, but reality is more complex. It is an intertwining of fragility, self -deception, irresponsibility and a difficult social context. I don’t want to minimize individual responsibilities, but it is undeniable that there were huge flaws around Alessia Pifferi in the aid system. When, after giving birth to Diana in the house, she showed up at the Papa Giovanni hospital in Bergamo without work and without a partner, nobody asked questions. Of course, it was the full of pandemic. When Diana fell ill months later, a social worker began to worry about the fact that the girl had been accompanied to the hospital by the grandmother and not by the parents, as well as the ambivalent relationship between mother and daughter. But when Alessia has been convened, he deceived the social services saying he lives in Leffe with his partner and that he can count on the help of mother, sister and friends “.

In his book he deals with themes such as loneliness, social atomization and inequalities. Do you believe that these phenomena are worsening?
«It seems to me that in the last 30-40 years, especially among the weakest bands of the company, the community ties have dissolved. The places of socialization such as parishes, acli and bowls empty, and the solitudes increase. It is no coincidence that Pifferi has found all his partners on dating platforms ».

What do we know about Diana?
«Very little, because the information available comes almost exclusively from the mother, from WhatsApp messages and a few people who have seen her with long time intervals between one encounter and another. We know he was a girl who ate a lot and who for a certain period grew up in acceptable conditions. But no pediatrician has ever visited it. “

In his book the importance of conversations on WhatsApp as retroactive test emerges.
«WhatsApp today allows you to recover conversations that would once have been inaccessible. It was once unthinkable to listen to the voice of a defendant while committing the crime: today, however, we can relive crucial moments through messages and voice notes. Listening to the voice of a mother who lies to herself while her little girl dies is something that leaves a deep mark ».

Alessia Pifferi knew what she was doing when she abandoned her little girl?
«Alessia Pifferi is a woman marked by psychological problems since childhood, a pathological liar. He lived loneliness and cultural degradation even before the economic one, and is deeply self -centered, even in his love for the girl, who seems more a projection of himself than an authentic feeling. We do not know if he was fully aware of his actions, and perhaps not even she really knew he was killing the girl. Accepting your responsibilities is impossible to her, and there is no trace of repentance, not even in her private letters, where it constantly paints like a victim. He is a self -deceived professional. And the first person to whom he is herself. “