Erba massacre, the review hearing: what can happen on Friday 1 March?

Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi in court, however, there will not be the Castagna brothers, sons and brothers of the victims for whom «the truth is already written. They will never find another.” It is not a trial, but a hearing to decide whether there should be a review of the trial for the Erba massacre. The two accused and convicted, in three levels of judgement, in the trials carried out following the massacre on the evening of 11 December 2006 have obtained a hearing in the Court of Appeal in Brescia, where dozens of requests arrived to attend the hearing which is public. A room with a giant screen has been set up for the press. Only on March 1st will the possibility of recording and transmitting images of the hearing be evaluated.

Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi were sentenced to life imprisonment and have remained in prison since their arrest. They are now 62 and 60 years old. Their defenders will present the alleged new elements to reopen, in their opinion, the case. The prosecutor's office of Brescia represents the prosecution. The Court will then decide whether or not to make the new trial for the Erba massacre possible.

There are three requests for review presented: that of the deputy general prosecutor of Milan Cuno Tarfusser, that of the guardian of Olindo and Rosa and that of the lawyers of both Fabio Schembri, Nico D'Ascola, Patrizia Morello and Luisa Bordeaux. The second section of the Court of Appeal of Brescia admitted the request for review. At this hearing it will be necessary to establish which new sources of evidence can enter into the possible future new trial. There are new witnesses, new consultations, wiretaps. The Court may not admit any of the new sources of evidence or admit only some of it.

A few days after the hearing on the request for review of the sentence with which the spouses were convicted for the Erba massacre, in which Raffaella Castagna, her son Youssef Marzouk, her mother Paola Galli and her neighbor Valeria Cherubini died, the video of Olindo Romano speaking to the consultant Massimo Picozzi was broadcast on the programme Fourth Degree on Rete4. «My wife thought – I don't really believe in this – that someone had done some evil to him. Then the only thing to destroy everything was fire, burning. And then we set the house on fire.”

It dates back to 2007. «That evening I practically didn't have any sensations, honestly, but even when I killed them it wasn't that I felt pleasure or I felt disgust, because for me it was a very normal thing, like when someone kills a rabbit. Then we set everything on fire. Why did we do it? Not to destroy evidence. We had gloves, we had everything, what evidence did we have to leave behind? Then we threw away all the clothes, they didn't find any murder weapons. We burned down the house because that girl there had told us years ago that she was part of a sect and until we got there, until two or three years ago, my wife didn't have a headache or anything, she was fine.”

Olindo Romano told what happened next. Changing clothes in the laundry, washing hands in a wash house along the road to Como. «We took the bag of clothes which was large and divided it into three: we immediately threw one in the bin outside the cemetery, another in Albavilla and another in Lipomo». Afterwards they went to Como, looked at the shop windows, went to eat at McDonald's and returned. «The only thing I tried to do is try to control myself a little, not because I was nervous but because of what I was saying. Because the carabinieri, knowing the arguments we had had and that had always been there, immediately turned on us, especially Marshal Gallorini. Then I had to be careful how I spoke to him. All there. We didn't talk to each other much because we were convinced that we had killed everyone, that's it, we were okay. But then when we went up we learned that one of them was seriously injured. Then I said to my wife: Let's hope this one dies too. Instead he is not dead and we are here».