Via Poma, the biologist Baldi: “Investigating the DNA on Simonetta’s bodice”

A new witness and a false alibi. It was these two elements that ensured that the Rome Public Prosecutor’s Office resumed the investigations on the crime in Via Poma, which took place in Rome on 7 August 1990, thirty-two years ago. The victim, Simonetta Cesaroni was massacred with 29 stabs in the youth hostel office where she had been working as an accountant two afternoons a week for some time. Her killer has never been found. Today, under the lens of the investigators there would be the statements of a witness who revealed that the then president of the hostels, the lawyer Francesco Caracciolo di Sarno, at the time provided a false alibi. Not only that: he falsely claimed that he did not know Simonetta, who, however, had her phone number on his notebook.

The witness would be a collaborator of the lawyer. Her words are confirmed in some old documents. For example, a note from 1992 which shows that immediately after the crime the door of the building where the lawyer lived had dismantled the man’s alibi: “The day of the crime”, one reads among the papers, “it would have been seen from the door returning panting and with a badly wrapped package to his home “, which was a stone’s throw from Via Poma.

However, it must be said that the man’s alibi was confirmed by his daughter and two of her friends, who explained that, at the time of the crime, he had accompanied them to the airport in Fiumicino. Not only that: the genetic traces found at the crime scene do not correspond to those of the president of the hostels. But then: what is the truth? Did the lawyer really lie? If so, why? And why did he claim not to know Simonetta? Above all: can genetic traces thirty-two years old still tell us something? “Basing the evaluations on such ancient finds and analyzes would be incorrect”, says Marina Baldi, the biologist specializing in forensic genetics who analyzed the data of the crime in Via Poma during the trial against Simonetta Cesaroni’s ex-boyfriend, Raniero Busco, later acquitted because he was innocent, “it would be absolutely necessary to evaluate the analyzes made subsequently and possibly, if possible, to arrange for others”.

Doctor Baldi, when were you involved in the Via Poma case?
«In 2004, after the coroner Ozrem Carella Prada, the same who had examined Simonetta’s body after the crime was discovered, handed over to the Prosecutor what remained of the girl’s clothes: a bra, a bodice and two socks. They were all closed together in an envelope in a closet ».

What was his task?
“I made some comparisons between the DNA that was later found on the bodice and that of the various people who resulted from the appraisals (with the opening of the new investigations, the DNA of 30 individuals who revolved around the case of Via Poma was taken. Among these was also the lawyer Francesco Caracciolo di Sarno, ed). I made an evaluation from the biological point of view of all the material that had been analyzed at the time and of that found later ».

Let’s start with the finds of the time.
«On the door of the room in which Simonetta was found dead there were some bloodstains. A piece was removed from the door and the DNA of that blood was obtained with the tools of the time. Another stain was found on the inside of the door and, finally, more blood stains on the phone. ‘

Today we know that that blood did not belong to Simonetta, since it was group A. Simonetta had blood type 0. The blood of the president of the hostels, Francesco Caracciolo di Sarno, was instead group B.
“In the investigation of a crime, the blood group can only serve in some cases, as a factor of exclusion. Group 0 has 40 per cent of the population, A 20 per cent and also group B ».

So the blood type would rule out the lawyer. The killer’s DNA was also derived from those traces. The judges of the Busco trial wrote that “the results were incompatible with the genetic profiles of other people taken together with those of Busco”.
«We are talking about ancient analyzes, which today are no longer taken into consideration because they are not very precise and not direct. Furthermore, as regards the office door, it must be considered that the DNA could also have been left by those who worked in those rooms, perhaps even long before the crime. If that DNA belonged to someone who attended the office, what could its probative value be? “

However, the judges wrote that the DNA extracted from the blood stain on the door knob was considered particularly relevant, since that blood was mixed with Simonetta’s. A sign that the trace was left when the crime took place.
“Unfortunately, there are many critical issues on that DNA. The door, then, was also destroyed: it was impossible to take other traces. Inaccuracies were made when the tests were done on those blood samples. Inaccuracies that have affected the result. Our findings show that the DNA on the door was somehow contaminated and could not be used. Mistakes were made during the inspections, because at the time the DNA was not well known and, therefore, the precautions taken were not adequate. Instead, the DNA that it would make sense to check are those found on the bodice when it was examined in 2004 ».