The Sky TG24 special on the Garlasco crime
Garlasco, the death of Chiara Poggi, the condemnation of Stasi, the investigation into Sempio. The stages
THE MURDER OF CHIARA POGGI – THE GARLASCO CRIME
On August 13, 2007, Alberto Stasi, 24 years old, calls the police. Someone killed his girlfriend, Chiara Poggi, 26 years old, found dead in the house where she lived in Garlasco, province of Pavia. On 12 December 2017, the Supreme Court seemed to have closed the very long legal case that followed the murder: Stasi himself was found guilty. In 2025 a new suspect. He is Andrea Sempio, a friend of the young woman's brother, already the subject of investigations (archived) in the past. Here are all the stages of the case.
Garlasco crime, new closure of investigations into Sempio: what happens now
13 AUGUST 2007: ALBERTO STASI REPORTS POGGI'S DEATH
"I found a person killed in via Pascoli, come". With these words Alberto Stasi raised the first alarm to 118 after finding Chiara Poggi on the stairs leading down to the cellar of the house where she lived with her parents and brother, who were on holiday in Trentino at the time. It is thought that a hammer may have killed her, but the murder weapon has never been found.
STASI ARRESTED AND THEN RELEASED
Seven days later, Stasi, a Bocconi student at the time, was accused of voluntary manslaughter. He is the only one under investigation. His overly clean clothes do not convince the investigators: how can he not have traces of blood on him if he was the one who found the victim? On 24 September 2007 he was arrested on the orders of the Vigevano Prosecutor's Office, but the same week the investigating judge ordered his release due to lack of evidence. He remains awaiting trial.
THE FIRST DEGREE TRIAL: STASI IS ACQUITTED
On 3 November 2008 Stasi received the request for indictment from the Prosecutor's Office, with the preliminary hearing taking place on 23 February 2009 with an abbreviated procedure. Prosecutors are asking for a 30-year prison sentence. On December 17 of that year the acquittal arrived. The IT report on the defendant's PC would demonstrate that he was working on his degree thesis at the time of Poggi's death.
STASI ALSO ACQUITTED ON APPEAL
In 2011 the appeal process began before the Court of Assizes of Milan, with the Prosecutor's Office again asking for 30 years in prison or, alternatively, a new trial. A new report would shift the time of the girl's death, thus blowing Stasi's alibi. However, the evidence was not admitted to trial and Stasi was acquitted again. However, the judges recognize that reality "remained unknowable in its many relevant factors".
THE CASSATION REQUESTS A NEW APPEAL TRIAL
A twist occurred in 2013, when the Court of Cassation annulled the second degree acquittal and asked to proceed with a new appeal process and to consider new evidence that emerged in the meantime, including the DNA test on a hair found in Poggi's hands.
THE BIS APPEAL: STASI CONDEMNED
In 2014 the judges of the Assize Court of Appeal of Milan accepted the request to reopen the hearing. Several inconsistencies remain, starting from the small quantity of DNA found under the young woman's nails, but the Prosecutor's Office returns to ask for 30 years in prison for Stasi, also contesting the aggravating circumstance of cruelty. This time the man was convicted, with a sentence reduced to 16 years and without aggravating circumstances.
BACK TO CASSATION: CONVICTION CONFIRMED
The second appeal does not convince either the Milan prosecutor's office or Stasi's defense: the former asks for a more severe sentence, the latter for the annulment without postponement of the sentence or for a new trial. In 2015 the prosecutor of the Supreme Court, surprisingly, pushed for the annulment, but the judges did not agree and confirmed the sentence (albeit at 16 years and therefore not accepting the request to raise it). Stasi enters the Bollate prison.
THE EVIDENCE ON WHICH THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CONVICTION IS BASED/1
In summary, the evidence on which the confirmation of the conviction was based revolves around the belief that Poggi had been killed by a known person who arrived at the scene on a bicycle: some neighbors had immediately spoken of a black bike. Stasi and his family used more than one bike, even more or less compatible with the description of the witnesses, on one of which genetic traces of the victim were found.
THE EVIDENCE ON WHICH THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CONVICTION IS BASED/2
Then again the cleanliness of his clothes, the foot size compatible with that hypothesized for the murderer and the fact that Stasi's (and no one else's) fingerprints were found on a soap dispenser in the Poggi house.
A NEW INVESTIGATE APPEARS, ANDREA SEMPIO
We are now in 2016 when Stasi's defense appeals to the European Court of Human Rights to request a review of the trial. Meanwhile, based on investigations carried out by the same lawyers, a new suspect emerges. It is Andrea Sempio, a friend of Poggi's brother: the DNA found under the girl's nails could be his, Stasi's lawyers claim. In 2007 he was 19 years old.
THE INVESTIGATION ON SEMPIO HAS BEEN ARCHIVED
The following year the investigations into Sempio were closed. "His responsibility is categorically excluded", writes the investigating judge, defining "technical advice on genetic material as radically unreliable". Meanwhile, Stasi's defense returns to appeal to the Supreme Court. With an extraordinary appeal they ask for the final sentence to be revoked due to an alleged "error of fact" committed by the judges who should have re-heard the texts taken as sources of evidence in the first instance on appeal.
CONFIRMATION OF THE CONVICTION
On 28 June 2017, a few weeks after the 10th anniversary of the murder, the Supreme Court confirmed the 16-year sentence for Stasi. But his new team of lawyers doesn't give up. In 2019 they returned to talking about new evidence that would exclude the responsibility of their client and returned to turning to the Supreme Court for a review of the trial. It is not granted.
THE ECHR REJECTS THE REQUEST FOR REVIEW
It seemed that the matter had definitively ended when, in February 2025, the European Court of Human Rights rejected (for the second time) the request for review of the trial, presented by complaining of an infringement of Stasi's right to a fair trial and claiming that in the second appeal trial the hearing of a witness considered "fundamental" had not been examined.
ANDREA SEMPIO INVESTIGED AGAIN
On 11 March 2025 it was discovered that Andrea Sempio was once again under investigation for Poggi's death. On the table there is again the DNA found on the victim's nails (incompatible with that of Stasi). New generation methods and techniques are followed. The charge is conspiracy to commit murder. A week earlier, having received information from the police, he had refused to undergo the saliva test and swab test, which were then ordered in a coercive manner.
ANDREA SEMPIO'S MOTHER SUMMONED TO THE BARRACKS
At the end of April, Andrea Sempio's mother, Daniela Ferrari, was summoned by the Milan police. The woman took advantage of the option not to respond and felt ill. The investigators wanted to have clarification on the times of his son's travels on the day of the crime and on the receipt from the car park in Vigevano (Pavia) which Sempio decided to keep at the suggestion of his parents and which effectively provides him with an alibi.
THE SEARCHES IN THE SEMPIO HOUSE
On 14 May 2025, searches were ordered at Andrea Sempio's home, in Voghera (Pavia), at his parents' home, in Garlasco, and at the home of his two friends, Mattia Capra and Roberto Freddi. Among other things, cell phones and PCs were seized.
THE HAMMER FOUND IN A CANAL
The attention of the investigators then also moved to Tromello, also in the province of Pavia, in search of a possible murder weapon which according to indirect testimony would have been thrown into a canal: the waterway was dredged and several objects were found, including a hammer, which will be analysed.
SEMPIO DOES NOT APPEAR BEFORE THE PM
An interrogation was scheduled for Sempio on May 20th but he did not show up at the prosecutor's office in Pavia. "Hard war without fear" was the message in an Instagram story published by his lawyer. At the basis of the decision of Sempio's lawyers, a procedural issue linked to a "deficiency" in the invitation to appear for questioning. Meanwhile, Tg1 revealed that investigators found Sempio's footprint near Chiara's body, on the stairs leading to the tavern.
ONLY IMAGES, ANALYZED WITH NEW TECHNIQUES
However, only the images can be used to analyze it (the original was scraped): it was found on the stairs leading to the basement of the house in Garlasco, where Chiara Poggi's body was found. In May, the Pavia prosecutor Fabio Napoleone explained that the trace had been analyzed "in light of the new technical potential available, both hardware and software".
15 MINUCES
He then specified that the trace was "highlighted through the use of ninhydrin" and was "left by Andrea Sempio's right palm due to the correspondence of 15 fingerprint minutiae" (in very simple words: 15 points). It cannot be attributed to Sempio for the defense of the suspect and for the expert appointed by the Poggi family. According to the Prosecutor's Office, however, it belongs to the new suspect.
NEGATIVE RESULT DUE TO THE PRESENCE OF BLOOD
For Stasi's lawyers, the photographs allow them to say that the footprint is Sempio's and is mixed with blood and sweat, although the test to detect blood has always given a negative result. The Pavia prosecutors themselves excluded the possibility of talking about blood traces having only the images available.
60 IMPRESSIONS
In the new evidentiary incident started in recent months, the experts carried out further analyzes on almost 60 prints contained in over 30 sheets of acetate. No genetic profiles emerged that could be extracted for possible comparisons. Not even in footprint 10, another finding known to the news (the investigators thought it could be the "dirty hand" left by the murderer).
UNKNOWN 3
In the first week of July 2025 the hypothesis of "unknown 3" returned. From Chiara Poggi's oral swab, taken 18 years ago and again analyzed during the aforementioned evidentiary incident, a minimal quantity of male DNA belonging to an unidentified man was identified: it could not be traced back to either Alberto Stasi or Andrea Sempio.
CONTAMINATION WITH OTHER AUTOPSIES
The trace was compared with the DNA of around 30 men: contamination in recent times was excluded. In August, through further investigations ordered by the Pavia Prosecutor's Office, it emerged that that DNA belonged to one of the bodies of five males subjected to an autopsy before Chiara Poggi, 18 years earlier.
THE FOOTPRINTS ON THE TRASH AND THE REMAINS OF THE BREAKFAST
In the first days of September, eight footprints were found on the artefacts identified among the remains of the breakfast seized 18 years ago in Chiara Poggi's home in Garlasco. There are six prints on the cereal bag and two on the garbage bag. None on the Estate or on the biscuit packaging. The investigating judge, meanwhile, grants an extension for the evidentiary hearing: the parties have been called for 18 December 2025.
THE VENDITTI CASE
In September 2025, the Brescia Prosecutor's Office entered the former deputy prosecutor of Pavia Mario Venditti in the register of suspects for corruption in judicial documents in the Garlasco investigation. According to prosecutors, the magistrate was bribed to exonerate Sempio. Giuseppe Sempio, Andrea's father, was also investigated. A year later the investigating judge of the Brescia court accepted the prosecutor's request to dismiss Venditti's position.
DNA UNDER THE NAILS
In the new investigation, Denise Albani, an expert appointed by the Pavia investigating judge Garlaschelli, asked for the transmission of the "raw data" on the sampling of Poggi al Ris's nails and to the geneticist Francesco De Stefano, who handled the previous analyses. According to the expert report filed in the evidentiary incident on 3 December by the expert, from the biostatistical calculations "with moderately strong/strong and moderate support" the genetic profile found on Chiara Poggi's nails is compatible with the male genetic line of the Sempio family.
WHAT IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO ESTABLISH FROM THE EXPERTISE
Again according to the report, it was not possible "to reach an outcome of identification of a single subject". Regarding genetic traces "it is not possible to establish with scientific rigor whether they come from DNA sources deposited under or above the nails of the victim and, within the same hand, from which finger they come; what were the methods of deposition of the original biological material; why this occurred (through contamination, through direct or mediated adventitious transfer)".
THE EVIDENCE INCIDENT
On 18 December 2025 the preliminary hearing of the evidentiary incident was held in the Pavia court. Alberto Stasi was also present in the courtroom. The experts discussed the male DNA extrapolated from the victim's nails which consultants from the Prosecutor's Office and the investigating judge consider compatible with that of Sempio or the male members of the family. The hearing lasted 4 hours. The material was acquired by the investigating judge and the documents are sent to the Prosecutor's Office to decide whether to request the indictment of the only suspect, Andrea Sempio.
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