Exonerated after 14 years: 'I no longer have a home or a job'

Monica Busetto, the 63-year-old nurse exonerated yesterday in Trento, at the end of the second review of the trial for the death of Lidia Taffi Pamio, presented herself to journalists in Venice today with a face halfway between scared and lost, smiling but melancholic. A crime, which occurred in 2012, for which he spent 14 years in prison as an innocent man.

"I was waiting for this moment - she reiterated today, in the patronage of the Salesians in the Castello district, the place of her childhood - I imagined it anyway, because I was born here and here everyone loves me. Even yesterday in prison - she continued, recalling the detention in Verona - there were people who cried when I left. As a free woman it seemed impossible to be at home because after 10 years always on that bed, in those cells it seemed different to me. I didn't sleep all night".

On the prospects for the future, Busetto recalled that "until this story happened here, I had a normal life. Now I don't have a job, I no longer have a home, but I'm moving forward. Now I'm at home with my dad's wife. And then we'll see, little by little. I don't wish something like this on anyone", he concluded. The lawyers who have followed her for all these years believing in her innocence, after having apologized to her yesterday, are now ready to ask for an account of the unjust detention.

"Once the sentence has become final - said the lawyer Alessandro Doglioni - and we have seen the reasons, we will evaluate whether there are the conditions to obtain compensation for the judicial error. Right now it could be. First of all we have to wait for the filing of the reasons, which will take place within 90 days. Then we have to wait for the sentence to become final, and it will take another 45, so we are already talking about at least 135 days. This means that we are not only going to the year next, but in the spring of next year".

The other lawyer, Stefano Busetto, recalled the point that gave a turning point to the trial: "There was a photograph of a chain of the victim, but it was not found. We bitterly discovered that those photos were never even asked for, and about 3 or 4 days later we understood where we could look for them. A gentleman, who we knew little about, took doors in his face, and 10-12 days later he came to us with the images of the poor lady Lidia Taffi Pamio, who irrefutably they allowed us to derive dimensional data, comparative data. Mrs. Pamio's necklace measured 70 centimetres, and Monica's measured 58 centimetres. We were told by the prosecution that a piece was missing - he concluded - who we were dealing with".