Death of Cristina Mazzotti, after 50 years two life sentences

After 50 years two life sentences for the death of Cristina Mazzotti. The 18 year-old girl kidnapped on 30 June 1975 in Eupilio in the province of Como, whose body was found on 1 September of the same year in a dump in Galliate (Novara). The Court of Assizes of the Court of Como sentenced to life imprisonment Giuseppe Calabrò, 74 years old originally from San Luca (Reggio Calabria), and Demetrio Latella, 71 years old, known as 'Luciano', also originally from Reggio but living in the province of Novara, for conspiracy to commit the aggravated voluntary murder of the young woman.

For the two defendants, on the other hand, the crime of conspiracy to kidnap for the purpose of extortion is prescribed and therefore extinguished. The third defendant, Antonio Talia, 73 years old from Africo, was acquitted for not having committed the crime. Calabrò and Latella were also sentenced to pay a provisional sum of 600,000 euro to each of Cristina's two siblings, Vittorio and Marina Mazzot. The wilful multiple homicide, at the basis of the conviction, was not charged for having materially killed, but for having accepted the risk that the kidnapping could end in the death of the hostage, as then occurred. A kidnapping 'commissioned' by the 'ndrangheta was that of 18-year-old Cristina Mazzotti, daughter of Elio Mazzotti, a well-known entrepreneur in the cereal sector, the first female victim of 'mafia' kidnappings.

Cristina was found dead two months after her kidnapping, on 1 September 1975, among the rubbish at the Varallino landfill in Galliate, in the province of Novara, most likely crushed by the abuse of tranquillisers that her kidnappers never stopped administering to her during a very harsh imprisonment, spent in a one-and-a-half metre high hole dug in the basement of a garage and connected to the outside by a plastic tube that allowed her to breathe.

In 1977, an initial trial in Novara against members of the kidnapping gang ended with 13 convictions, including eight life sentences. Still missing from the appeal were the members of the small commando that had gone into action in Eupilio on the evening of 30 June, while the girl was returning home after celebrating her 18th birthday with her friend Emanuela Lusari and her boyfriend Carlo Galli. Fifty years later, the testimonies of Carlo and Emanuela proved decisive in recognising the face of the defendant Calabrò as the one who sat next to the driver of the car used for the kidnapping that evening. As for Latella, a confessed criminal, it was he who indirectly determined the reopening of the investigation, when in 2006 the Rome forensic police were able to attribute to him a fingerprint that had been found on Cristina's Mini 30 years earlier.

Today, at the reading of the sentence, together witha group of students from the Carducci high school in Milan, the same high school the girl attended, were also present Vittorio and Marina Mazzotti, the victim's siblings, to whom the Assize Court awarded a provisional compensation of 600,000 euro each. Statements of circumstance by the defence lawyers who asked for time to read the motivations of the sentence. Appeals are very likely. The defendants remain at large.