A Murder That Shocked The Italy

At 6:44 PM on 26 November 2010, Yara Gambirasio left the Brembate di Sopra, Italy gym alone, but never came home 700 meters away. Her family soon phoned the Carabinieri, but despite an investigation involving hundreds of volunteers, her corpse was not discovered until 26 February 2011 in Chignolo d'Isola, 10 kilometers away from Brembate di Sopra. The body showed multiple external cuts, perhaps made by a sharp object such as a nail or a knife, and an injury on the skull.

After evidence of genetic material was taken from the Yara's pants and leggings, forensic scientists investigated and compared about 22,000 DNA profiles and the investigation started for a suspect with matching DNA, referred to as "Ignoto 1", Unknown 1, the identifying nickname given by detectives to the killer of Gambirasio. On 16 June 2014 an Italian bricklayer living and working in the region, Massimo Giuseppe Bossetti, was caught and accused of being the killer.

One of the most complex killing investigations in Italian history ended on 12 October 2018 with the prime suspect imprisoned for life after being arrested through a combination of DNA proof and the disclosure of family secrets.

Massimo Bossetti, 46, was found guilty of killing Yara Gambirasio in November 2010 and dumping her corpse in a field where she was discovered three months later. The 13-year-old had been on her way home from a gym class in Brembate di Sopra, a town close to Milan when she was kidnapped and suffered many injuries.

Italy gripped as trial begins over the killing of 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio.

Bossetti, a local construction worker, was convicted by the Bergamo court to life in jail for the girl’s killing. Judges announced he would lose parental rights over his three children, though they did not grant the prosecutor’s plea to put him in isolation for six months.

His DNA had been discovered on Gambirasio’s corpse and fibers from his van were on her clothing, but, ahead of the decision, Bossetti declared his innocence and questioned the scientific fact. “I might be dumb, a fool, ignorant, but I’m not a murderer,” he said to the court.

The Gambirasio family reacted to the verdict in a statement released through their lawyers, Enrico Pelillo and Andrea Pezzotta. “Now we understand who it was, even if we know that no one will get Yara back to us,” her parents told.

The decision of the year-long trial follows the testing of 18,000 DNA samples in the wake of Gambirasio’s corpse being discovered, in an outstanding operation mounted on the back of public pressure to find her murderer.

Through a sample given by a family member of Giuseppe Guerinoni, police discovered the DNA evidence was a close match to the deceased and in 2013 instructed to exhume his body.

Further examinations confirmed the suspected murderer was Guerinoni’s illegitimate son, sparking a search throughout the region to find who had borne him a child decades earlier. It wasn’t until June 2014 that authority pinpointed Bossetti as the prime suspect, through a DNA match with his mother, Ester Arzuffi, who was married and has rejected the affair with Guerinoni.

The extent of the police inquiry disclosed different other illegitimate children and affairs, including allegations by two men who claimed to have had affairs with Bossetti’s spouse.

The massive operation came to a head with the charge of Bossetti in June last year, after he was stopped at a trap roadblock where authority took his DNA sample under the guise of a breathalyzer test. Bossetti, who has been in custody since his capture, will be eligible to appeal the guilty verdict.