The story of Serena Mollicone, 18, from Arce, in the province of Frosinone, found dead in June 2001, returns to the courtroom. After the acquittal of the five accused – including the former carabinieri marshal and former station commander Arce Franco Mottola and his son Marco, brought to justice for complicity in assassination – took place today, March 26, in the Assize Court of Annarita Torriero heard in the Rome appeal. Who had an affair with Brigadier Santino Tuzi, who committed suicide in Sorano after revealing important details for the investigation. Torriero's testimony was eagerly awaited after Sonia Da Fonseca, his neighbor, spoke about some of the woman's alleged secrets. According to his words, Torriero told him that he had seen Serena in the barracks on June 1, 2001: the day the eighteen-year-old from Arce disappeared. A circumstance today categorically denied by the person concerned.
The witness
Torriero defined Da Fonseca, without mincing his words, as “a fake”. “I absolutely did not say that I had seen Serena – he declared – and anyone who says it will be prosecuted for defamation.” She, she continued, often went to the barracks to bring sandwiches or bottles of water to Tuzi, because he lived nearby. But he wasn't there on the morning of June 1, 23 years ago. However, before Serena disappeared, he claimed to have seen the eighteen-year-old girl in the area. In some cases, he had even seen her “enter and leave with other friends through the large gate under the new barracks.”
“A good girl in this company”
“But – he clarified – I cannot say whether he entered the structure or not. I saw her outside the building, on the embankment in front of the gate. But inside the building, I never saw her. Torriero appeared very upset in the courtroom, claimed not to remember many details requested by the prosecutor, and responded vaguely to other questions. However, he said he knew Mollicone because his father was his daughter's teacher. “I knew her, I saw her on the Arce course with other boys and I thought: 'how can a good girl like that stay in this company, with the son of Marshal Mottola'.
Facts
Serena's body was found two days after her disappearance in a forest near Arce. It was behind an abandoned trash can, half hidden by leaves. His face was wrapped in a plastic bag. Indeed, according to the prosecution's reconstruction, she was seriously injured in the head. Unconscious, but presumably dead, she was reportedly taken to the Anitrella grove, in the neighboring municipality of San Giovanni Campano, and eventually suffocated. Her presence or absence in the Carabinieri barracks is a fundamental detail to confirm or refute the thesis that, on the last morning of her life, Serena went to the local Carabinieri barracks, to confront Marco Mottola, son of the commander Franco of the time.
The surveys
Indeed, according to the prosecutor's hypothesis, there would have been a violent argument between the two, following which the marshal's son would have made him violently hit his head against the door of an abandoned apartment inside from the station. Behind the argument, according to what has always been supported by Guglielmo Mollicone, Serena's father who died of a heart attack in 2020, there was the young girl's desire to denounce Marco for his drug trafficking activity. A table disavowed by the Cassino Assize Court, which decided in July 2022 to acquit the five accused: Marco and Franco Mottola, his wife Annamaria, and two other carabinieri, Vincenzo Quatrale and Francesco Suprano, respectively involved in the accusations of external complicity in murder and complicity. On October 26, the second degree trial began in Rome.
The suicide of Santino Tuzi
Santino Tuzi shot himself on April 11, 2008, opening a mystery within a mystery. A few days before the tragic act, in fact, she had told investigators that, on the day of Serena's disappearance, a young girl who looked a lot like her entered the barracks around 11 a.m. and never came out. At that time, Torriero said in court today, the brigadier seemed almost crazy: “He was different, he seemed crazy. He claimed that I had never been to his house at the barracks. It was almost as if he didn't recognize me. » Final explosion of a tension of which there would have been several signs previously. The man, according to Torriero, seemed “concerned” about the Serena Mollicone-related lawsuit. He also reportedly began to have sudden mood swings every time they passed the spot where the girl's body was found. “He was no longer the same – recalled Torriero -. But I never asked him about it.”
Read also:
