Angelo Stazzi, a nurse from Rome, was sentenced to life imprisonment in Italy. In December 2011 a Corte d'Assise sentenced him to 24 years for the murder of Maria Teresa Dell'Unto, 58, a woman with whom he had had a relationship, who died in 2001. In March 2014 the Third Corte d'Assise of Rome sentenced him to life imprisonment for the deaths of five elderly residents of a care home in Sant'Angelo Romano, a small town near Rome, where he had worked in 2009. The Rome appeals court upheld the life sentence for two of those five deaths only, and in July 2016 the Court of Cassation rejected his final appeal. That conviction is final.
The two cases are joined by more than the man. The care-home inquiry grew directly out of the police work that solved the Dell'Unto case, eight years after her death, and the conversations investigators recorded during that work gave them their first reason to look at the deaths of the elderly people in his care.
Stazzi was born in Rome on Christmas Day 1945. He worked as a nurse, first in a large hospital in Rome and later in private care homes outside the city. He married and had two children; by 2011 he was a widower. In the years before his arrest he lived in Montelibretti, near Rome.
One of his daughters later spoke about him in public. She said he had done wrong and should pay for the death of Maria Teresa Dell'Unto, but that she could not believe the larger accusations: to her he had been a good father and not a violent man.
In conversations recorded by investigators, Stazzi called himself "un medico mancato," a doctor who never was.
Maria Teresa Dell'Unto was 58 in 2001. She and Stazzi had known each other through work, and at one time they had had a relationship. She had lent him money more than once, and she had also stood as guarantor for a debt of his, a sum of about 9 million lire.
She died in 2001. Prosecutors later alleged that the killing followed an argument over money, after she refused a new request for a loan. Her death went unexplained for about eight years.
The first investigation into her case ended in 2005 without charges. The judge who weighed the evidence at that stage found it insufficient against Stazzi, and the file was closed.
In 2007 the Rome police headquarters set up a unit to reexamine unsolved killings, the cold case section of the Squadra Mobile, under Vittorio Rizzi. Its officers took up the Dell'Unto file in 2008. Over the following year they built the case against Stazzi, and on October 29, 2009, the Rome police arrested him for her murder at the request of Deputy Prosecutor Pietro Saviotti. He was then 64.
He admitted killing her. In the spring of 2010, a letter he had written from prison was read on national television. In it he said that it was hard to live in prison under the names he was now being called, he asked forgiveness of his own family and of Maria Teresa Dell'Unto's relatives, and he said that he had hidden the truth for years and felt relief now that it was known. His family said they had been shaken by the confession.
In 2010 the Rome judicial authorities sent the file to the court in Tivoli. On September 30, 2010, the preliminary hearing judge (giudice dell'udienza preliminare) of Tivoli committed Stazzi for trial on the charge of murdering Maria Teresa Dell'Unto, with the trial to open on December 2 before the Third Section of the Corte d'Assise of Rome. Her family joined the proceedings as civil parties, represented by the lawyer Massimo Lauro.
Before the judge ruled, Stazzi spoke in court and addressed her family directly. "I ask forgiveness for what I did," he said. "It was an accident. I did not want to do what I did." The prosecution's case was that he had killed her after a quarrel over money.
The verdict was expected in mid-December 2011. That month the Corte d'Assise convicted him of her murder and sentenced him to 24 years in prison. The exact wording of the verdict and any later appeal in that case are not on record. By March 2014 he was serving the 24-year sentence.
While the Dell'Unto investigation was still open and before his arrest, Stazzi worked as a nurse at a private care home in Sant'Angelo Romano, from December 2008 to September 2009. In 2009 seven of its elderly residents died, five men and two women, aged roughly between 70 and 90. Their deaths came within a span of months, between January and October 2009.
The care-home inquiry began with the Dell'Unto investigation. While they were building that case, investigators were authorized to intercept Stazzi's telephone conversations, and what they heard in those recordings led them to the deaths in Sant'Angelo Romano. The Squadra Mobile's unsolved-crimes unit, led by Vittorio Rizzi, carried the new investigation forward, under the direction of the Tivoli prosecutor Gabriella Fazzi. In 2010 he came under investigation over the deaths in 2009 of ten elderly residents of two care homes where he had worked. By May of that year the suspicion was public, and one of his daughters answered it in public.
In November 2011 the investigating judge (giudice per le indagini preliminari) of Tivoli, Alfredo Bonagura, granted the prosecutor's request and issued an order for Stazzi's pre-trial detention in prison on seven counts of voluntary homicide (omicidio volontario). Officers of the Rome Squadra Mobile served the order on him in prison, where he was already held for the Dell'Unto case, in late November 2011. He was 66.
Investigators said publicly that they had found no clear motive.
On October 2, 2012, the preliminary hearing judge of Tivoli committed Stazzi for trial over the deaths of the seven residents. The case was heard before the Third Corte d'Assise of Rome.
At the close of the trial, the prosecution asked the court to convict on five of the deaths. For the other two, prosecutors themselves asked for acquittal on the ground that the evidence left a doubt. Arguing for conviction, they put it to the court that Stazzi had been in search of the "delitto perfetto," the perfect crime, and the prosecutor called his a cruel and narcissistic mind. The defense answered that the case offered no motive and no proof, only hypotheses, and asked for his acquittal on every count.
On Monday, March 31, 2014, the Third Corte d'Assise of Rome found Stazzi guilty of the deaths of five of the seven residents and sentenced him to life imprisonment. The court did not find his guilt established for the remaining two. He was 69.
Stazzi appealed. The Corte d'Assise d'Appello of Rome heard the case on the five convictions and upheld the sentence of life imprisonment for only two of the five deaths. The date of the appeal ruling, the exact wording of its findings on the other three, and which two deaths it upheld are not on record.
He then appealed to the Court of Cassation. On July 13, 2016, it became known that the court had rejected his appeal, and with that the life sentence became final. His lawyer, Cristiano Conte, said afterward that the case had rested on circumstantial evidence and was, in his view, full of gaps: on the cause of the deaths, on whether the acts could be attributed to his client, and on motive.
As of July 2016, Stazzi was serving life imprisonment in Italy, with the conviction for two of the care-home deaths final. He had also been sentenced to 24 years for the murder of Maria Teresa Dell'Unto. No later court decision in either case is on record.
Stazzi was tried in the Italian court system's tier for the gravest crimes. Ordinary criminal cases go before the tribunals, but the most serious offenses, including homicide, are tried at first instance by the Corte d'Assise, and appeals from it go to the Corte d'Assise d'Appello.
A Corte d'Assise is a mixed panel: two professional judges sit with six lay judges, ordinary citizens drawn by lot from lists that the municipalities prepare. Law No. 287 of April 10, 1951, governs their service. To sit, a lay judge must be an Italian citizen of good conduct, between 30 and 65 years old, with at least a middle-school diploma for first-instance courts and a high-school diploma for the appeal courts. Lay and professional judges form one bench in every respect, unlike a jury in the Anglo-American system, which deliberates apart from the judge. The panel deliberates in secret; each member votes on guilt and on sentence, every vote has equal weight, and voting begins with the youngest lay judge and ends with the most senior professional judge. When there is no unanimity, the outcome most favorable to the defendant prevails. The court announces its verdict and sentence, and one of the professional judges later writes the reasons.
Above the appeal courts stands the Court of Cassation, which sits only in Rome, in the Palace of Justice on Piazza Cavour. Its task is to ensure the exact observance and uniform interpretation of the law. It reviews whether the decisions brought before it are lawful; as a rule it does not reexamine the facts or the merits. Under Article 111 of the Constitution, an appeal to it for violation of law is always available against judgments. Where it finds a defect it may set the decision aside or send the case back for a new trial. In Stazzi's case, its rejection of his appeal made the life sentence final.
Life imprisonment, ergastolo, is the most severe penalty in the Italian Penal Code. Article 22 defines it as perpetual, served in an institution designated for it, with the obligation to work and with isolation at night; a life prisoner may be admitted to work in the open air. Under Article 176, a person serving a life sentence may be admitted to conditional release once he has served at least 26 years and has behaved in a way that makes his rehabilitation certain. The release also depends on meeting the civil obligations arising from the crime, unless the prisoner shows that he cannot.
December 25, 1945: Angelo Stazzi is born in Rome.
2001: Maria Teresa Dell'Unto, 58, dies.
2005: The first investigation into her death is closed without charges.
2007: The Rome police set up a cold case section in the Squadra Mobile.
2008: The section takes up the Dell'Unto file.
December 2008 to September 2009: Stazzi works as a nurse at a care home in Sant'Angelo Romano.
January to October 2009: Seven elderly residents of the home die.
October 29, 2009: The Rome police arrest Stazzi for the murder of Maria Teresa Dell'Unto.
2010: He comes under investigation over deaths in two care homes; in May a letter of his admitting the Dell'Unto killing is made public.
September 30, 2010: The preliminary hearing judge of Tivoli commits him for trial for the Dell'Unto murder.
November 2011: A custody order on seven counts of voluntary homicide is served on him in prison.
December 2011: The Corte d'Assise convicts him of the Dell'Unto murder and sentences him to 24 years.
October 2, 2012: He is committed for trial over the seven care-home deaths.
March 31, 2014: The Third Corte d'Assise of Rome convicts him on five of the seven deaths and sentences him to life imprisonment.
Date not on record: The Rome appeals court upholds the life sentence for two of the five deaths.
July 13, 2016: The Court of Cassation's rejection of his appeal is made public; the life sentence is final.