Andrea Volpe and Nicola Sapone are the two members of the Bestie di Satana, the Beasts of Satan, convicted over both episodes of the group's killings: the murders of Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino in woods at Somma Lombardo in January 1998, and the murder of Mariangela Pezzotta at a chalet in Golasecca in January 2004. Both were also among the six members charged with inducing the suicide of Andrea Bontade in 1998. Volpe confessed, led investigators to the 1998 grave, received 20 years on appeal and was released in March 2020. Sapone, whom prosecutors called the group's executor, received two life terms. He has always denied taking part, and as of the October 14, 2024 ilSussidiario.net report he was still in prison.
The case came to light through Volpe. On the morning of Saturday, January 24, 2004, carabinieri in Somma Lombardo, in the province of Varese, found two young people near the Panperduto dam on the Ticino canal after a road accident. They were Volpe and his girlfriend, Elisabetta Ballarin, who had just turned 18. Both were confused and under the influence of drugs and psychiatric medication, and both were taken to the hospital. The prosecutor on duty that day, Tiziano Masini, went first to the canal and then to the hospital. When he learned there was a chalet involved, he went there with the Varese carabinieri and found the body of Mariangela Pezzotta, 27, Volpe's former girlfriend.
The killing at first looked like the act of two drifting young people on drugs. It turned out to be the end of a six-year story. Within months, Volpe's confessions led investigators to a pit in the woods where two teenagers missing since 1998 were buried, and to a group of friends who called themselves the Bestie di Satana, the Beasts of Satan. The Italian courts eventually convicted eight people over three murders and one induced suicide. Some questions raised at the time, about more victims and about a hidden leadership, were never proved.
Andrea Volpe was from Somma Lombardo. When he was arrested in January 2004 he was 28, and il Giornale described him as a drug addict and unemployed ("tossicodipendente e disoccupato"). Like the others, he frequented the Midnight, the metal pub in Milan where the group met. Sources differ on his standing in the group. Fanpage describes him as one of Sapone's followers. Peter Popham of The Independent called him one of its alleged leaders, and Il Giorno, in 2020, its "leader carismatico," but most sources give the leading roles to Sapone and Paolo Leoni. Mariangela Pezzotta had been his girlfriend and had distanced herself from him about two years before her death. By 2004 he was living with Ballarin at a chalet in Golasecca that belonged to her family.
The courts found that Volpe, Sapone and Mario Maccione carried out the killing of Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino on January 17, 1998. In his statements Volpe described an earlier attempt on the couple, a firecracker placed in the fuel tank of Chiara's car, and said the pit had been dug the night before the killing; Pietro Guerrieri's accounts of both points differed. In the years that followed, Michele Tollis came to suspect him because of a remark at the pub, which Fanpage quotes as "Signor Tollis, noi per aiutare lei non possiamo rovinarci noi" ("Mr. Tollis, we can't ruin ourselves to help you"). Volpe was one of the six members charged over Andrea Bontade's death in September 1998.
On the evening of January 23, 2004, by his own account, Volpe shot Pezzotta in the face at the chalet and then phoned Sapone. He and Ballarin were stopped the next morning near the canal. In custody he was recorded saying "se non c'è corpo non c'è reato" ("if there's no body, there's no crime"). Within weeks he began to talk, first haltingly and then at length, and he led investigators to the pit near the Mezzana cemetery. According to Sapone's lawyer at the 2004 evidentiary hearing, Volpe held that everything had started with Sapone ("tutto partiva da lui"). He also spoke of a "third level" in Turin that gave the group orders, which was never proved. Fanpage quotes him as saying, "Se non ci avessero arrestati ci avrebbero uccisi tra di noi" ("If they hadn't arrested us, we would have killed each other").
Volpe chose the abbreviated procedure, which carries a reduced sentence. In February 2005 the preliminary judge in Busto Arsizio sentenced him to 30 years. He did not appear at the later trial of the members who denied the charges, where defense lawyers called him the one truly responsible and said he had accused innocent people to reduce his own sentence. In June 2006 the Milan Court of Assizes of Appeal cut his sentence to 20 years, taking account of his cooperation, and the Court of Cassation upheld the convictions in 2007.
He was released from the prison in Ferrara on March 14, 2020, at 44, after 16 years of his 20-year sentence. Adnkronos reported that he went home, where because of the coronavirus emergency he had to stay before he could look for work. He told the weekly Giallo that he had joined an Evangelical church and wanted to rebuild his life. According to Il Giorno, he attributed his crimes largely to drug addiction. As of those April 2020 reports, the latest found on him for this page, he was free and living at home.
Nicola Sapone was a plumber from Dairago, in the Milan hinterland; Adnkronos gave his age at the time as 27. Accounts of his place in the group differ. Prosecutors described him as its executor. Adnkronos called him its charismatic leader, Popham its alleged leader, and Fanpage wrote that he laid down the law to the others. Michele Tollis saw him instead as Leoni's instrument: "Sapone era un perfetto esecutore, un automa" ("Sapone was a perfect executor, an automaton").
The courts found that Sapone carried out the killing of Tollis and Marino with Volpe and Maccione. According to Maccione's lawyer in 2004, Maccione proposed killing Fabio, but Sapone made the decision. Fanpage reports that Sapone stabbed both victims. He was among the six charged over Bontade's death; Fanpage reports that after Bontade failed to appear on the night of the double killing, Sapone and others told him, "Se non lo fai tu lo facciamo noi" ("If you don't do it, we will").
In 2004, by Volpe's account, Sapone came to the chalet after Volpe's call, found Pezzotta still alive and finished her with a shovel. SaronnoNews, in a 2023 retrospective, describes the killing as carried out on Sapone's order. Sapone has always denied taking part. At the 2004 evidentiary hearing his lawyer said Sapone held that the orders had come from a demon that possessed Maccione when he fell into a trance. Already held over Pezzotta's death, he was named in the June 3, 2004 custody orders for the 1998 killings.
Sapone did not confess. He was tried before the Court of Assizes of Busto Arsizio from June 2005 with Leoni, Monterosso, Zampollo and Ballarin; his lawyer, Francesca Cramis, also represented Ballarin. While the court deliberated, VareseNews reported, he was among the defendants pacing with their hands behind their backs. On January 31, 2006, he received the heaviest sentence: life imprisonment with three years of daytime isolation, reported in most accounts as two life terms. Cramis was the only lawyer clearly dissatisfied with the verdict, saying the court had not given enough weight to her arguments on the defendants' capacity. On May 15, 2007, the Milan appeal court gave him two life terms with 18 months of daytime isolation, and the Court of Cassation upheld the convictions in 2007.
Sapone went on contesting his conviction. In 2013 his lawyer, Paolo Franceschetti, said he was preparing a request for a retrial, citing a neighbor who heard a shot at 3 a.m. on the night of Pezzotta's death; no outcome of that request was found. In April 2020, Adnkronos reported that Sapone was serving his sentence at Bollate prison in Milan, where he worked. His father said in 2018 that he had shown real remorse and was close to finishing a university degree. As of the October 14, 2024 ilSussidiario.net report, he was still in prison serving a life sentence.
The Bestie di Satana were young people from the Milan hinterland and the lower part of the Varese province, most of them teenagers when the group formed, brought together by heavy metal. They met at metal and alternative pubs between Milan and Varese, in particular the Midnight, a pub on via Altaguardia in Milan that has since closed. According to witness testimony at trial, reported by VareseNews, the group changed in the summer of 1996 and began to take the shape of a sect, and some members left. Members used drugs, held affiliation rituals and staged what they called black masses. Witnesses later told investigators about rites in which they cut themselves and drank blood from a cup.
Besides Volpe and Sapone, the members later convicted were these. Paolo Leoni, known as "Ozzy" after the singer Ozzy Osbourne, was from Corsico and was 27 when arrested; prosecutors called him the ideological leader. He grew up largely without his father, Corrado Leoni, who was interested in the occult and in 1985 killed the singer Maddalena Russo and was committed to a criminal asylum. Eros Monterosso, 27, of Cesano Boscone, was known in the group as "Caos." Marco Zampollo, 26, was from Brugherio. Pietro Guerrieri, known as "Wedra," was a 29-year-old factory worker from Brugherio. Mario Maccione, also from Brugherio, born in 1980, was nicknamed "Ferocity" and acted as the group's "medium," claiming contact with spirits; he was a minor in 1998. Elisabetta Ballarin, Volpe's girlfriend in 2004, was not part of the group in 1998, when she was 13, and was tried only over the 2004 killing.
Investigators said the group had about ten members. Fabio Tollis's father counted 13 people around it.
Fabio Tollis was 16 and lived with his parents in Cologno Monzese, on the edge of Milan. He loved metal. In 1995 he founded a band, Infliction, which released two demos, and he played drums. His father, Michele, a construction worker, later said Fabio saw the metal scene as a teenage game and enjoyed playing music, and that when he understood the people around him were serious, they decided to kill him. Fabio was close to his parents. On the day he disappeared, he told them he was going out for pizza with friends.
Chiara Marino was 19 and was Fabio's friend. Both had been drawn into the group and, in the words of a 2006 VareseNews account, were fascinated by Satanism but were regarded by the others as "weak" and "unreliable." At trial, the defense lawyer Guglielmo Gulotta read from Chiara's diary and from a piece Fabio had written, both describing a struggle between God and Satan. Her parents, Savino and Lina Marino, attended the trial.
According to testimony at the 2004 evidentiary hearing, there had been earlier attempts on the couple. Both Volpe and Guerrieri described a firecracker placed in the fuel tank of Chiara's car, which only slightly damaged it. A 2005 VareseNews chronology also refers to an attempt to kill Chiara with an overdose.
On January 17, 1998, Fabio and Chiara left the Midnight with members of the group and were taken to a wood near the Mezzana cemetery in Somma Lombardo, on the pretext of a ritual. That night they were stabbed and struck with a club and buried in a pit about two meters deep. The courts found that Sapone, Volpe and Maccione carried out the killing. Some reports give the date as the night of January 17 to 18. Guerrieri said the pit had been dug two or three weeks earlier; Volpe said it was dug the night before.
The motive found by the courts was that the two were considered traitors, for wanting to leave the group or for being weak. Fanpage, in a 2016 account, reports that Chiara was condemned for wanting to leave and that Fabio was condemned after he refused to take part in killing her. Maccione's lawyer said in 2004 that Maccione proposed killing Fabio but that Sapone decided.
Afterward, the killers spread the story that the couple had run away together. Milan prosecutors treated the case as a voluntary disappearance.
Michele Tollis did not accept that explanation. From 1998 to 2004, six years and four months, he investigated on his own. He went to the Midnight and bought drinks for people who might talk. He kept notes, phone numbers and tips, documented meetings and séances, attended 84 metal concerts across Europe and contacted well-known Satanists, who distanced themselves from the crime. The family appealed for information on the RAI program "Chi l'ha visto?" without result. He later testified that the group had become frequent visitors to his home after Fabio disappeared, without giving real help, and that when he began to suspect a sect he received threats. He said he had seen bite marks and burns on his son before he vanished and came to believe they were punishments.
According to Fanpage, a remark Volpe made convinced Tollis that Volpe had harmed his son. He repeatedly took his suspicions to the Varese carabinieri. In Il Giornale's words, investigators long treated it as the theory of a grieving father. Without evidence, nothing moved.
Andrea Bontade, 19, was from Gallarate. His brother, Gianluca, testified in 2005 that Andrea had joined the group for the music, that he changed over time, and that he removed the crucifixes from their home. According to the prosecution, he was supposed to take part in the January 1998 killing and did not show up, and the group then treated him as a traitor. VareseNews reported that he was humiliated and given hallucinogens for months. A 2024 ilSussidiario account says instead that he helped dig the grave; the sources disagree.
On the night of September 21, 1998, after drinking and taking drugs at the Midnight, according to Fanpage, Bontade drove his car at about 180 km/h into a wall on the Malpensa expressway near Gallarate and died. A witness said he did not brake. Prosecutors charged six members with inducing his suicide: Leoni, Zampollo, Monterosso, Maccione, Volpe and Sapone. Gianluca Bontade told the court that about a month after the funeral, six red candles appeared on his brother's grave, which the family had not placed there. Several sources date the death to September 1998; two VareseNews reports from 2004 and 2005 give 1999.
Mariangela Pezzotta was 27 and lived in Somma Lombardo, where she worked at the municipal nursery school; after her death her colleagues there published an obituary. She had been Andrea Volpe's girlfriend and had distanced herself from him about two years before she died. Her father, Silvio Pezzotta, still marks each anniversary of her death in public. In a message quoted by VerbanoNews in January 2025, he wrote: "Il tempo non cancella il ricordo indelebile della Tua presenza. ciao Mary." ("Time does not erase the indelible memory of your presence. Bye, Mary.")
On the evening of January 23, 2004, Volpe asked her to the chalet in Golasecca where he lived with Elisabetta Ballarin; the chalet belonged to the Ballarin family. According to Volpe's later account to prosecutors, reported by Peter Popham of The Independent, the three had dinner and toasted with champagne. Pezzotta knew about the 1998 killings, Volpe said, and had threatened to expose them. He said he told Ballarin to take a rifle and make sure Pezzotta did not leave the room. When Pezzotta broke down and shouted that he had given her "10 years of hell," he shot her in the face with a .38 Special revolver that had been taken from the home of Ballarin's father.
Volpe then called Nicola Sapone. By Volpe's account, Sapone came to the chalet, found Pezzotta still alive, said "You don't even know how to kill someone," and finished her with a shovel. She was buried in a shallow grave in the garden. The plan was to hide her car by dumping it in the canal. Before that could be done, the carabinieri stopped Volpe and Ballarin.
Who struck the final blows was disputed at trial. Volpe and the prosecution said Sapone. Ballarin, who had the same lawyer as Sapone, said Volpe did it himself. The courts accepted the prosecution's version.
At the chalet, Masini found signs of a clumsy attempt to clean up and objects with Satanist symbols, and he suspected something more than a drug-fueled killing. Chief prosecutor Antonio Pizzi of Busto Arsizio and the carabinieri were at first skeptical.
In the days that followed, Michele Tollis contacted investigators. He told them Volpe belonged to the group that was the last to see his son and Chiara leave the Midnight. Investigators also had Pezzotta's diary and prison wiretaps of Volpe, including the remark about bodies quoted above. Volpe's statements came only weeks after his arrest. He led investigators to the woods in the Ticino park between Somma Lombardo and Arsago Seprio. In late May or early June 2004, the remains of Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino were found in the pit near the Mezzana cemetery, with items including latex gloves, a shovel blade and cigarette butts. Clothing belonging to the two was recovered during the excavation.
Announcing the case in June 2004, officials described a group of about ten members from Milan and Somma Lombardo and said the two had been killed during a ritual, according to the Catholic News Agency. Arrests followed through the summer. Sapone, already held over Pezzotta's death, was the first of the group to be arrested after Volpe. On June 3, custody orders were issued for Volpe, Sapone, Guerrieri and Maccione. On July 28, Leoni, Monterosso and Zampollo were arrested. On August 25, Massimiliano Magni, another member who was a minor in 1998, was arrested.
Investigators pursued two further lines. One was whether an outside figure directed the group; Volpe spoke of a "third level" in Turin that gave orders, and Guerrieri said Maccione claimed contact with a "Setta X" in Turin. Neither was ever proved. The other was a series of deaths of young people in the area, several by hanging, that had been filed as suicides. Masini later said investigators could not gather enough evidence to link them to the group, partly because of the time that had passed and partly because witnesses would not cooperate. He left the case in December 2004 on transfer to Varese.
In December 2004 the investigation was formally closed, with fourteen charges against ten defendants. All seven group members were charged with criminal association. Volpe, Ballarin, Sapone, Leoni, Zampollo and Monterosso were charged with Pezzotta's murder as planners or perpetrators, and Volpe, Ballarin and Sapone with concealing her body. Six were charged over Bontade. Ballarin's father, Alberto Ballarin, a journalist, was charged with manslaughter for failing to secure the revolver; he died in the summer of 2005. Another man, Andrea Basciu, was charged with helping cover up a car arson.
The three members who confessed chose abbreviated proceedings, which carry a reduced sentence. In February 2005 the preliminary judge in Busto Arsizio sentenced Andrea Volpe to 30 years and Pietro Guerrieri to 16 years. Mario Maccione, tried by the Milan juvenile court for the double murder, was sentenced to 19 years around April 2005. Massimiliano Magni was acquitted because the evidence against him was not considered decisive.
The trial of the members who did not confess opened before the Court of Assizes of Busto Arsizio on June 20, 2005, presided over by Judge Anna Azzena. Sapone, Leoni, Monterosso and Zampollo were tried for the three murders and for Bontade's death, and Ballarin for the Pezzotta killing only. The prosecutors were Pizzi and Masini. The case rested on the confessions of Volpe, Maccione and Guerrieri and on evidence gathered afterward that, VareseNews wrote, generally but not always confirmed them. Volpe did not appear at the trial.
Witnesses included Michele Tollis, Gianluca Bontade, Mariangela Pezzotta's parents and a carabinieri officer who described what Volpe and Ballarin said at the hospital. Tollis testified that heavy metal concerts were places where sects recruited, and named Leoni as the real leader, citing a former girlfriend of Leoni's who described his obsession with the occult and a room painted black in his home.
The defense attacked the credibility of the three who confessed, pointing to contradictions in accounts given years apart. Monterosso's lawyer Pasquale Lepiane said Volpe had spoken only to reduce his sentence. Gulotta presented an expert report describing Monterosso as having a borderline personality disorder, noted that he had not personally shed blood, and played a prison wiretap of October 19, 2004, in which Sapone told his father that "Ozzy," Eros and Marco Zampollo had nothing to do with it. Leoni's lawyer, Ettore Traini, maintained his client was innocent.
On January 31, 2006, the court convicted all five. Sapone received life imprisonment with three years of daytime isolation, reported in most accounts as two life terms. Leoni and Zampollo received 26 years each, Monterosso 24 years, and Ballarin 24 years and three months. The court rejected the charge of criminal association, and the prosecution appealed that point. Pizzi said the court had accepted the prosecution's case. Michele Tollis called the verdict "the beginning of the end." Gianluca Bontade said the family had always believed his brother's death was not an ordinary suicide. Ballarin's mother, Cristina Lonardoni, said Volpe had once again bound her daughter to him.
The appeal of Volpe, Guerrieri and Maccione opened in Milan on May 24, 2006. In June 2006 the Milan Court of Assizes of Appeal cut Volpe's sentence from 30 years to 20, taking account of his cooperation, and Guerrieri's from 16 years to 12 years and eight months. Maccione's juvenile sentence was reduced on appeal to 16 years because he had been a minor.
The appeal of the other five opened on May 8, 2007, before the second section of the Milan Court of Assizes of Appeal. On May 15, 2007, according to SaronnoNews, the court increased the sentences. Sapone received two life terms with 18 months of daytime isolation. Leoni, given 26 years at first instance, received life imprisonment with nine months of daytime isolation. Zampollo's sentence rose to 29 years and three months and Monterosso's to 27 years and three months. Ballarin received 23 years.
The Court of Cassation upheld the convictions in 2007; SaronnoNews gives the date as October 25, 2007. The final ruling, as summarized by Fanpage and Il Giornale, held the members responsible in their various roles for the murders of Tollis, Marino and Pezzotta, the concealment of bodies and the induced suicide of Andrea Bontade. On November 9, 2007, an appeal court in Brescia set Maccione's sentence at 19 years and six months, up from 16.
Leoni, like Sapone, went on contesting his conviction. His lawyer, Paolo Franceschetti, asked for a retrial. In April 2013 the Milan Court of Appeal rejected Leoni's request. The defense had argued that the pit could not have been dug with the tools described, that the victims' clothes showed no bloodstains and that cigarette butts at the site suggested a later date of death. The court acknowledged doubts about the reliability of Volpe, Maccione and Guerrieri but held that this did not mean they had lied about Leoni.
Pietro Guerrieri was the first to leave prison. He was the first member to show remorse, cried at trial and was the only one to pay compensation to the families of Fabio Tollis and Chiara Marino, according to ilSussidiario.net. After about seven years, he was placed in a rehabilitation community in May 2012 and was fully free by 2013.
Elisabetta Ballarin studied in prison. After seven years she was granted semi-liberty to study, earned a degree in art education from the Accademia di Santa Giulia in Brescia in 2012 and a further degree in graphic design and communication in 2015, and in 2013 worked as a tour guide on Monte Isola. She petitioned the President of the Republic for a pardon, a request also signed by the mayor of Brescia, Adriano Paroli. On May 12, 2017, the Brescia surveillance court granted her probation, and she no longer had to return each night to Verziano prison.
Mario Maccione was released in October 2017 after about 13 and a half years, with good conduct and a general pardon (indulto) counting toward his sentence. In 2024 he was living in Sardinia and opened an online listening service for people dealing with addiction and depression. Michele Tollis called the idea absurd and potentially dangerous, according to Il Giornale; Maccione said Tollis had never commented.
Andrea Volpe followed on March 14, 2020, after 16 years, as described in his section above.
As of the most recent sources found for this page, Nicola Sapone and Paolo Leoni were still in prison; Sapone's situation is set out in his section above. Leoni was held at Sanremo in 2013. In January 2018, his mother, Carla, told Il Giorno that he had been in prison since he was 27, had never received a single hour of leave, worked making window frames and was innocent and had "never been a Satanist." ilSussidiario.net reported on October 14, 2024, that both were still serving life sentences. No source found for this page gives the release status of Marco Zampollo or Eros Monterosso; L'Espresso wrote in September 2023 that nearly all the members had finished their sentences.
Several deaths have been linked to the group in the press. None has led to a conviction.
Andrea Ballarin, 22, no relation to Elisabetta, was found hanged near a school in Somma Lombardo in 1999 or 2000; he had been in contact with Volpe. Volpe at one point told investigators it was not a suicide, then retracted, and investigators found nothing to support it. Doriano Molla was found hanged in the woods of Cavaria con Premezzo in 2000; the case was archived, and his mother, who never accepted the outcome, later took her own life. Christian Frigerio disappeared on November 14, 1996, at 23; prosecutors in Busto Arsizio and Monza looked at both his case and Molla's and archived them. Other cases mentioned at the time included a young man found hanged in Legnano in 2004 and a heroin overdose in 2000.
In June 2008, Mario Maccione told Il Giornale that the group had killed about 18 people, that bodies were buried in woods and never found, and named, among others, Andrea Ballarin, Doriano Molla and the custodian and florist of the Legnano cemetery, Angelo Lombardo and Luca Colombo. No new investigation is reported to have followed. The 2021 authors Fabio Sanvitale and Armando Palmegiani, who worked from the trial records, described Maccione as the least reliable of the group because his statements kept changing.
The Satanist framing itself has been questioned. Popham, writing in 2004, found the evidence of Satanic ritual thin. Sanvitale and Palmegiani found no sign of a ritual at the Somma Lombardo site, concluded the group lacked the features of a sect and said each member had his own motive, from wanting new experiences to revenge; they found no evidence of the Turin "third level." In 2006 a Corriere della Sera report by Luigi Offeddu noted that a headline linking the group to a murder in Rome was misleading and that no investigation was underway. The 2014 film "In Nomine Satan," directed by Emanuele Cerman, suggested a larger organization behind the group and that innocent people were convicted. These are claims and opinions. The courts' findings are the convictions above.
Michele Tollis bore his own legal costs and, according to L'Espresso, received no compensation. He met Andrea Volpe in prison in 2006 and said he saw no sincere remorse. He recalled Volpe telling him, "When we killed Fabio, we hadn't smoked even one joint," which he takes as proof that the killing was planned. In 2023, at 75, he said he had nothing to reproach the justice system for and accepted that prison is meant to rehabilitate, but would not forgive. "I want to die certain that I have not forgiven and will not forgive," he told L'Espresso. Fabio's grave in Cologno Monzese is visited by metal fans from around the world, and Tollis has kept up friendships with metal musicians, saying the violence came from the group, not the music.
Silvio Pezzotta posts a photo and a message on each anniversary of his daughter's death. The case has been the subject of books, a stage play and the 2014 film.
1995: Fabio Tollis founds the band Infliction.
Summer 1996: by witness accounts, the group begins to take the form of a sect.
January 17, 1998: Fabio Tollis, 16, and Chiara Marino, 19, are killed in woods at Somma Lombardo and buried.
September 21, 1998 (1999 in some reports): Andrea Bontade, 19, dies when his car hits a wall near Gallarate.
1998 to 2004: Michele Tollis searches for his son.
January 23 to 24, 2004: Mariangela Pezzotta, 27, is killed at a chalet in Golasecca; Volpe and Ballarin are stopped and arrested.
Late May to early June 2004: the remains of Tollis and Marino are found.
June 3, July 28 and August 25, 2004: custody orders and arrests of the other members.
December 16, 2004: investigation closed; ten defendants charged.
February 2005: Volpe 30 years, Guerrieri 16 years (abbreviated trial).
About April 2005: Maccione 19 years (juvenile court); Magni acquitted.
June 20, 2005: trial opens in Busto Arsizio.
January 31, 2006: Sapone life, Leoni and Zampollo 26 years, Monterosso 24, Ballarin 24 years and three months; criminal association rejected.
June 2006: Volpe cut to 20 years, Guerrieri to 12 years and eight months.
May 15, 2007: Milan appeal: Sapone two life terms, Leoni life, Zampollo 29 years and three months, Monterosso 27 years and three months, Ballarin 23 years.
October 25, 2007 (per SaronnoNews): Court of Cassation upholds the convictions.
November 9, 2007: Maccione's sentence set at 19 years and six months.
April 2013: retrial request for Leoni rejected; Guerrieri free by 2013.
May 12, 2017: Ballarin granted probation.
October 2017: Maccione released.
March 14, 2020: Volpe released.
October 14, 2024: Sapone and Leoni reported still in prison (latest source found).