Dr. Danilo Molducci was a doctor “of great experience” and basically, for his therapies, he “managed himself”. This is what emerged during the second hearing of the trial for the death of Campiano doctor Danilo Molducci, who died at the age of 67 on 28 May 2021, for which they are accused the son of the doctor himself, 40-year-old Stefano Molducci (defended by the lawyer Claudia Battaglia), and the 52-year-old Romanian carer Elena Vasi Susma (defended by the lawyer Antonio Giacomini), both present in the courtroom, were charged with multiple aggravated murders d’Assise of the Court of Ravenna this morning.
According to the prosecution, in fact, his son Stefano would have premeditated the intoxication of his father – already suffering from previous pathologies – with an overdose of the drugs that the 67-year-old had to take. All with the help of the maid, who – again according to the accusatory hypothesis – first bought the medicines also through counterfeit recipes (during the first hearing it emerged that, at the time of Molducci’s death, the woman was already being investigated for this reason), then he would have administered them to the victim. The possible motive outlined by the accusation is economic. According to the investigative hypothesis, that is, the son would have wanted to prevent the father from withdrawing the banking proxies after having discovered substantial withdrawals (so much so that, just a short time before his death, the 67-year-old had hired a private investigator from Trento to shed light on any shortcomings and had contacted a lawyer to sue his son).
The complaint presented by pharmacists: “Too many prescriptions and suspicious handwriting”
In today’s hearing, the Court, presided over by Michele Leoni (subordinate judge Antonella Guidomei), listened to the testimony of various doctors who had treated Molducci and of pharmacists who had prescribed various medicines that the Campiano doctor used . The first to sit at the bench of heads was Giorgia Borghi, pharmacist and former director of the municipal pharmacy 1 of Ravenna (the one in via Berlinguer). The pharmacist, Angela Scorza explains to the public prosecutor, in 2021 had turned to the director of the municipal pharmacy 8 (Molducci stocked up on medicines in both pharmacies) after noticing, starting from spring 2020, “a very high amount of recipes containing prescriptions for many drugs, even heavy ones, such as Diazepalm, Toradol, painkillers and benzodiazepines, which can be abused, even 5-6 boxes for each medicine and even 7-8 prescriptions every two days, both at pharmacy 1 and at 8” registered and signed by Doctor Molducci.
But these recipes, in addition to the suspicious quantity – “we didn’t understand why so many medicines were prescribed for a single person, even though they were valid because Molducci was still registered with the Order of Doctors” – made pharmacists doubt for another reason too : “At the beginning they had a certain handwriting, after a while it changed – reports Borghi – We asked the woman who collected the medicines for Dr. Molducci, who I believe was the carer, and she said that he was very ill and could not to hold the pen in her hand, so she filled out the prescriptions for him. However, the signature was from the doctor, so we could not refuse to give him the medicines. However, in January 2021 we filed a complaint, as we also noticed that the amount of prescribed drugs continued to grow. From that moment, after the complaint, the requests for medicines stopped almost immediately”.
The second witness, Francesco Cattoli, is a colleague of Borghi, a pharmacist until January 2020 at the municipal pharmacy 1 and then at 8. “I informed my directors of the anomalies we had noticed in the recipes, I was amazed by the quantity of medicines prescribed and for the frequency with which they were requested, often even during the night shift, was not appropriate for a single person – says the pharmacist – Furthermore, the recipes did not have a linear writing and presented inaccuracies or corrections. suspicious”.
Molducci’s doctors: “He self-manages the medicines to take”
It is then the turn of the general practitioners who have treated Molducci in recent years. The first to speak is Elena Placci, who assisted the Campiano doctor from 2016 until April 2021 (one month before his death). She explains that she doesn’t know why Molducci had decided to change the family doctor. “He managed himself, he called me to make me requests for drugs or outpatient prescriptions – says the doctor – he called me shortly after we had interrupted the relationship (therefore shortly before he diedndr) to ask me something about a bladder catheter: I replied that he had to call his new doctor, if I remember correctly he seemed surprised, perhaps he didn’t know about the change. However, he usually asked me to prescribe cholesterol medications, gastric protection, I never prescribed benzodiazepines or psychiatric drugs nor did I know he took them.
Even the doctor, she explains, noticed anomalies in the quantity of drugs requested and in the handwriting of the prescriptions compiled by the same doctor, which “in some cases was different”. Furthermore, “just before changing doctors, he called me to ask me to make a request for the insertion of a venous catheter at home to carry out an infusion therapy, which however had never been prescribed for him. So I said no, because these home visits are only made for cancer or terminally ill patients. They had also made a request privately, but they had denied it. I also spoke about this with their son Stefano, who then called me in June 2021 to ask me if I would be available to testify in his favor that his father was using drugs on his own initiative. I replied that I had never prescribed drugs of that kind to his father, while I recall that I filed a disability application for my patient”.
“I know that he often went to the emergency room for ulcers, pulmonary embolism, dyspnea”, explains the doctor. “Do you remember a hospitalization for a benzodiazepine overdose, an acute intoxication from psychotropic drugs and a hospitalization due to withdrawal from the same psychotropic drugs?” asks Stefano Molducci’s lawyer. But the doctor doesn’t remember. The President of the Court asks some clarification questions about the mental state of the 67-year-old who, according to the doctor, “spoke slurred, but as he always did”, and about the medicines she prescribed: “Knowing that he was a critically ill patient with a lot of pathologies and that he made many visits to the emergency room, before prescribing a drug, did he inquire by reading his medical record or not?”, asks Leoni. But the doctor says that for a repeat prescription it was an unnecessary procedure.
The doctor: “The son asked me for an autopsy to protect the carer under investigation for falsifying recipes”
A month before his death, as mentioned, Molducci had changed his general practitioner to Daniela Lorenzi, who treated him for the last month of his life. “Son Stefano told me that his father had changed doctors because he had had a disagreement with the previous doctor about the prescription of certain drugs – he then adds an important detail – The day of his father’s death, Stefano came to ask me for the death certificate and to perform an autopsy to establish the cause of his father’s death, according to him to protect himself and the caregiver because there was the possibility that there were objections from the 67-year-old’s partner, as the caregiver was already being investigated for false prescriptions (after the complaint of the two pharmacists precisely, ndr) and, given that her father abused drugs, he wanted to protect her”. Initially, however, “the autopsy was not authorized by the coroner because there were not sufficient elements, but when he learned of the ongoing complaint he changed his mind and authorized it” .
Dr. Lorenzi also specifies that she “never met Danilo Molducci, since he was bedridden, nor did she ever prescribe him drugs in that month, while she had prescribed him a gastroscopy for stomach problems, a urine test because he had with the catheter, a tac for a previous pulmonary embolism and a request for surgery on a shoulder. He seemed lucid anyway, apart from the pain in his shoulder he didn’t tell me that he was having difficulty writing or moving his hands or arms”. Yet, when the lawyer Battaglia shows her a report from the emergency room regarding a hospitalization for epigastric pain, she says: “The drugs that Molducci had taken on his own initiative for this ailment are not correct: he took medicines to prevent epigastric pain, not to cure it”. At the request of the President of the Court, then, you explain that Molducci presented a D-Dimer (test that is used to detect or not the presence of an inappropriate clot, a thrombus, ndr) with a very high level, “in an obese patient and with his pathologies it was a warning sign for embolism, but it must be evaluated together with other symptoms. However, in these cases an angiotac is needed”, confirms what was requested by Leoni .
The former clinic colleague: “Her house was a seaport, she dispensed drugs to family and friends too easily”
Finally it is the turn of Desiderata Farneti, Molducci’s former colleague and general practitioner for a few years until 2015. “I knew Molducci since 1988 when I was a pharmaceutical trainer, then from 2009 I shared the activity with him in the Campiano until 2015, when I was transferred to Cervia. I knew his whole family, so much so that his son informed me of his father’s death via Whatsapp. “I have to give you some bad news – she wrote to me the day after his death – my father died , probably pulmonary embolism”. The day before the funeral he reiterated the cause of death and told me that they were waiting for the results of the autopsy”.
The doctor then talks about Molducci both as her patient and as a colleague: “Among us doctors we always say that ‘there is no worse patient than a colleague’. He had great experience, he was highly esteemed and far ahead of me, so I couldn’t impose tests, therapies or hospitalizations on him, but I had to respect his superiority – asserts Dr. Farneti – So I couldn’t suggest much, I did what he asked of me, even for the mother, even for the prescription of benzodiazepines “. And on the excessive use he admits: “It was clear that he made a lot of benzodiazepines and Contramal, an opioid, and Tramadol (an analgesic, ndr), it was full of empty boxes and bottles of medicines”. Not only that: “His home was a sea port for patients, friends and family: he was always available, even too much, and the requests he received were too many, it was in the clinic even until 4 in the morning. I also told him as a doctor, “you overuse it”.