Murder of Stefania Rota, the arrested cousin admits. She in the diary: “Ste, watch out for Ivano”

Stefania Rota had a diary, she wrote everything down every day. The diary found in the living room stops at February 11th. She describes in detail: wake up at 8.40, breakfast, petrol, shopping at the supermarket. She too had confided a fear to the pages, speaking to herself: “Be careful, Ste, Ivano … but you already know that.”

Killed on the afternoon of 11 February

The afternoon of February 11 is the day on which his murder is dated, more than two months before the discovery, April 21, with a fractured skull, a hematoma on his face, an injury to the thyroid cartilage, a sign of a last blow . The weapon is not known. Ivano (known as Ivan) is Perico, his second cousin who lives in a beautiful house with green shutters next to that of the woman, in via XI February in Mapello.

The cousin arrested

For days holed up in the house, he was arrested on charges of voluntary homicide. Jeans and blue sweatshirt, glasses, accompanied by his wife by car, Perico was summoned to the barracks at Ponte San Pietro and then taken to the provincial command for the notification of the order of the investigating judge Massimiliano Magliacani. Prison, as requested by prosecutor Letizia Ruggeri, for voluntary homicide. “If I am confirmed, I will go to visit him on Monday”, public defender Stefania Battistelli, who has not yet had the opportunity to read the ordinance, has not much else to say.

First admissions

What Perico will say in the guarantee interrogation, assisted by the defender, will count. Meanwhile, in front of the carabinieri he admitted to having killed his cousin. While he was still in the barracks at Ponte San Pietro, a patrol of plainclothes carabinieri left for a search of the house and other colleagues started looking for something – Stefania Rota’s weapon, bag, keys, telephone disappeared – in the dense vegetation on the sides of the stream that flows in front of the house. It is not yet known what the motive might be, if he will not reveal it, provided that he has not already unofficially done so and that he still wants to speak before the judge. During the days of the murder, his wife originally from Veneto and her daughter were not there.

Who is Ivano Perico, known as Ivan

Perico, a commercial agent in the beer sector, hadn’t worked for some time. It seems that he was closed in on himself. In the village he could not be seen much, there are those who in recent days, when Mapello was still a whodunit, struggled to pinpoint who he was. He talked about it because more people, on the other hand, saw him going for a walk with his cousin Stefania towards Ambivere, someone had also met them at the shopping center.

The phone calls then nothing. She didn’t look for it

Since last summer, Stefania and Ivan, who is married and has a 17-year-old daughter, have often spoken on the phone. Until February 11, when the woman’s cell phone dies with her. He disappears, he doesn’t call her anymore. He doesn’t look for her, not just on her cell phone. She doesn’t really look for her and this fact, for one who heard and saw her frequently, proved to be a strong indication against him. Unlike the few friends she had and some first cousins ​​who were warned that she was no longer seen commuting to and from the house, he was neither alarmed nor alerted. Indeed, to those who ask him «but Stefania?» he replies that she was at the seaside, looking after an elderly man. Thing denied by the daughter of this gentleman: Stefania Rota had already told her that she would not leave her.

The red herrings

A misdirection, according to the investigative hypothesis. Not just with words. According to when reconstructed by the carabinieri of the Bergamo Operations Section – who worked on the case with colleagues from the Ponte San Pietro station and with the investigative unit – the matter of Stefania Rota’s 2011 blue Ford Fiesta weighs heavily. Found the body, the car was not in the garage, not even in the driveway to the left of the house as usual. But not even in the nearby public parking spaces in via Bolis, convenient for those who enter the house to leave on the fly. It was in the parking lot in via Ugo Foscolo, next to the schools. It’s 200 meters from the house, not even many, but putting it there was without logic, as it was located closer, even in the small space in front of the former blacksmith father’s workshop which has been rented out to a building company in Barzana for six years.

GPS and cell phones

That the car was moved when Stefania Rota was already dead is indicated by the track memorized by the satellite anti-theft GPS. The carabinieri tracked down the Ford a few hours after the discovery of the body, but did not move it until May 4 to check if anyone, incautiously, went to pick it up. But since April 21, no one uses it anymore, the discovery of the body makes everything more dangerous. But what proves that Perico himself used it? The investigations have crossed the movements of the car with the telephone cells hooked up by the man. A strong element, even if it is known that the cells do not localize to the millimeter and when one is full of hooks, it diverts the phone to the freest and closest one.

The friends who were looking for her

A shift, moreover, takes place after two friends go to ring Stefania’s doorbell. Receiving no answer, they knock on him, who reassures them: «she’s at the beach, she’ll come back after Easter». The hypothesis that Stefania Rota had died of illness has narrowly failed, while that of her murder has risen, in light of the multiple injuries to her skull. Perico was rarely seen around. He never answered the doorbell to the many journalists who were looking for him, because it is the closest to Stefania as a house and for the testimonies on their walks. With a shy woman who little people know about in the village, he could tell her. At least during the day, he was not seen leaving the house, unlike his wife with the black Dacia Duster who remained in the parking lot in front of the Ponte San Pietro police station on Saturday 13 May. It was the military who took her back to her house, probably upset.

The summons and the search

With the lens of the investigation now focused on Perico, it was perceived by the silence of the investigators, as well as by the shouts of the town (although this must always be weighed), that the investigations were at a turning point. So it was when around 12.20 the gate of the house opened, almost impenetrable to view with the thick hedge that surrounds it. The nose of the Dacia appeared, he got on the passenger side, his wife driving and off to the Ponte San Pietro barracks. A couple of hours later, a plainclothes patrol plus one from Ponte San Pietro took him back home for a search. From there, via delle Valli and then via Gleno.