First, her boyfriend hit her with a stone. Then he set it on fire. Finally, she threw her body into a cliff. The assize court chaired by Vincenzo Terranova sentenced Pietro Morreale, the twenty-year-old who murdered Roberta Siragusa on the night between 23 and 24 January 2021, in the parking lot of the Caccamo sports field to life imprisonment. She was twenty, she. In the courtroom on the ground floor of the Palermo courthouse, Roberta’s parents are present to attend the reading of the device, the judges remained in the council chamber for ten and a half hours. “Justice is done. We would not have accepted anything less than life imprisonment – her mother, Iana Brancato whispers in tears -. For how she took my daughter’s life, she must not have one of her more than hers”.
In the courtroom there are also the brother of the victim and about thirty friends, with the shirt that depicts the face of the young woman killed. It says: “Justice for Roberta”. On the other hand, there is no defendant, who has chosen to wait for the verdict of the court in prison.
The sentence accepts the requests of the public prosecutor, the deputy prosecutor of Termini Imerese Giacomo Barbara, who had asked for life imprisonment for Pietro Morreale: in the indictment he had emphasized “the certainty of the guilt of the accused” and his premeditated gesture, committed for jealousy. So the magistrate retraced the dramatic phases of that evening: “He was inside the car with Roberta, it was he who moved the car from the sports field and tried to call other friends while Roberta’s body was still on fire . It was he who dragged Roberta’s burning body and hid it in the steep slope “. A meticulous reconstruction that of the prosecutor directed by Ambrogio Cartosio, supported by the investigations of the carabinieri of the Compagnia di Termini, who retraced moment by moment the movements of the accused that cursed night, and also his attempts to create an alibi. For this case, technical activities and surveys of the Scientific Investigations Department were implemented. And, in the end, what emerged for the prosecutor is “the evidence of proof”.
Femicide by Roberta Siragusa, the shock video of the crime shown at the trial
The prosecutor said: “It was a murder, and not a suicide, as the defendant claimed during the trial.” Morreale stated that Roberta had set herself on fire. But it was denied point by point, as also reiterated by the pool of lawyers who supported the family members who were in the civil action: the lawyers Giovanni Castronovo, Giuseppe Canzone, Simona Lo Verde and Sergio Burgio.
Caccamo remembers Roberta Siragusa a year after the femicide. Mom: “The sky as dark as our hearts”
by Salvo Palazzolo
There is no doubt about the power of attorney. Before her, the girl was hit in her face: with fists and with a stone. Then, her boyfriend burned her in the parking lot of the Caccamo sports field, while she was still alive. An atrocious end. The body was then loaded onto the car and thrown into a cliff at the foot of Monte Rotondo, just outside the town. To nail Morreale there is also a video acquired by the carabinieri a few days after the crime, made by a shop’s camera. The prosecutor showed it in the courtroom: in the images you can clearly see the parked car, a Fiat Punto, at a certain point there is an explosion. Pietro Morreale witnessed his girlfriend’s agony, and he did nothing to save her. After he got rid of the body, he went home to sleep. The next morning, he showed up at the carabinieri barracks, telling a pile of lies: “First Roberta did so with petrol, then she threw herself into the cliff.” That morning, Morreale presented himself with his father and his lawyer, immediately led the investigators to the place where the girl’s body was. A story that still has many dark sides. He says his mother: “Now we can’t stop, whoever helped him kill my baby has to pay”.