It seems that a kind of “relay” had begun at Elisa’s house a couple of months ago. Her husband, Maurizio, her grandparents and even an aunt took turns to help her with little Luca. That he was a very sweet child and had been desired so much, before arriving to fill the apartment in via Mezzana, in Voghera, with whimpers and then with screams. Elisa, 44 years old, however, was having a hard time: for some time she was afraid of driving, and of being alone at home, she had asked for a break from her job as an employee. Doctors call it “postpartum depression”, it has clear symptoms in the books, it affects up to 15% of women in the first year of their children’s lives (which translates into a variable number between 50,000 and 100,000 women each year), but in a family grappling with everyday life they can resemble a moment of fragility, a bit of tiredness. And so Elisa seemed about her: kind and reserved as always, as everyone knew her in the neighborhood, but a little tired. “Only in the last few weeks things had gotten worse, she had blank heads – said her father, shocked -. She had been to a couple of doctors, they had given her medicines.’
This morning Maurizio left home early to go to work, his grandmother would arrive shortly after. And Elisa, in her abyss of loneliness and suffering invisible to everyone else, must have met her ghosts. When her mother arrived, she found her in a daze, lying on the bed, with the unconscious child next to her. Maybe still alive. The grandmother immediately asked for help, she called 118 and the carabinieri. When help arrived, however, for little Luca – who would have turned one in a couple of weeks – there was already nothing more to be done: his little body lay on the bed, lifeless, the purple marks around his neck. Elisa strangled him, probably without knowing why. Or maybe for those shadows, that weight that she presses on her chest and that doesn’t let her breathe when depression becomes anxiety and panic attacks: vision blurs, reality blurs and a mother can end up losing her reason.
It has happened many times in recent years in our country: 116 in the last six, according to Eures data, 535 since 2003. In seven cases out of ten, it was the father who killed the children: out of revenge against the mother who had left him or that he suspected of treason, above all. In three out of ten cases, however, the ruthless killer was a mother: almost always the victim of mental problems or depression. Too many, not to notice that the issue of support even after pregnancy should be dealt with more carefully by the institutions. Consultants exist, help groups and specialized associations multiply, but awareness is scarce (except for the appeal of some well-known personalities, such as the recent one of the singer Levante), the paths must be sought. And Covid has had its share: isolation and interruption of sociality have weighed in the dramatic way we know on the mental health of the population, especially the youngest and most fragile. Including pregnant women and new mothers.
Elisa is now at the San Matteo Polyclinic in Pavia, in the psychiatry department, in custody. She is in shock and placed on guard: as soon as she recovers, she will be questioned. The Public Prosecutor’s Office of Pavia intervened yesterday afternoon with a terse note to explain the facts and deny what was leaked at first, namely that it was Elisa herself who called her 118 saying she had killed her baby. Luca’s body was also taken to San Matteo, to the Institute of Forensic Medicine, for the autopsy which will be necessary to reconstruct what really happened yesterday morning. Meanwhile, Voghera is a city in shock: the mayor, Paola Garlaschelli, intervened expressing her condolences to the family and explaining that “we are astonished in front of a child snatched from the life by a terrible gesture”. The neighbors tell of a beautiful family, «the portrait of happiness», even if someone had noticed Elisa’s uneasiness: «she had changed, she suffered from a form of depression. But with the child – explained an acquaintance of the family – she was loving, they had been looking for him for 5 years ». The mind returns to similar cases that have hit the headlines in recent years, from the murder of Samuele in Cogne to that of Loris in Santa Croce Camerina (Ragusa) in 2014, when Veronica Panarello strangled her child and then hid his body in a gully and pretend for a few days that it had disappeared. But in Lombardy in particular, that of little Diana remains an open wound, left to die of starvation at 18 months in the cot at home by her mother, Alessia Pifferi. She had been left alone at home, while the woman had spent almost a week with her lover. For her, that daughter of hers, was “a burden”.