Crime In September 2005, the Onofri family (composed of the spouses Paolo Onofri and Paola Pellinghelli, aged 46 and 43, employed at the Italian Post Office, and their children Sebastiano, aged 8, and Tommaso, aged 17 months) left their apartment on the outskirts of
Parma to move into a renovated
farmhouse at number 27 in the rural hamlet of , on the border with
Sorbolo. At around 7.45 pm on 2 March 2006, the electricity went out in the farmhouse. The family were sat down eating dinner. After five minutes Paolo Onofri went out into the courtyard to check the
electric meter and was attacked by two men with their faces covered by
helmets and
balaclavas, who threatened him with knives and pistols and forced the door to be opened. Once inside, they shouted robbery, pointing the gun at Tommaso and ordering the couple to hand over the money. Paola gave them her wallet with 150
euros in cash, after which the two assailants made the parents and their eldest son, Sebastiano, lie down on the floor, tying them up and gagging them roughly with
packing tape. The alarm was immediately raised with the
police; the parents told the investigators that the two criminals were short and spoke with a marked southern accent, perhaps
Calabrese or
Sicilian. Their son Sebastiano, also questioned in a protected hearing, said that before the break-in no noise had been heard coming from outside the house and that the two kidnappers had brought a lot of dirt into the house; he also highlighted the different attitude of the two, the man with the helmet was calm, while the one with the balaclava was agitated and brutal in his manner.
Investigations The investigations were entrusted to deputy Lucia Musti and Silverio Piro. A file was also opened at the
Bologna . At the same time various actions of solidarity were promoted towards the little boy's family and various appeals were made to the kidnappers to free the child. on 7 March by
Pope Benedict XVI, and on 9 March by the wife of the President of the Italian Republic
Franca Ciampi. The declaration was also supported by the
priest Don Giacomo Spini, who had
baptized the child on 2 April 2005 and
married the couple three years earlier, who made himself available to act as an intermediary with the kidnappers. The educational priest also came forward with the same intention, but the Onofri family refused. Moreover, apart from the 150 euros spontaneously handed over by Paola Pellinghelli, no other valuables had been stolen from the farmhouse; however, the Onofris were not well-off, they had recently taken out a mortgage to purchase the property in Casalbaroncolo and it seemed unlikely that anyone would ask them for a ransom, if not for the mistaken belief that their work at the Post Office (in particular that of their father Paolo, who was director of the Parma Sud Montebello post office) put them in a position to draw on the funds of the postal institution. The police actually received some requests for money, but none of them were found to be truthful. This was done to avoid misdirection, such as the one that occurred when the
Rai 3 programme ''
Chi l'ha visto?'' received a false report of the discovery on the
riverbed of clothes and medicines mendaciously identified as belonging to the child. A revengeful action was also hypothesized, with reference to alleged conflicts with colleagues at the workplace, to a robbery perpetrated in 2001 in the post office where Paola Pellinghelli worked. Another hypothesis was even linked to the previous marriage of Paolo Onofri, which had ended in 1993 and from which a son was born. It emerged that his ex-wife had been having an affair with an inmate in the
Vigevano prison that was suspected of
voluntary homicide and this aroused some investigative interest. The investigators also evaluated other clues, such as a
footprint left in the mud near the farmhouse and the disappearance of the
family dog, which occurred two days before the kidnapping. While the searches continued on without results, the Milanese
psychic Costantina Comotari also intervened. She stated that the child had been killed and that the body had been thrown into the waters of the
Magra river, near
Pontremoli in the
Province of Massa-Carrara, almost 100 km from Casalbaroncolo. On 16 March, the
divers of the
Livorno Fire Brigade inspected the area indicated by the psychic, but the search was unsuccessful.'''' She was later investigated for forgery in relation to the incident. Many other
mediums contacted the investigators to give their "solution" to the case; On 26 March, a painted sign appeared on a road near the Onofri house bearing the words "Have you had enough?", which was interpreted by some as a message from the kidnappers and was immediately erased.
Suspicions about Paolo Onofri and the bricklayers The only lead that seemed promising was the spontaneous declaration of Pasquale Gagliostro. He was a former member of the Parrello clan of the
'Ndrangheta and a
collaborator of justice, who had been recently released from prison. He stated that in August 2005, he had met in a restaurant in , with a fellow countryman who had proposed that he take part in the "lightning kidnapping" of a young child. The target was the son of two postal workers, who would then have been made to pay a ransom using
Poste Italiane money, hopefully within a few hours. Gagliostro, who said he did not remember the name of the person who made the proposal to him, refused to take part. but the investigation did not reveal any connection between the events; the proceedings continued separately and ended with a plea bargain of a sentence of 6 months in
prison. Tommaso's father initially declared that he had carried out anti-paedophilia research and that he had kept the material in order to file a complaint with the authorities. Later, in an interview with
Panorama, he retracted this version, defining the detention of the incriminating material as "a mistake" that he regretted.
Discovery of the murder Attention then focused on
bricklayer Mario Alessi, who had a criminal record for sexual violence committed with an accomplice in
San Biagio Platani in 2000, which had cost him a 6-year prison sentence; the related trial had not yet been concluded. Alessi, who had already been heard by investigators regarding the "gang of Slavs" described by Barbera (and had denied everything, raising the suspicion that the
master builder had invented the story for the sole purpose of asking for money from third parties), had shown himself to be in clear solidarity with the Onofris, himself making public appeals for the child's release. Registered in the register of suspects on 27 March, he presented as an alibi first the appointment with a fellow bricklayer, then his presence in a bar in on the evening of the kidnapping; neither circumstance was confirmed. In addition, the investigators had caught him burning something in the garden of his house and Paola Pellinghelli, when she met him at the police station, said she was convinced that she had recognized his walk as similar to that of one of the kidnappers. Even the two alibis presented by Pasquale Barbera (refereeing a soccer match and being present at a meeting of
Jehovah's Witnesses) were not confirmed. On the evening of 2 April, Mario Alessi led the investigators and the Fire Brigade to , on the banks of the
Enza river, where the child's body had been hidden. The body was found intact, buried under a few centimetres of earth and debris. The autopsy placed the death on the same night as the kidnapping. The body showed signs compatible with strangulation, as well as repeated blows to the head inflicted with a flat object, a
shovel or a
spade. The bricklayer later declared that he had planned Tommaso's kidnapping with the intention of asking his parents for a large ransom, which would have been used to pay off some debts. During the renovation work on the farmhouse, he had in fact learnt that Paolo Onofri had shown Pasquale Barbera a considerable amount of money that he had recently
inherited from a relative. Alessi had thus convinced himself that this meant the family had ample financial resources. He also assumed that it would be easy for them to access further funds through their employer at the Post Office; however, events had taken a turn for the worse within twenty minutes of the kidnapping. Alessi confirmed that the child had been killed because he was crying and "being a nuisance", as well as because of the kidnappers' fear of already being hunted down by the police. Raimondi reported that he had been involved with the promise of obtaining a large part of the ransom and with the lie that the Onofri family was somehow "consenting" to the kidnapping. Antonella Conserva, the only suspect to proclaim her complete innocence, was instead identified as the designated "jailer" of the child during the kidnapping, as well as (following the discovery in Alessi's house of a map of the Casalbaroncolo area) as an active participant in the events of the night of 2 March. In fact, she was supposed to be the one to wait for the two kidnappers in an agreed place, probably somewhere between Strada di Beneceto and Strada del Traglione, on board the
Fiat Tipo registered to her partner, so as to continue the escape towards a nearby ruined building.
Trials The trial began in March 2007. In 2010, the
Supreme Court of Cassation definitively confirmed the sentences of Alessi, as well as of Raimondi, while for Conserva it was necessary to re-hold the appeal trial, after which in 2012 the Supreme Court also validated her sentence. The reasons for the first-instance verdict attributed responsibility for the crime to both Mario Alessi and Salvatore Raimondi, while the two accused each other, irreconcilably, of having committed the murder (committed with cruelty and "without giving room for control, logic and above all a sense of human pity") and of having abandoned the accomplice before this happened. The former boxer's statements were certainly considered truthful with regard to the preparation of the crime: it was he who found the "safe" phone cards that would have been used to ask for the ransom, as well as procuring the helmet, balaclava and weapons to use to enter the Onofri house and (once Tommaso had been killed) to get rid of the clothes used during the "raid". Confirming the mendacity of the subsequent statements, the judges highlighted that, if the two had separated without an agreement, Alessi would have had difficulty leaving the Casalbaroncolo area, since Antonella Conserva had probably "missed" the car meeting at the agreed place and time. Furthermore, the fact that the three had waited two days before meeting again was seen by the court as further confirmation of the full awareness of all of them regarding the crime committed. The first instance judges therefore did not consider the order of 13 May 2006, with which the Bologna had cleared Raimondi of the charge of complicity in murder (accepting as true the version according to which Alessi, before killing the child, had made his accomplice go away on his moped), leaving standing only the one relating to the kidnapping with the "unwanted" aggravating circumstance of Tommaso's death. The role of Alessi's partner was also defined as central and fully involved in the criminal action: the judges highlighted on one hand her aptitude (together with the bricklayer) to find "creative" methods to earn money in ways bordering on illegality, on the other they highlighted some of her actions aimed at trying to escape investigations, for example suggesting to her partner what to say in interviews, informing herself on elements not in the public domain at the time (such as the fingerprints found at the crime scene) or even trying to induce the
barmaid from Casaltone who denied Alessi's alibi to give false testimony to the investigators. == Political reactions ==