Alberto Stasi, convicted of the 2007 murder of his girlfriend Chiara Poggi after two prior acquittals, has been granted probation. Meanwhile, Pavia prosecutors prepare to send a new suspect to trial on the strength of DNA evidence that may point to a miscarriage of justice.
Alberto Stasi, the former Bocconi University economics student who has spent 11 years in prison for the murder of his girlfriend Chiara Poggi, was granted probation on Friday. It is a conditional release that follows work release he obtained three years ago as he serves a 16-year sentence for the killing. He is now in the final phase of a sentence that has been anything but straightforward, handed down in 2015 after he had already been acquitted twice.
The development comes as the case that has gripped Italy for nearly two decades takes another dramatic turn. Pavia prosecutors are now preparing to request that Andrea Sempio, a friend of Poggi’s younger brother Marco, be sent to trial for the murder — on the basis of new forensic evidence linking DNA found under the victim’s fingernails to his family’s genetic profile.
Chiara’s murder
Chiara Poggi, 26, was found beaten to death in the villa she shared with her family in Garlasco, a small town in the province of Pavia, 50 kilometres south of Milan, on the morning of 13 August 2007. Her family was on holiday. Her boyfriend, Alberto Stasi, then 24 and completing a degree in economics at Bocconi, called the emergency services to say he had found her body after she failed to answer repeated phone calls. Investigators established that she had opened her front door to her killer in her pyjamas and that she had been struck with a blunt object, possibly a hammer, that was never found.
The early investigation was marred by significant procedural failures that would dog the case for years. Stasi’s shoes were not seized until the following day. No fingerprints were taken from Poggi’s body. The body was not weighed, a standard procedure for establishing time of death with precision. Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation would later note that the investigative process was “certainly not clear, also characterised by errors and superficiality”, even as it delivered a final guilty verdict.
Two acquittals and a conviction
Suspicion fell quickly on Stasi, who became the sole defendant in what would become one of the longest and most contested criminal proceedings in modern Italian legal history. On 17 December 2009, following an abbreviated trial before the GUP (preliminary hearing judge) of the Court of Vigevano, he was acquitted with full formula — a finding that he had not committed the crime. The prosecution’s evidence, based largely on circumstantial material including blood traces, disputed bicycle tyre marks, and inconsistencies in his account of the morning, was judged insufficient.
The prosecution appealed, and on 6 December 2011 the Milan Court of Assize of Appeal confirmed the acquittal. In April 2013, however, the Supreme Court of Cassation annulled that second acquittal and ordered a retrial at the appellate level. The grounds for the annulment were debated intensively by legal scholars, many of whom noted that the Italian system’s capacity to retry an acquitted defendant multiple times sits uneasily with the European Convention on Human Rights principle of ne bis in idem. This principle prohibits trying someone twice for the same offence. Stasi’s subsequent appeal to the European Court of Human Rights on this ground was rejected in February 2025.
In the retrial on appeal, in December 2014, Stasi was convicted and sentenced to 16 years. The case against him rested primarily on circumstantial evidence: the absence of forced entry at the Poggi home, inconsistencies in his alibi, biological traces on the pedals of his bicycle attributed to Poggi, and disputed forensic readings of blood evidence. The Supreme Court definitively confirmed the conviction in December 2015. Stasi had maintained his innocence throughout every stage of the proceedings and continued to do so. Speaking from Bollate prison in Milan in a television interview, he said: “When they ask me if I killed Chiara, I think they don’t know what they’re talking about. My conscience is clear.”
The New Suspect
Andrea Sempio, now 39, is a friend of Poggi’s younger brother Marco and has been on investigators’ radar for years. He was investigated once before, in 2016, and acquitted. The case against him was reopened in March 2025 on the basis of new forensic evidence: DNA found under Chiara Poggi’s fingernails has now been linked to Sempio’s family’s genetic profile.
Prosecutors allege that Sempio killed Poggi after she rejected a sexual advance. He denies all charges. Pavia prosecutors are now expected to formally request that he be sent to trial, a step that would mark the most significant development in the Garlasco case since Stasi’s final conviction a decade ago.
The new investigation has also uncovered what investigators describe as evidence of misdirection and corruption in earlier proceedings. Notably, the former prosecutor who secured Sempio’s 2016 acquittal is reported to be under investigation for corruption.
If Sempio is ultimately convicted, the implication for Stasi would be profound. He could not be retried: his conviction is final. But Italian law provides mechanisms for revision of a final verdict in the event of new evidence, and a conviction of another person for the same killing would constitute precisely such grounds.
