Murder of Chiara Poggi

Chiara Poggi, a 26-year-old economics graduate, was found fatally struck with a blunt object on the morning of 13 August 2007 inside the villa where she lived with her family in Garlasco, in Italy's Province of Pavia. The weapon was never identified or recovered. Poggi was alone in the house at the time, as her parents and brother were away on holiday; investigators found no signs of forced entry and concluded she had opened the door herself, while still in her pyjamas, to someone she knew. Her boyfriend, Alberto Stasi, an economics student who later became an accountant, reported the discovery of her body to police.

Suspicion quickly centered on Stasi. His shoes, which he said he wore while walking through the blood-marked interior of the villa while searching for Poggi, showed no trace of blood — a discrepancy a 2014 forensic report concluded was inconsistent with his account. Two witnesses reported seeing a black women's bicycle leaning against the villa's wall around the time of the killing; Stasi's family owned bicycles of both a men's and a women's model, and biological material from Poggi, though not blood, was later found on the pedals of his own burgundy bicycle. A report commissioned seven years later by a lawyer representing the Poggi family as civil party suggested the pedals from the two bicycles might have been swapped; prosecutors themselves rejected that theory at a 2014 appeal hearing as "mathematically excluded." Genetic material recovered from under Poggi's fingernails produced male markers described as compatible with, but not conclusively matching, Stasi; according to media leaks, the same material also corresponded to at least two other, unidentified male profiles. A hair found at the scene lacked a follicle and yielded no usable DNA.

Stasi was arrested in September 2007 and released days later for insufficient evidence. He was acquitted at his first trial before the Court of Vigevano in 2009 and again on appeal in Milan in 2011. In 2013, the Supreme Court of Cassation annulled the second acquittal and ordered new DNA testing on hair and fingernail evidence. At a further appeal in December 2014, despite the absence of a DNA match, Stasi was convicted and sentenced to 24 years, later reduced to 16 under Italy's abbreviated-trial procedure; the Supreme Court of Cassation finalized that conviction and sentence on 12 December 2015, describing the killing as an act of rage without identifying a specific motive. Stasi has continued to maintain his innocence and has unsuccessfully sought review of the verdict, including rejected appeals to the Supreme Court of Cassation in 2021 and to the European Court of Human Rights in 2023 and again in 2025. He entered a work-release program in January 2023 and, under a 2018 agreement, has been paying civil compensation to the Poggi family.

In March 2025, investigators reopened aspects of the case after new forensic analysis of previously untested DNA recovered from under the victim's fingernails indicated a male genetic profile that did not match Stasi.