Murder of Sarah Scazzi

Fifteen-year-old Sarah Scazzi, a hotel-management student, was reported missing by her mother on 26 August 2010 in Avetrana, in the province of Taranto, Italy. She had left home around 2:30 p.m. to visit her cousin Sabrina Misseri, a few hundred metres away, intending to go to the seaside with her and a friend.

Early media coverage focused heavily on Sarah's private life, including her diary and Facebook profile, and some coverage suggested she might have run away. Her family, including Sabrina, publicly supported the kidnapping theory and made television appeals for her return. Investigators initially explored the possibility that she had been lured away by someone she met online.

On 29 September 2010, Sarah's mobile phone was found partially burned in a field near her home by her uncle, Michele Misseri, who claimed he could find his niece, drawing suspicion toward him. On 6 October 2010, after an interrogation lasting about nine hours, Misseri confessed to killing Sarah. He initially said the killing followed an attempted rape, a claim he later retracted after the autopsy found no evidence of sexual violence. He led investigators to a water-collection well in the Contrada Mosca countryside, where Sarah's body was recovered. The discovery was announced live on the Rai program Chi l'ha visto?, with Sarah's mother present as a guest. Sarah was buried on 9 October 2010 at the municipal cemetery of Avetrana.

Misseri subsequently revised his account several times. On 15 October 2010, he implicated his daughter, Sabrina, saying Sarah had died during an argument. Sabrina was arrested the next day on charges of complicity in murder. Investigators attributed her motive to jealousy over Sabrina's relationship with a young chef the cousins both knew. On 26 May 2011, Sabrina's mother, Cosima Serrano, was arrested on charges of complicity in murder and kidnapping. A key piece of evidence was the testimony of a florist who initially said he saw two women forcing Sarah into a car, though he later expressed uncertainty about whether he had witnessed this or dreamed it; courts at the first two levels found his account credible.

The trial opened before the Corte d'Assise of Taranto on 10 January 2012. On 20 April 2013, the court sentenced Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano to life imprisonment for Sarah's murder, and Michele Misseri to eight years for suppression of a corpse and tampering with evidence; other relatives received shorter sentences for helping conceal the body. The Court of Assizes of Appeal of Taranto confirmed these sentences on 27 July 2015, and the Supreme Court of Cassation confirmed them on 21 February 2017, along with shorter sentences for other defendants convicted of aiding and abetting.

In its written reasoning, the Court of Cassation found that Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano killed Sarah and staged her disappearance as a stranger kidnapping while helping to conceal her body. The court found that the strangulation, carried out with a belt, showed no sign of a struggle, indicating it required two people acting together, and that only Sabrina Misseri and Cosima Serrano were in the house at the time. The court described Sabrina's public appeals for Sarah's return as part of a deliberate strategy to mislead the investigation. In 2024, the European Court of Human Rights ruled an appeal filed by the two women inadmissible. Michele Misseri was released from prison in February 2024, having served a reduced sentence, and has since said in television interviews that he alone was responsible for Sarah's death.