Thirty years have passed since the day when 16-year-old Elisa Claps told her brother Gildo that she was going to mass with a friend but then disappeared into thin air. Today Potenza remembers the girl who was killed that same day by Danilo Restivo and abandoned in the church of the Holy Trinity, where she was found almost 17 years later, on March 17, 2010.
Hundreds of people took part in a procession that started from the Claps house and ended right in front of the church of the Holy Trinity , which reopened last August 24, amid controversy, after long renovation works.
At the head of the procession, with a cross, the actor Ulderico Pesce, and Elisa's brother, Gildo, who thanked those who participated, reiterating the request not to enter the church "as a sign of solidarity with the family".
Bull's-eye sandals were also placed in front of the door of the building where Elisa Claps' mother, Filomena Iemma, still lives today, like the ones Elisa was wearing on the morning of her disappearance. And some shops, as the procession passed, decided to lower their shutters.
Today, as ordered by the mayor, Mario Guarente, the flags of the buildings of the Municipality of Potenza will be displayed at half-mast, while by decision of the metropolitan archbishop of Potenza, Monsignor Salvatore Ligorio, in all masses of the day there will be prayers for Elisa.
Danilo Restivo was definitively sentenced to 30 years in prison and is currently detained in England for the murder of another woman, Heather Barnett, which occurred in 2002. The names of those who have evidently helped him in recent years, however, they never came out.
(Unioneonline/D)