After ten years there is an arrest for the murder of Agata Scuto, the 22-year-old who disappeared on 4 June 2012 in the Catania area and never found again.
A 60-year-old ended up in handcuffs, arrested by the Carabinieri of the Acireale company for murder and concealment of a corpse: it is Rosario Palermo, a former cohabitant of the young woman's mother. According to the Public Prosecutor of Catania, "he had established a particular relationship with the girl", "provided false information about her movements" and "tried to pollute the evidence". Intercepted in the car, while speaking to himself, he would have expressed fear that the body of the girl, who had been strangled and burned, could be found.
A precautionary custody order was carried out against him in prison issued by the investigating judge of Catania at the request of the Etna district prosecutor.
THE INVESTIGATIONS - The investigation was reopened by the carabinieri in 2020 after a report on the broadcast "Who has seen it?" on the presence of the body of the 22-year-old, suffering from epilepsy and an impairment in the arm and leg, hidden in the cellar of her mother's house. The searches had a negative outcome but the attentions of the Arma soldiers focused on Rosario Palermo, explains the Public Prosecutor of Catania, "because of the particular relationship he had established in the last period with the girl, who never went out. at home alone, nor did she entertain relationships with other people ".
According to the investigators, Palermo had also lied about "his movements on the day of Agata's disappearance".
The man, in fact, "had neither gone to collect snails in the Catania plain nor to collect oregano on Etna, as claimed by him in the interrogations". Among the "serious indications of man's guilt and responsibility for the murder and concealment of the body" an environmental interception is cited. "The same, in fact, speaking alone inside his own car - writes the Public Prosecutor of Catania - frightened by his possible arrest, expressed his fear that the body of Agata Scuto would be found in a cottage in Pachino and that he would make sure that the same had been strangled and burned, reflecting on the need, moreover, to go to the place to check what was left of the body ".
To raise suspicions about Palermo also the fact that "he would have tried to pollute the evidence, not only obtaining confirmation of his false alibi from his acquaintances, but even preparing a complex staging to simulate traces such as to justify the reason. for which on the day of Agata's disappearance he had seriously injured his leg "claiming that it had been due to a fall in the mountains. "In order to pollute the evidence, the suspect, during the restrictions on free movement due to the pandemic - accuses the Prosecutor - would have tried to hide an iron rod soaked in his blood in a location on Etna, a rod that he wanted to make find the day of his arrest in order to prove his alibi and his innocence ".
(Unioneonline / D)
