Murder of Manuela Murgia, the ex-boyfriend accused: «The beginning of a bad dream but light will be shed»

A turning point in the investigation into the death of Manuela Murgia, the sixteen-year-old found lifeless on the slopes of the Tuvixeddu canyon in Cagliari on February 5, 1995. Thirty years after the case was opened, initially filed as suicide, deputy prosecutor Guido Pani has entered 54-year-old Enrico Astero, the young woman's ex-boyfriend, in the register of suspects for voluntary homicide. The investigation was opened in March of this year, after a technical consultation by coroner Roberto Demontis, appointed by the family, who had questioned the hypothesis that the young woman had fallen from the cliff.

Clothing tests

Next Wednesday, in the laboratories of the Central Service of the Scientific Police, in via Tuscolana in Rome, the non-repeatable technical tests will begin on the victim's clothes, accessories and shoes that were found a few weeks ago, thirty years after the autopsy, in the now decommissioned Institute of Forensic Medicine of the University of via Porcell in Cagliari. They were perfectly preserved inside the bags for the storage of the evidence, but it was feared that they had now been thrown away after all that time had passed. The public prosecutor has ordered a forensic genetic analysis to search for biological traces and then the possible comparison with those entered in the National DNA Database, so as to verify whether there could be traces of the people who spent the last hours of her life with the girl. The ex-boyfriend, Enrico Astero, 24 years old at the time of the events, has been entered in the register of suspects and has been notified of the non-repeatable tests, so as to be able to appoint a consultant to attend the tests.

Manuela Murgia's ex-boyfriend has appointed Marco Fausto Piras as his defense attorney. "We were surprised by this news," the lawyer said, "also because just a week ago we had accessed the Register of Investigators without finding anything. The setting of the technical investigations for June 4th puts us in a position to have very few days to prepare. For my client, it is certainly the beginning of a bad dream, but we remain calm and convinced that full light will be shed on the matter."

The consultancy

The coroner Roberto Demontis had contested the conclusions of the experts of the Prosecutor's Office (Francesco Paribello and Giuseppe Santa Cruz) who thirty years ago, after the discovery of the body, had performed the autopsy hypothesizing that the girl had committed suicide.

The theory put forward by the family's consultant is that Manuela Murgia was voluntarily hit by a car after having had sexual intercourse (perhaps even violently). For this reason, it is not excluded that, after the unrepeatable technical tests on the clothes the girl was wearing the day she died, the prosecutor Pani could also order the exhumation of the body.

The family

The unrepeatable technical assessment notice was also notified yesterday to the young deceased's sisters, Elisabetta and Anna Murgia, her brother Joele and her mother Maria Marras, assisted by lawyers Giulia Lai and Bachisio Mele. "We are satisfied with the speed with which the investigations are being carried out," the lawyers clarify, "and we are confident in the results that will be achieved by the analyses that will be carried out. With the help of our technicians we will finally get justice for Manuela." The investigations are being conducted by investigators from the Police Headquarters' Flying Squad, coordinated by director Davide Carboni, while the DNA tests will be conducted by experts from the Scientific Police.

Francis Pinna