Death under the Sant'Elia overpass: "My son Riccardo was killed."

She has never believed her son's suicide theory. And she continues her fight for a murder investigation. Simonetta Spano, mother of Riccardo Madau, found dead on the night of July 14, 2017, under the overpass between Unipol Domus and Via Magellano in Sant'Elia, has relied on various lawyers over time. Recently, armed with the report by criminologist Carmelo Lavorino and his team of experts, coordinated by lawyer Cinzia Mancini, she presented herself to the Carabinieri at the San Bartolomeo station to file a murder complaint against unknown persons. Too many things don't add up in what was ruled a suicide nine years ago: Madau, according to the Prosecutor's Office's reconstruction based on the Flying Squad's investigation and the autopsy performed by coroner Roberto Demontis, after attacking his girlfriend Manuela Picci, from Assemini, in the stadium parking lot, believing he had killed her, reached the nearby bridge and threw himself off.

The dark spots

The report filed with the complaint reconstructs the incident, highlighting the inconsistencies that led to the accusation of suicide. These are supported by the technical and scientific evidence highlighted by medical examiner Salvatore Scialdone, forensic psychologist Enrico Delli Compagni, investigator Claudia Lobina, and IT expert Gaetano Bonaventura. "The investigators at the time believed it was suicide, but we have proven that Riccardo Madau's was murder," explains Lavorino, a criminologist and criminalist. In the past, he has worked on nationally investigated crimes such as the Monster of Florence, the Via Poma crimes, the Cogne crimes, the murder of little Tommaso Onofri, and other unsolved cases.

The unidentified witnesses

The complaint states that the caretaker of Cagliari's new stadium—then the Sardegna Arena, recently completed and due to host its first match in September of that year—"alerted the police at 2:45 a.m. that he had heard the screams of a woman and a man coming from a car in the dimly lit parking lot." The officers found the car with both doors wide open and, approximately 50 meters away, the body of Manuela Picci (also a victim in this sad story), Riccardo's girlfriend, unconscious, in a pool of blood. She was immediately rescued and taken to the hospital, but remained in a coma for some time. At 3:20 a.m., two women discovered Madau's body under the overpass on Viale Salvatore Ferrara. One of them then told the police that three people, unknown to her, "who have never been identified," the criminologist reiterates, and as the young man's mother has always maintained, had told her that they had heard "the screams of a fight between a boy and a girl" from the window of their house and that they had then seen a young man "head towards the bridge and jump off it."

The Darkness

According to Riccardo Madau's family consultants, this is "a false version" from "unidentified key witnesses who may actually have been involved in what happened." And no one witnessed the argument between the two lovers and the attack, which would later lead to the young man's suicide. Manuela Picci herself was interviewed by the Flying Squad for summary information, but a year and seven months after the tragedy, in February 2019, reporting "that she remembers nothing of that evening between July 13th and 14th" and that she learned of what happened in August, after a period in a coma, "from the hospital psychologist and then from friends and family."

The autopsy

Even the autopsy on the young man's body, according to the Madau family's consultants, revealed some features inconsistent with suicide. "The wounds, abrasions, and contusions are not consistent with each other or with a fall from the approximately five-meter-high bridge," the report reiterates. "The wounds on the skull were inflicted by a blunt, circular object, and this can be deduced from the shape of the wounds," and furthermore, "the lacerated and contused lesions, given their vitality, appear to have been inflicted before death," the criminologist reiterates. He concludes, in the documents filed with the Carabinieri and the Prosecutor's Office: "This is not a suicide, but a homicide: first Riccardo was beaten, then he was thrown from the bridge by at least two young, strong, and determined individuals."

Matthew Vercelli