"The fire started to kill Anna Maria Merola"

Not a short circuit but a preordained criminal plan that had achieved the goal: to kill the disabled wife, who has perhaps become a burden to get rid of because she is infirm, continually "humiliated" and "mortified" as well as "deprived of essential care and attention". So here is the decision to start the fire that on August 2, 2017 had caused the death of the 59-year-old nurse Anna Maria Merola in the villa in the Medadeddu district in Carbonia

The prosecutor: "In judgment"

What was initially a suspect has become a precise accusation formulated by the acting prosecutor Paolo de Angelis, who closed the investigation and asked for the indictment of Giuseppe and Roberto Demurtas, 63 and 29, husband and son of the victim, the first accused of premeditated murder , attempted murder of children and their girlfriends, fire and mistreatment in the family; the second of the harassing behaviors framed in the latter crime and committed, in the investigative reconstruction, between May 2016 and August 2017, date of death. Thesis formulated on the outcome of testimonies, wiretapping, consultancy and technical investigations, kidnappings and in-depth analyzes of the Ris carabinieri which will now be examined by the judge of the preliminary hearings Lucia Perra of Cagliari before which the defendants will present themselves, in the company of the defense lawyers Lorenzo Perra and Agostinangelo Marras, and the injured parties (the original family of the woman), who will form a civil party with the lawyer Raffaele di Tucci. Appointment on January 12th.

The crime

The investigative thesis summarized in the indictment is three pages long full of disputes. The hypothesis that the flames had been triggered by a short circuit linked to a malfunction of the air conditioning system lost consistency as the investigations ordered by the Prosecutor went ahead. The woman had been imprisoned in the building while the stake blazed. It was 4.30 in the morning and her husband (retiree, former police employee), her two children and their companions had been saved, with minor injuries. The victim, who had long had problems walking and moved with difficulty, had suffocated. The firefighters had found her lying on the steps leading to the first floor, near the stairlift, with her feet facing the ground floor. He was probably trying to escape the fire, which had started right from the ground floor. What had happened? The current outcome of the investigations is clear, albeit in its provisional nature. The frequent checks in the house by the military of Carbonia and the Scientific Investigations Department, in addition to the testimonies that the climate in the family was not the best, have led to the current dispute. According to the prosecutor, the fire was set by Giuseppe Demurtas during the night while everyone was asleep and the flames and incandescent smoke had caused the death of his wife. The woman, who was in the bedroom on the second floor, was surprised in her sleep: having severe movement problems (she could only move with crutches), she was unable to escape and was killed "by the combined action of fire and smoke that had invaded the house and internal stairs ». The same risk was taken by the two sons Roberto (in this case the injured party) and Pietro with his girlfriends, who slept on the first and second floor. To escape the fire, the girls jumped out of the windows, the firefighters had saved Pietro Demurtas from suffocation.

Mistreatment

What happened would seem to be linked to the second crime (ill-treatment). The husband and son Pietro with "daily behavior humiliated, mortified and deprived of essential care" the woman, "annihilating her personality"; they took her money from her, made her "submissive" to her husband, did not care for her pathologies and therapeutic needs "to force her to abandon her home" and "take possession of the patrimony"; they "ignored" her, "isolated" her, did not greet her, did not eat together; they had removed the cooking cylinders from the kitchen forcing her to eat "only pre-cooked food", they managed her earnings as a nurse, they did not buy what she needed for her disability, they insulted her, they ordered her to leave the house; they threatened to have her banned and forcibly hospitalized, made her live "in disorder and dirt", controlled her with cameras, did not remove architectural barriers and created new ones with the furniture. No comments from the lawyers.

Andrea Manunza