May 21, 2024, 04:57
2 min read
CATANIA – Paola Pepe, the 58-year-old from Catania accused of the murder of her great-aunt Maria Basso, will go to trial for premeditated murder and circumvention of incompetent persons. The judge decided it Sebastiano Fabio By Stefano Barbagallo which, accepting the request of the deputy prosecutor Sebastiano Ardita and the substitute Michela Marescaordered the immediate trial of the accused.
The process
The woman’s lawyer, the lawyer Carmelo Peluso, confirms the news by simply stating “we will go to trial and we will defend ourselves there”. The first hearing has been set for July 8th before the Court of Assizes of Catania. The woman was arrested and placed under house arrest by the Carabinieri on February 22nd on charges of circumvention of incapable persons and aggravated murder of her great-aunt Maria Basso, 80 years old.
According to the prosecution, based on investigations by soldiers of the Aci Castello Army, the accused would have caused the woman’s death to gain possession of her inheritance. According to the reconstruction of the Prosecutor’s Office, the 58-year-old, a few days before her death, would have invited Maria Basso out for lunch, with the 80-year-old eating spaghetti and a dessert, despite a debilitating illness forcing him to ingest only homogenized food.
And this would have “caused his death from pneumonia ‘ab ingesti’, reconstructs the Prosecutor’s Office, which contests the aggravated charge in order to “receive the profit linked to the circumvention of incapable murder” of the victim.
Maria Basso: who she was
Maria Basso, who was not self-sufficient, died on 16 December 2022 in a nursing home in Aci Castello, where she had been residing for approximately 15 days and where the suspect had taken her from Asiago. The reconstruction of the accusation is contested by the lawyer Peluso who explains that there was affection and understanding between the two women, so much so that Maria Basso considered Paola Pepe “a missed daughter”, and that together “they went on trips and holidays”.
“If Mrs. Basso she died from ingesting solid food – this is the line of defense – we must keep in mind that you cannot kill a dysphagic person by making them eat spaghetti because they cannot swallow them. She ate spaghetti shredded and turned to mush just as she has done dozens of times before.”
Paola Pepe is also charged with circumvention of an incompetent person: Basso changed his will a few days before his death, naming his relative as universal heir. The signing took place in the Catania retirement home where the eighty-year-old from Vicenza was a guest. And the inheritance would be precisely the motive that according to the judges would have pushed the niece to order the plan to kill her aunt.
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Published on
May 21, 2024, 04:57
