DNA will reveal the truth about the murder of Pierina Paganelli, the 78-year-old from Rimini killed with 29 stab wounds on 3 October 2023 in the garage of the condominium in Via Del Ciclamino, after returning from a meeting of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Will there be the genetic profile of the only suspect, the Senegalese Louis Dassilva? Probably yes. Will there be plausible explanations for why Dassilva’s DNA was on the body that doesn’t include killing Pierina? Again, probably yes. This is why all the commentators, the defenders, the defense consultants from the criminologist Roberta Bruzzone, for the Senegalese, to Davide Barzan for Pierina’s daughter-in-law, insist in saying that it will be an circumstantial trial. But what does circumstantial mean and why? First of all it must be clarified that if there were to be a formal accusation against Louis Dassilva (being under investigation is not an accusation) and an indictment for voluntary homicide, the trial would be in the Court of Assizes, i.e. with judges officials and popular judges. Popular judges are simple citizens who will inevitably already have an opinion on the case. However, their judgment will have to be formed in the courtroom where the prosecution, the Prosecutor’s Office, represented by prosecutor Daniele Paci, will bring the arguments on which the criminal action was based. When the evidence is not univocal, that is, it does not have a single possible reading, then we speak of clues. And here there are many clues that lead to Louis but no evidence, scientific in particular, yet. For this reason laboratory tests will be important, because DNA does not lie.
In these months however, 8 to be precise since the murder, the four main suspects, Louis Dassilva and his wife Valeria Bartolucci, Pierina’s neighbors, her daughter-in-law Manuela Bianchi, Louis’ lover and neighbor of the murdered mother-in-law, as well to their brother Loris Bianchi, they were able to meditate on a possible defensive line. Manuela and Loris Bianchi, as well as Valeria Bartolucci, are not under investigation, but DNA was taken from all of them immediately after the crime. The same was done with Louis too. In 8 months the suspects behaved as if they were the accused, that is, defending themselves. For every move the investigators made, they went on TV to give their explanation. It thus emerged that Louis would have touched Pierina on the morning of the discovery, which would explain a possible trace of her DNA on the victim. What if there was Louis’ blood lying around the garage? Valeria and Manuela gave the explanation a few weeks ago on TV, telling how the blood-stained clothes of Louis, who had been involved in a car accident a few days before Pierina’s murder, had been taken by his lover and taken home without his wife’s knowledge. In short, every clue has an explanation that may well have been well thought out over the months. Of course, if Pierina’s blood were to be found on the knife seized from Louis’ house, things would be different, but to date the murder weapon has never been found. Then there are the technical investigations on the few surveillance videos in the possession of the investigators of the Rimini Flying Squad. Again, these are clues. In fact, there is a surveillance video from the neighborhood pharmacy which records Pierina Paganelli’s car arriving at the street at around 10.10pm and going down to the garage. Then the cameras of a private garage, near the victim’s, which recorded the woman’s screams while she was attacked. Then again the video of the pharmacy which perhaps shows a black man passing by at a time compatible with the murder. Clues, many clues, which in the hands of the investigators became the evidence that led them to focus attention solely on Louis.
