After 33 years, the killer of Pierangelo Fioretto and his wife Mafalda Begnozzi, killed on the evening of 25 February 1991 in the courtyard of their home, in Contra’ Torretti, in Vicenza, has a name and a face. The agents of the Flying Squad of the Vicenza police headquarters and of the Central Operational Service of the State Police have served a precautionary custody order on Umberto Pietrolungo, 58 years old, already in prison in Cosenza for other crimes, close to the ‘Ndrangheta Muto clan. The man was framed by traces of DNA and fingerprints on some finds collected 33 years ago but which, subjected to new scientific investigations with today’s modern technologies, allowed him to be identified.
The turning point in the investigation
The turning point came from forensics on 24 February 2023, when Pietrolungo’s genetic profile – collected for another case – coincided perfectly with that obtained from the fingerprints isolated on a glove of the alleged Vicenza murderer. Footprints which at the time were not enough to solve the “mystery” and which now, thanks to increasingly sophisticated analysis techniques, have proven decisive.
