FOGGIA – Vittorino Checchia, 71, died yesterday morning at the hospitals where he had been hospitalized for about ten days, guarded by the penitentiary police. He was awaiting trial for complicity in the murder of Franca Marasco, the 72-year-old tobacconist stabbed in the shop. of via Marchese de Rosa 100 on the morning of August 28, 2023 during a robbery that yielded 75 euros and 2 mobile phones. Checchia, former manager of a cleaning company from Castelluccio Valmaggiore and domiciled in the Daunian capital, had been detained for 9 months: he denied the charges.
He was arrested on 14 September 2023 by the Carabinieri on the order of the investigating judge requested by the prosecutor, on the basis of what was declared by the co-suspect Redouane Moslli, a Moroccan, 43 years old resident in Milan, who arrived in Foggia in the summer of 2023 looking for work in the fields, who was arrested on September 3 and is detained in Taranto prison. The North African confessed to having stabbed Marasco, accusing Checchia of having planned with him to rob some tobacconists, starting from the one in Via de Rosa which had reopened on the day of the crime; of having provided him with the knife, gloves and anti-Covid mask used during the attack; adding that immediately after the murder he had reached a place in via Mameli in the availability of Checchia with whom he had shared the 75 euros stolen; and that he was the elder who advised him to leave the city. Checchia had discovered in prison that he was ill; about ten days ago the worsening occurred and the transfer to hospital, with guards: yesterday the death.
On May 15, the prosecutor Ida Perrone had notified Moslli and Checchia of the notice of conclusion of the investigation: now the accusation against Moslli alone for illegal carrying of a knife remains standing; complicity in robbery, aggravated by having acted “for base and futile reasons given the modesty of the loot”; anomalous participation (crime other than the intended one) in murder, aggravated by the fact that Marasco was “not able due to her age and slender physical conformation to put up an adequate defense”.
The victim was alone in the tobacco shop that had been run for decades when, shortly before 1pm on August 28, 2023, a man armed with a kitchen knife with an 18-centimetre blade, wearing gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints and a mask to avoid being seen on his face, broke in. The woman hit by 2 blows to the neck and 2 to the abdomen died instantly. No cameras in the shop, but there were on the escape route of the robber-killer filmed while he threw away the weapon, he walked away in the direction of the center, reached via Mameli to change his clothes. Videos and testimonies made it possible to identify Moslli, who was tracked down on the evening of 2 September at the Naples station, brought back to Foggia and stopped the following day by decree of the prosecutor.
Both by the prosecutor and by the investigating judge in the validation interrogation (except then making use of the right not to answer on May 9th in the evidentiary incident requested by the Prosecutor’s Office to question him in the presence of Checchia and the defender) Moslli confessed to the murder while saying that he did not want kill; and called into question this “Renu” whom he met in the reception center of a city church; “Renu” was identified as Checchia and he was arrested.
