The image of Kataleya Chicllo Alvarez’s smiling face has faded but, after a year, it is still posted on the counter of a shop in the San Jacopino neighborhood. On June 10, the 5-year-old Peruvian girl disappeared into thin air from the former Astor hotel, where she lived with her mother, little brother and other desperate and homeless immigrant families.
He disappeared from that building which, until the eve of the pandemic, was a dignified three-star hotel halfway between the Duomo and the Cascine park, before closing its doors and being occupied illegally by homeless Peruvians and Romanians. Since then the investigations coordinated by the Florentine prosecutor’s office have never stopped. Kata was taken away from the Astor with a “well-organised plan” leaving via Monteverdi, an area not covered by the cameras. One year after that damned day, Florence’s chief prosecutor Filippo Spiezia takes stock of the investigation.
“Kata’s disappearance is the result of a well-organised plan and not of an extemporaneous activity – he explained – We have confirmation that the network of cameras surrounding the former hotel has a hole, an area not covered by the video surveillance that was exploited” by those who organized the kidnapping of the little girl. The escape route is behind the former hotel: the kidnappers may have taken Kata away by crossing a two meter high wall and walking on the roofs of the garages of an apartment building to finally land in Via Monteverdi, a side street. The investigations of the anti-mafia prosecutor’s office are focusing on four tracks: drug trafficking, the room racket in the former Astor hotel, mistaken identity and sexual abuse. And two suspects: Kata’s two uncles, her father’s brother and her mother’s brother. “At the moment there are no elements to archive their position – explains Spiezia – The investigations have never stopped, we have cultivated new hypotheses but we have also proceeded with a re-reading of extensive investigative materials collected in the initial phases”. The complexity of the investigation, the prosecutor believes, depends on the “delay with which the alarm was raised” about her disappearance. “Even the context – she explains – doesn’t help: we found non-collaborative attitudes on the part of Peruvians and Romanians and a somewhat conspiratorial climate”.
ANSA Agency One year ago Kata’s disappearance, 4 leads opened, from drugs to mistaken identity – News – Ansa.it “One year after the disappearance of Kata, the Peruvian girl who disappeared into thin air from the former Astor hotel, the investigations continue and have never stopped”. Thus the prosecutor Filippo Spiezia during a press conference at the courthouse in Florence. (HANDLE)On June 10, 2023, the mother of little Katherine Alvarez was late in realizing her daughter’s disappearance. At 3.45pm she returned from work at the supermarket and took a shower. She is calm, she has entrusted the children to her brother. She then goes to look for them, she finds the eldest son but not Kata. The woman checks the building, the courtyard, the street. But there is no trace.
She calls 112 and is invited to the barracks, in Borgo Ognissanti.
The woman makes a mistake: first she stops at the Fadini barracks, then at the Polfer headquarters. It’s 8pm when you sign the report. And the searches begin. The last image of Kata was taken at 3.13pm by the cameras aimed at the former Astor. Sim sees that she climbs the fire escape to the third floor alone and goes down into the courtyard. Then she vanishes.
Elite Carabinieri teams with advanced investigative techniques were deployed in the search. A few months ago the Cacciatori di Calabria (department established for the search for those kidnapped in Aspromonte) combed the over 3 thousand square meters of the former Astor, also digging in the courtyard and knocking down walls. With sophisticated probes they had scanned walls, cavities and manholes. It cannot be ruled out that the investigators may not return to the building again for further investigations. Spiezia is optimistic: “We have prospects for short-term developments: everything will also depend on the outcome of further delegated activities”.
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