Her story is one of the so-called Italian cold cases, Roman ones, to be precise because in February 2000 this young sociologist died after ingesting “Cyanide in San Lorenzo” which is also the title of the book by the investigative writer Mauro Valentini
The diatribe between the innocent and the guilty in Italy is an ancient debate that long predates the Erba massacre. There is a girl that not many will remember, who went down in history for having met her death with a “soup”. His story is one of the so-called Italian cold casesRomans, to be precise because this young sociologist died in February 2000 after ingesting “Cyanide in San Lorenzo” which is also the title of the investigative writer’s book Mauro Valentini (Nadia Toffa 2023 award) in bookshops for a few days with a re-edition that tells the story of Francesca Moretti“a story of love and violated friendship”, comments the author who for this book has reread, as is characteristic of his approach, all the documents of the investigation documents in an in-depth but also critical manner.
Why is the San Lorenzo crime referred to as the minestrina crime? The soup was mentioned for the first time by the accused, Daniela Stuto, who shared an apartment with Francesca in the neighborhood nestled between Termini station and La Sapienza University. But let’s start from the beginning. Who was Francesca Moretti? The victim Francesca Moretti is 29 years old, she is originally from Pesaro but she moved to Rome four years earlier to work as a sociologist at Opera Nomadi. She dates a Roma boy, Graziano, but he is married and has five children. They planned to move to Turin but Graziano leaves Francesca out of the blue.
The soup – It is February 22, 2000, Francesca is ill, she has terrible pain in her back due to a hernia. A matter of hours and she will be hospitalized for surgery because her doctor, Dr. Giuliani, thinks the situation is serious. The pain gives Francesca no respite as she no longer eats or sleeps nor has she been upright for days. This operation will postpone her plans. In fact, her definitive return to her city of origin is expected in a few days. One of the two girls with whom she shares her apartment prepares her a soup. Francesca goes to bed, she’s sick, she screams in pain. “Francesca is sick! Run”: Mirela, her other roommate, shouts into her phone at her policeman boyfriend who rushes to them. They call an ambulance, Francesca has become swollen and purple, she is struggling. Meanwhile, Daniela, who had gone shopping, also returns. Daniela shakes her hand, gets into the ambulance with her while we run towards San Giovanni, the nearest hospital where they enter code red. As the situation worsens, doctors want to know what medicines the girl has taken. At 7.35 pm, the girl was declared dead.
The first articles speak of a death for drug poisoning. The investigations On February 23rd everyone is at Francesca’s house, even her sister Antonella who has just returned from Spain. Parents Maria Assunta and Rinaldo say their final farewell to her daughter a few steps away, in the Institute of Forensic Medicine. The prosecutor orders the autopsy, the doctors’ report still speaks of poisoning but in the meantime the policeman Altobelli, on duty at the San Giovanni hospital, had sent a fax to the San Lorenzo police station in which there was talk of a possible suicidal action of the victim, “as reported by the companion Stuto Daniela” who however will always deny this circumstance.
The poisoning – The forensic team goes to the apartment in via dello Scalo but does not seize anything: nor the syringes in the bin used for painkillers or anything else. On the orders of Prosecutor Lina Cusano, an autopsy will be carried out before the funeral. Since February, only in July at the pm did the forensic doctors from the laboratory say what really happened: Francesca died of cyanide poisoning. For his mother Maria Assunta, “it was the gypsies”, or the Roma, as Valentini himself writes in her book.
The suspect and the trial – The prosecutor will bring Daniela Stuto to trial and she will spend a year and two months under house arrest. The girl, a psychology student and originally from Lentini, was acquitted in the first and second degree. At the second degree trial, which started after an appeal by the prosecutor, the prosecutor himself will renounce proceeding. Francesca’s family, now convinced of Daniela’s innocence, did not even take part in civil proceedings. Why was the prosecutor sure of her guilt? During the investigations, Daniela ends up on telephone wiretaps in which she makes sexual jokes about a friend and these words would be the perfect clue for the prosecutor. For the prosecutor Cusano it is a crime of passion with a homosexual background despite the fact that Stuto is engaged to a man. In her hypothesis, Daniela has a strong passion for Francesca and if not reciprocated, it poisons her. Bad luck has it that during an inspection at Daniela’s uncle’s house in Lentini, in the countryside, he was found an old drum of cyanide from 40 years ago with which the uncle, according to him, burned pieces of wood (at the time it was permitted for agricultural use) but the prosecutor doesn’t believe him and asks for premeditation.
Cyanide – Added to this is an error in the report: in the first the poisoning dates back to 1.30 pm, therefore shortly after Francesca ate the soup, the second instead reports 4 pm as the time of the poisoning and determines that the intake of cyanide it occurred 10 minutes before Francesca started feeling severe pain. “My hypothesis – explains Valentini – is that Francesca voluntarily took something with cyanide and we will never know if she wanted to commit suicide or if it was some poisoned drug taken for her pain”. But was it so easy to get cyanide in those years? Valentini, originally from Rome and who knows that neighborhood well, explains to us that “San Lorenzo in 2000 was still full of craftsmen who worked metals for which cyanide was widely used. Many sold it illegally, as rinse aid.”
Why would Francesca have cyanide? “The investigations revealed that Francesca wrote very dark diaries in 1999. She was a sad and tormented girl. Her diary from 2000 was burned by her mother because it contained very intimate thoughts but the friends who read it said it was very sad. Her experience at the Opera Nomadi had failed and so had her love story. Francesca was going through a time of great difficulty aggravated by severe back pain. She was going through a phase of strong prostration. My feeling is that she ingested the cyanide herself. Unfortunately, this diary is missing with something inside her that could explain her psychological state and above all her relationships with the people around her. The only certainty is that she voluntarily assumed what led to her death: we will never know whether by deception or deliberately due to the lack of findings”.
