Bologna, 9 May 2024 – There is a “hole” in the reconstruction of the deaths of Isabella Lsala and Giulia Tateoaccording to the Prosecutor’s Office, killed by the husband of the first and son-in-law of the second, the ophthalmologist Giampaolo Amato. “Assuming that the accused stole the drugs from the hospital where he worked, how would he then have administered them to his wife, who was also a doctor, in rapid succession, without her realizing it?”
So it thunders the medical examiner Donatella Fedeli, defense consultant, according to which the woman took the medicines alone, which she abused in a context of “moderate dependence”. But the civil lawyer for the 62-year-old’s sister, Maurizio Merlini, he doesn’t back down: “You are giving information that is seriously harmful to Isabella, and furthermore not supported by any real element.”
In short, there is no peace between the fronts of defense and prosecution to the trial for double murder and embezzlement towards Giampaolo Amato. It can happen: it is the natural dynamics of the process. But in this case even the slightest common ground is missing between the theses of the medical consultants of the Prosecutor’s Office (prosecutor Morena Plazzi) and the civil parties (in addition to Lsala’s sister there is Tateo’s brother, with the lawyer Francesca Stortoni), and those of the defense (lawyers Gianluigi Lebro and Cesarina Mitaritonna).
In fact, the technicians, when asked the fundamental question of how Isabella and her mother, found lifeless in their beds on 31 and 9 October 2021, died, give almost opposite answers. No holds barred.
Isabella, the cross-examination
The Court of Assizes opened yesterday cross-examination of the various consultants on the Lsala death, discussed three hearings ago. In which, remember, the Prosecutor’s Office – with i doctors Guido Pelletti, Luca Morini, Enrico Polati and Matteo Brunelli – and the civil parties – consultants Sindi Visentin and Luca Pieraccini – had supported the theory of death due to a lethal cocktail of Midazolam, a benzodiazepine, and Sevoflurane, a hospital anaesthetic, administered in rapid succession to the woman and leading to an almost immediate death, while the defense – doctors Donatella Fedeli, Roberto Agosti, Donata Favretto and Stefania Taddei – had launched the hypothesis of an accidental death due to the abuse of drugs, which the doctor would have taken “for pleasure purposes”. “Hetero-administration is the only valid option – the accusation reiterates –: in the case of self-administration, death is so rapid that one does not have time to put away the containers of the drugs, which were not found here”. It would then be “clinically imaginative”, according to the civil party consultant Gaetano Thiene“the diagnosis of a ‘Broken Heart Syndrome'” hypothesized by the cardiologist Agosti.
The death of the mother-in-law
The causes of Tateo’s death they are necessarily more obscure things to investigate: at least on this there is agreement among doctors. This is because the autopsy examination was done on the poor remains of the old woman exhumed 15 months after his death. Who, in addition to being almost ninety years old, was also suffering from pathologies, for which she took various drugs on medical prescription. Thus the prosecution front also cracked for a moment: if on the one hand the prosecutor’s consultants admit the presence of doubts, since “the woman’s heart was suffering and she had coronary plaques”, as he explains the pathologist Brunellithis hypothesis is completely rejected by the cardiologist Thiene, for whom “there was no evidence of risk of sudden death, according to the heart analysis”.
What is certain is that “the presence of Sevoflurane and Midazolam appears from all the biological samples analysed, with other substances that the elderly woman took on medical prescription”, but the accusation attacks: “Why are we focusing only on these, as a probable cause of death ? Because they shouldn’t have been there. She had undergone an operation in which they were administered, it’s true, but a good eight months earlier. And these substances wear off within a few days at most.” So, although there is no certainty, the “probability of acute intoxication due to exposure to them shortly before dying” is prevalent for consultants. And then “highly suspicious” which are precisely the same ones that 22 days later would have led to the death of their daughter.
The defence
Here too, there defense is barricaded: “The lady had more than one reason to die without the need to bother with Midazolam and Sevoflurane: let’s keep the suggestions for other areas. Tateo’s death was a natural one, she was suffering from many illnesses, all potentially fatal”. And i two anesthetics in the body How did they end up there? “There could be two thousand reasons – adds the doctor Fedeli –, we cannot also rule out that his daughter herself gave them to him, with a ‘consoling’ function: after all, she was also his doctor”.
