Yara (2021)

February 26, 2011. The body of 13-year-old Yara Gambirasio is found entirely by chance by a model aircraft enthusiast in an open field in Chignolo d'Isola, about 10 kilometres from Brembate di Sopra, the town where she lived. Friday, November 26, 2010, three months earlier: at around 5:30 p.m., Yara goes to the sports centre in her town, where she regularly trains in rhythmic gymnastics. According to various witnesses, she stays there until at least around 6:40 p.m., after which all trace of her is lost. Her mother becomes worried and goes looking for her, while her father later reports her disappearance to the Carabinieri. Prosecutor Letizia Ruggeri, Colonel Vitale and Marshal Garro pursue the case with determination and do everything they can to get to the truth. All the sports centre's surveillance cameras are out of order and prove useless in reconstructing the girl's movements. At 6:44 p.m., her mobile phone connects to the Ponte San Pietro cell tower on Via Adamello; at 6:49 p.m., to the Mapello tower, three kilometres from Brembate di Sopra; and at 6:55 p.m., to the Brembate di Sopra tower on Via Ruggeri. On December 5, 2010, aboard a ship bound for Tangier, 22-year-old Mohamed Fikri, a Moroccan construction worker at the Mapello building site where sniffer dogs seem to have detected Yara's last trace, is stopped. The worker is investigated in connection with the girl's disappearance because of a wiretap in which he speaks Arabic. It later proves to be worthless because of a mistranslation of the phrase “May Allah protect me” as “May Allah forgive me.” The young man is found to have no involvement in the case, and prosecutor Ruggeri becomes the focus of controversy. Her superior, Prosecutor Sperone, advises her to request a transfer, since the CSM (the High Council of the Judiciary) also wants to look into her conduct. Numerous blows from a metal bar, a head injury, a deep wound to the neck and at least six stab wounds are found on Yara's body. In the following months, it is hypothesised that she died some time after the assault, due to the cold and the weakening caused by her injuries. There are no signs of sexual assault on her body. Just as the investigation is close to being closed, a breakthrough comes: on June 16, 2014, 44-year-old Massimo Giuseppe Bossetti, an unconvicted bricklayer from Mapello, is arrested. His nuclear DNA is found to match that of the man designated “Unknown 1,” detected on Yara's underwear in the area struck by a bladed weapon and considered by the prosecution to be the only trace attributable to the killer. Bossetti is identified through a lengthy process that begins with the discovery that the Y-chromosome haplotype of “Unknown 1” is identical to that of a patron of a nightclub near where the body was found. This person is unrelated to the case and is one of many people whose DNA was collected in a “screening” investigation. By testing various individuals from his family line, whose genetic profiles were progressively more closely related, investigators trace the line back to Giuseppe Guerinoni, a bus driver from Gorno who died in 1999 and is identified as the biological father of “Unknown 1.” Only after many attempts, and with help from a colleague of Guerinoni, who confides that the driver had had a relationship many years earlier, are investigators able to trace the maternal line by looking for allele 26, present in the nuclear profile of “Unknown 1” and necessarily inherited from the mother, since it is absent from Guerinoni's DNA. They identify Ester Arzuffi, the woman whose nuclear DNA corresponds to the maternal half of “Unknown 1's” profile. On the basis of these clues, Massimo Bossetti, one of Arzuffi's two sons, has his DNA collected during a traffic stop involving a breathalyser test, and his nuclear DNA is confirmed to match the DNA found on the victim. With the virtual certainty afforded by genetic evidence, the prosecution identifies Bossetti as “Unknown 1.” Another piece of evidence presented by the prosecution is that surveillance cameras on the road leading to Yara's gym allegedly filmed Bossetti's van passing the sports centre several times. The defence immediately challenges the genetic evidence because Bossetti's mitochondrial DNA is missing from the genetic trace that was found and examined. Bossetti declares from the outset that he is innocent and claims the DNA was accidentally transferred from some tools that had been stolen from him and were stained with his blood because of nosebleeds, which he says he suffers from regularly. Bossetti's wife says that her husband was at home with her on the evening of the murder, although she seems doubtful when confronted with her husband. On July 1, 2016, the Bergamo Court of Assizes sentences Bossetti to life imprisonment for murder with multiple aggravating circumstances, as requested by the prosecutor.