Banners of affection at the funeral of Roberta Siragusa
The 17-year-old girlfriend Roberta Siragusa burned alive: sentenced to life imprisonment
There Court of Assizes of Palermo sentenced Pietro Morreale to life imprisonment21 year old from Caccamo, for the brutal murder of his girlfriend Roberta Siragusa, which took place on the night between 23 and 24 January 2020.
According to the first instance, the boy stunned her by hitting her face with a stone, set her on fire by watching her burn alive for five endless minutes, loaded the body into the car and went to get rid of it by pushing it down a ravine. Then he returned home and went to sleep, with a “criminal determination” – these are the words of the investigating judge who had ordered his custody in prison – which induced the judges of the Palermo Assize Court to impose the maximum sorry for the boy.
The reconstruction of the Public Prosecutor’s Office and the “not credible” defense
The night of the murder the accused and his girlfriend had had yet another argument, probably sparked by sick jealousy of the boy. The couple spent the evening at a friend’s house, then drove away to a football field: here, according to the Prosecutor’s Office and now the sentence, the 21-year-old would hit her with a stone making her unconscious, then he would throw some flammable liquid he kept in his car at her and burn her alive.
Before loading her into the car, dragging her by the feet, he would chat with a friend and make an appointment for the next day to play the play-station; then he would get rid of the body and go to bed. Woken up by the victim’s parents, worried, he had sent a series of messages to Roberta’s cell phone, pretending to be alarmed, in order to remove the responsibility for the crime from himself.
Morreale has always denied having murdered Roberta, telling a story that the investigators immediately considered imaginative. The morning after the murder, in fact, he went to the carabinieri and took them to where he had thrown the body, telling an unlikely version: after a fight – he said – the girl would set herself on fire with some petrol that he kept in car and would have thrown herself into an escarpment in the countryside of Caccamo. “Lies”, the prosecutors and the plaintiff lawyers argued from the beginning.
Against the boy, in fact, dozens of clues: from the violent episodes committed against the victim in the months of their relationship, as many as 33, to a video broadcast in the courtroom during the probationary incident in front of the victim’s family, where Roberta’s body can be seen burning and Pietro’s car shortly distance. Also near the football field the keys to the girl’s house were found, as well as traces of her blood in the vehicle.
Compensation to the family, which is still asking for justice
The Assize Court declared the accused banned in perpetuity from public office and in a state of legal interdiction for the duration of the sentence, as well as providing for the compensation for damage to relatives of Roberta, mother Iana Brancato for 225 thousand euros, father Filippo Siragusa for 229 thousand euros, brother Dario for 209 thousand euros and grandmother Maria Barone for 117 thousand euros. Pietro Morreale will also have to compensate the municipality of Caccamo with an executive provisional of 15 thousand euros.
Morreale, already in prison for two years, was not present at the reading of the verdict. Waiting for the sentence instead, in addition to the parents, the grandmother and the brother of Roberta, constituted civil party, there was a group of friends wearing the same T-shirt: the face of the young 17-year-old student, and the words “Justice for Roberta”. After the sentence read by President Vincenzo Terranova, the young people hugged each other in a long embrace.
The life imprisonment in Morreale does not, however, close the case: for the lawyers of Roberta’s family, Simona La Verde, Sergio Burgio, Giovanni Castronovo and Giuseppe Canzon, the boy would have had accomplices. This is demonstrated by the initial confusion in finding the place where the body was, escorted by the carabinieri, “as if he had not brought it there”, say the lawyers.
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