The presentation of a series of preliminary objections by the defense characterized the first hearing before the Court of Assizes of Appeal of Catanzaro in the trial for the murder of the Cosenza footballer Donato “Denis” Bergamini, from Argenta (Ferrara), who died at the age of 27 along the state road 106 in Roseto Capo Spulico (Cosenza), on 18 November 1989.
The only defendant in the trial is Bergamini’s ex-girlfriend, Isabella Interò, sentenced in the first instance, on 1 October last year, to 16 years of imprisonment by the Assize Court of Cosenza. The woman, defended by lawyers Angelo Pugliese and Cataldo Intrieri, was present at the hearing.
Also in the courtroom, accompanied by her children, was Donata Bergamini, Denis’ sister, who from the first moment did not believe in the theory of suicide carried out in the years immediately following her brother’s death, and who, with the assistance of the lawyer Fabio Anselmo – the other civil party lawyers are Alessandra Pisa and Silvia Galeone – managed to reopen the investigation first and then lead to a trial. Internò is accused of premeditated voluntary homicide in collaboration with unknown persons.
The judges of first instance sentenced her to a sentence lower than that requested by the prosecutors of the Castrovillari Prosecutor’s Office, 23 years, for the exclusion of the aggravating circumstances of poisonous means and cruelty, with the granting of generic mitigating circumstances prevailing over the aggravating circumstances. According to the prosecution, Bergamini was suffocated and then his body was placed along the state road where he was hit by a truck and he did not commit suicide by throwing himself under the vehicle as Isabella Internò, who was with him at the time of his death, had said at the time and repeated over the years.
Among the members of the popular jury of the Court of Assizes of Cosenza which issued the first degree sentence for the murder in 1989 of the Cosenza footballer Denis Bergamini there were a father and a daughter. This is the reason why the lawyers Cataldo Intrieri and Angelo Pugliese, defenders of Isabella Internò, accused of the murder of Bergamini and sentenced to 16 years, asked for the annulment of the first degree trial.
One of the two jurors linked by family relations, Isabella Internò’s defenders pointed out, was replaced only on the last day of the trial. The defendant’s lawyers also asked for the reopening of the preliminary investigation and the appointment of “an internationally renowned expert who is foreign to the Italian circuits” and to hear again some witnesses already heard in the first instance trial.
“The request for the appointment of a new expert – argued the defendant’s defenders – is motivated by the questioning of the validity of the scientific evidence according to which Denis Bergamini had already died of asphyxiation before being hit by a truck on state road 106”.
The defense requests were opposed by the deputy prosecutor of Cosenza Luca Primicerio, applied in the appeal as deputy attorney general, and the civil party lawyers, Fabio Anselmo, Alessandra Pisa and Silvia Galeone. The judges of the Assize Court of Appeal have reserved the right to decide on the requests of Isabella Internò’s defenders at the next hearing of the trial, set for January 27th.