«There, that murderer over there…» Halfway through her testimony, it was past noon, her voice weak but determined, her glasses on her pale face, the anguish of her memories visible even in the nervously controlled gestures of her hands, Rosaria turned towards the prisoners’ cage and pointed her finger at her brother Giosuè, who on 14 January killed their mother Caterina Pappalardo with 112 stab wounds in via Cesare Battisti, after having stunned with pepper spray. He never said his name in over two hours of devastating and very tense testimony. And then he repeated it a couple more times while answering questions: “that murderer over there…”.
In a silence of broken ice. In front of everyone. Shocking stories. The woman said for example that her brother often locked her mother in a room for even three or four hours, and opened the door only when the woman agreed to give him more money (“… he was always thinking about money, he wanted to sell one of the houses, he always had requests aimed at money”). Mother and daughter had to stay holed up in their rooms when they all lived together in via Battisti, until 2023.
«… It wasn’t life closed in a room» revealed Rosaria, along with a shocking detail: Giosuè had even divided the dining table into three parts with scotch tape, because he wanted to have the largest part and always reserved a smaller slice of wood for the two women.
All the details in the paper and digital edition on newsstands tomorrow