Isabella Internò would have played an active role in the murder of Donato Bergamini, the twenty-seven-year-old Cosenza footballer originally from Argenta (Ferrara) whose body was found on 18 November 1989 under a truck along the 106 Ionica state road, in Roseto Capo Spulicoand whose death was initially attributed to suicide.
The suicide was just a staged act
In reality Bergamini was killed and the suicide was only a staged event. This is what is stated in the sentence with which on October 1st the Court of Assizes of Cosenza sentenced Isabella Internò to 16 years of imprisonment in relation to the death of Bergamini on charges of aggravated voluntary homicide, however considering the prevailing generic mitigating circumstances on the disputed aggravating circumstance of premeditation. Circumstance that explains the lack of a life sentence. A murder that Internò, then twenty years old, allegedly committed in collaboration with unknown persons, «who – states the Court – after having narcotized Bergamini, or in any case reducing his defense capabilities, caused his death by mechanically asphyxiating him using an instrument’ soft’ and placing him, already a corpse, under the truck driven by Raffaele Pisano”.
The judges also accuse Isabella Internò of the aggravating circumstance of “having committed the crime with an insidious means, namely the ‘soft’ instrument used to asphyxiate the footballer”; the premeditation and of having acted with cruelty and for abject reasons and futile, represented by the victim’s decision, not accepted by the woman, to end their romantic relationship”.
Cold planning
The sentence recalls that, a few hours before his death, Bergamini had been seen by his teammates leaving with his ex-girlfriend. Furthermore, for the Court, that of Denis Bergamini was «a murder of passion, carried out with the aim of teaching the footballer a lesson. The criminal action was the direct consequence of a cold planning of a strong-willed attitude arising from a punitive desire towards the boy, from whom the accused did not accept separation, considering him res of her property”.
A conduct today attributable to the crime of persecutory acts
Furthermore, according to the judges, Isabella Internò «carried out conduct against Bergamini which can now be attributed to the crime of persecutory acts, a crime not foreseen by the Criminal Code at the time. A personality – the Court of Assizes still maintains in the reasoning of the sentence – formed in a family context deviated by retrograde moral principles, as has been reconstructed. And it is clear that the reference context has influenced the criminogenic genesis, characterizing the conduct, even that which is now sub judice, under a single matrix, the passional one”. The Court also requested the transmission of the procedural documents to the Public Prosecutor’s Office so that they can proceed with the crime of perjury against some of Internò’s family members. The mother, Concetta Tenuta; the aunt, Assunta Trezzi, and the cousins Roberto Internò, Dino Pippo Internò, Michelina Mazzuca and Luigi D’Ambrosio (cousins). The same request was made against the truck driver Raffaele Pisano.