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In July 1997, an 86-year-old woman was murdered in her Gold Coast villa. Investigators discovered the possible perpetrator through detours.
The Italian, now charged in Meilen, had to answer for another brutal robbery in Thun in 2018.
Drawing: Karin Widmer
It has been an unsolved murder case for 23 years and is now going to trial.
In early July 1997, the cantonal police found the body of a very old woman in a village in Küsnacht. She was tied up in the laundry, so investigators assumed a homicide.
DNA didn’t help at first
The millionaire had apparently been mistreated before he died. According to the then “Blick”, the attacker is said to have savagely beat the 86-year-old widow. The woman had serious injuries to her head, neck and arms, the newspaper wrote.
It is not known if only the man was on the scene at the time or if he still had accomplices: the police only recovered the DNA of a male person. But the DNA profile doesn’t match anyone in the database. Despite extensive investigations, law enforcement authorities were unable to locate the perpetrator.
Therefore, the prosecution suspended its proceedings against unknown persons in 2001, until the Bern cantonal police obtained the DNA of a man who had committed a robbery in Thun in 2016. The profile matched that of Küsnacht.
Brutal attack on Thun
The Italian suspect was arrested in Tenerife, where the then 73-year-old lived in a mobile home and where a gun and jewelry were found. In 2017 he was extradited to Switzerland.
In June 2018, he was sentenced to an unconditional prison term of seven years in the canton of Bern for robbery and duress. He had attacked a couple and their daughter in their Thun apartment with a simulated pistol. He handcuffed the three of them, threatened to kill them, and drugged them. Finally, he forced the daughter to have oral sex and took valuables. Later, the three people had to go with the attacker to a jewelry store where the wife was a branch manager. There he had to give her jewelry.
The man has been in regular prison since his conviction in the Thun regional court.
Diversion via Spain
In order for the Zurich Public Ministry to resume the suspended procedure, the Federal Office of Justice had to first submit a supplementary request to the Spanish authorities for the extradition to Switzerland for the alleged murder to be approved, as the Zurich Prosecutor General’s Office noted in Announced Monday. The defendant defended himself with legal resources in all instances.
The final approval of the subsequent delivery by the Spanish authorities finally took place in February 2020.
Murder charges due to statute of limitations
The fact that an act from so long ago can still be treated and subject to the 30-year prescription demonstrates “once again the importance of DNA analysis as an indispensable tool for law enforcement agencies in the fight against crime,” he writes. The prosecutor.
The Prosecutor’s Office I of the Canton of Zurich has completed its criminal proceedings and filed charges against the 77-year-old man in the Miles District Court on November 16, 2020. He is charged with breaking into the 86-year-old woman’s villa on July 4, 1997 with the intention of stealing money and valuables.
The prosecution has to plead guilty to murder. In the case of intentional homicide, the statute of limitations is only 15 years. Until a final conviction, the 77-year-old is presumed innocent.
