A "cold case", what an expression to talk about someone that is gone and most probably about to stay like that, no closure for those left behind.
It's April 2021 and my colleague Francesco Rubino receives an email: a family asks if it would be possible in Italy to prosecute and charge someone with murder committed 30 years before even if no body was found. What he thinks at first could be a scam reveals to be a cry for help of a mother and a brother seeking justice for Sargonia Dankha, a 21-year-old girl, that disappeared in 1995 in Linköping (Sweden). All evidence points to her ex-partner, a 45-year-old Italian man. But Sargonia's body is never found, and this prevents any further prosecution by the Swedish authorities. In 1996 the man was therefore released and he immediately moved back to Italy.
Francesco and his team, avv. Elisa Mazzucchelli and avv. Marta Vignati, start reading the few deeds and papers the family sends them and decide they had to give Sargonia's family this last chance. A crazy journey begins, I get involved with a phone call "Do you speak Swedish? Could you translate some documents?", yes, I can! Why? Because in 1995, the same year Sargonia died, I started to learn Swedish!
Francesco contacts a private detective: he finds the man living in a little town at the seaside, San Remo. He gets in contact with the public prosecutors' office of Imperia and soon they are convinced: the case is strong, difficult but worth prosecuting! All documents from the Swedish investigations are retrieved by the public prosecutor: 9 folders, big as two times The Lord of the Rings...in Swedish! I start working with the public prosecutors’ office translating them, it takes months of work to prepare the case, in secret, in fear the suspected person might flee the country and disappear abroad, out of reach for any criminal proceeding.
Finally on July 17, 2023 Salvatore Aldobrandi gets arrested, October, same year, the trial starts in front of the Court of Imperia. Almost 40 witnesses are found, summoned, and questioned, some of them were heard through video-connection from the Court of Linköping, questioned by the judges in Imperia.
It's a tough fight: all evidence is almost 30 years old; witnesses have a hard time to recollect, the defense lawyer questions everything. Evidence must be presented to the Court that has been collected in a different manner than we are used to in Italy. Procedural differences between Italy and Sweden emerge all the time and need to be addressed.
Read more about the legal details in our previous article
Francesco and his team bring in a forensic psychiatrist that profiles the man and the controlling and abusive relationship he had with Sargonia, how this led to the murder of Sargonia. It is essential in order to argument for the existence of aggravating circumstances in the murder, otherwise it would be prescribed after 28 years, and this is happening 29 years after the murder. If the Court does not recognize the existence of the aggravating circumstance of abject motives (which is hard to prove, involving the exercise of power and sense of possession on the victim) they could sentence the convicted for murder, but he still could walk free.
December 13, 2024 is the day of last pleadings, Sargonia's mother and brother have come from Sweden. They sit quietly, Sargonia's mother weeps. The brother says he has no strength left to hope for a positive outcome. They return to Sweden the day after, they're too scared to wait for the Courts' decision. We wait. It is nerve racking, have we done all we could? Could we have done more?
On December 15, 2024, a Sunday, at 14.00pm, after three years of fighting, the Court comes back with a decision: Salvatore Aldobrandi is sentenced to lifetime imprisonment for murder with aggravating circumstance of abject motives.
Almost 30 years later, finally there was some closure for a mother that for too long waited for this on an empty grave.
