Salerno, robbery with crime in San Leonardo: 24 years for Maria Grazia’s carer

Twenty-four years of imprisonment. It is the punishment inflicted on the Baronissi’s carer-killerhe 43enne Giuseppe Buonoguilty of killing the 91-year-old Maria Grazia Martino and that he also almost killed his 88-year-old sister Adele Martino, during a robbery that went terribly wrong. Despite the aggravating circumstances, the accused, defended by the lawyer Assunta Mutalipassi, escaped life imprisonment. At 2.15pm yesterday afternoon the president of the Assize Court of Salernothe judge Vincenzo Ferrara, read the operative part of the sentence, reserving 90 days for filing the reasons. There is also the usual perpetual ban from public office.

The sentence matches that requested by the public prosecution, represented in the courtroom by Licia Vivaldiprosecutor who conducted the investigations into the San Leonardo crime together with the owner Alessandro Di Vico. Except that at the end of the first instance trial some serious questions still linger. The most serious of all concerns a 46-year-old from Salerno who was never included in the register of those under investigation, at least as far as is known, for the disputed facts. Yet his photo ended up in the criminal case file: during the harsh indictment, the prosecutor also referred to the man, attributing him the task of arrest.

The 46-year-old appears in the company of the condemned man in the hours immediately preceding the crime inside a bar near the home of the Martino sisters. And during the hearing, the 88-year-old survivor of the tragedy – who joined as a civil party together with her family, all assisted by lawyers Massimo and Emiliano Torre – even reported having recognized that face in the house during the crime. Circumstances on which, in all likelihood, the Salerno Prosecutor’s Office will focus again.