There are responsibilities in the murder of Elisa Clapsresponsibilities never found which are added to those recognized in court Danilo Restivosentenced to 30 years in Italy for the murder of Elisa. Restivo is also serving a 40-year sentence in the United Kingdom for the murder of Heather Barnett.
The book talks about these responsibilities, about everything that has not passed through mainstream narration, about all the most interesting details, told with a precise and detailed investigative approach.Elisa Claps – Investigation into the Abyss of the Trinity Churchwritten by journalists Fabio Amendolara and Fabrizio Di Vito.
Amendolara spoke to Il Giornale about the book in a lengthy interview that perhaps does not do justice to the wealth of details contained in the book. The pages written by the two journalists are difficult, not only because they tell of the gruesome murder of a sweet and altruistic 16-year-old girl that took place on September 12, 1993 – and of a family that remained for 17 years without a tomb that reflected the “legacy of affections” – but these pages also tell of omissions and a search for the truth that has not yet been fully achieved.
Amendolara, at the beginning of the book there is a sort of anonymous poem found in Potenza in 1993. Would you like to tell us about it?
“It is a document discarded by investigators, despite being very important. Rereading it today gives you the shivers, for three details: the verses ‘I had her buried with a stone on top‘ – and this is how Elisa was found in the attic of the Trinità -, the admission of having killed her and the presence of the same name, Elisa. It is not clear why it was discarded as an element. We found it by chance, rereading all the documents, indicated as an attachment in a footnote. We are not forensic graphologists, but we had fun comparing some letters of the anonymous writing found in the Montereale Park with a writing by Restivo, written in his own hand to his mother Filomena and read during one of the hearings in Salerno: the S, written like the symbol of a flash, are identical”.
What were the investigative slips and cautions that negatively affected the investigations at the beginning?
“The first mistake is one that investigators still make today. Elisa’s father and brother Gildo file a complaint. They say: my daughter went out this morning, met with Danilo Restivo, never came back, we suspect something serious has happened. A case is opened for voluntary absence. Thirty years later Giulia Cecchettin disappears, her father goes to the police station and says: my daughter left home, went out with her ex-boyfriend, never came back, I suspect something serious has happened. And the case is opened for voluntary absence. We have seen that cases end differently and this should teach us something.”
Then?
“Second mistake: prejudices. Two types of prejudice have wasted a lot of investigators’ time. The first is a prejudice that concerns women and that we still find in all cases in which women are victims of murder or violence. During the first prayer vigil, so a day after her disappearance, a witness hears after mass that Elisa has escaped with the military and that she is pregnant.”
What’s happening?
“She reports it to the police station and what do the investigators do? They rush to the pharmacies in the historic center of Potenza, which is a city of sixty thousand inhabitants, and ask if a girl who just disappeared was there to buy a pregnancy test. A dynamic is triggered whereby Elisa becomes a bad girl. Not content, they waste more time at the city hospital and go to ask if she had been there to undergo a gynecological examination. So she is left with this indelible stamp: after thirty years, the family has been forced to publish the girl’s diaries, to demonstrate that she was anything but a bad girl. But the investigators waste the first forty-eight hours, the ones that are fundamental for someone to solve an investigation. Then there is another prejudice regarding the foreigner”.
Meaning what?
“They are investigating an Albanian who arrived during the period of the first landings in Puglia. He had a drug conviction. His name was Eris Gega: there was a 600-page file on him, compared to Restivo’s 200. At the latter’s house they hadn’t even seized his clothes, which the police saw hanging out to dry because they had just been washed. Gega was searched several times, interrogated, wiretapped, followed. Restivo was questioned for the first time a few days after his disappearance, with sensational errors”.
In what sense?
“Restivo is believed intermittently. The first part of his testimony, when he says he met Elisa and saw her leave while he stopped to pray, is considered credible and no search is done in the church. The second part, in which Restivo says he fell on the escalator and hurt himself with a metal splinter, is deemed not credible, so the investigators investigate thoroughly at the escalator construction site, without finding the splinter, among other things. Unfortunately, the investigators took the wrong path at every crossroads, but if in Potenza, where the first part of the investigation took place, there were omissions, in Salerno they did even worse.”
What happened in Salerno?
“Everyone thought that the investigators there would be the saviors of the country, but in reality they had let the maximum time for preliminary investigations expire. It happened at a key moment: when the remains of Elisa Claps were found in the attic. There was a lot of material that could have been analyzed: a cigarette butt, an electoral card, receipts, beer bottles. At a certain point the forensic paleontologist wrote to the prosecutor’s office to ask for information on the prints found with photos in the attic, prints that had not been analyzed: she would never receive an answer. But there was more”.
What?
“Of course the church didn’t say everything that was expected, such as how long ago Elisa’s clothes were found. But they did find the remains: whoever hid them was never looked for. It is certain that Restivo couldn’t have acted alone. The logic of the times tells us this, because after the murder Restivo walked home and then had himself driven by car to the hospital, where he was treated. Someone must have helped him transport the body to the place where it was later found. And there were certainly other sightings of the body, given that some workers worked on the wooden coffered ceiling of the church, coffered ceilings that were collapsing and an anchor was made with steel pins in the attic, right next to the body. But to better understand the double investigative track, it is necessary to name a witness, Giuseppe Carlone”.
Who is it?
“The day after Elisa disappeared, Carlone goes to the police station and says: I met Elisa, she was near the stairs of her house an hour after the alleged disappearance. This statement shifts the investigative perimeter, from the church of the Trinity to the rest of the world. The witness was never called back or heard from again. There were many demonstrations in front of the church, attacks on the bishop, but I would have expected the same mobilizations in front of the prosecutor’s office and in front of the homes of the witnesses who told falsehoods”.
Why is Restivo called a serial killer in the book?
“Restivo committed two murders: Elisa Claps and Heather Barnett. The dynamics connected to the two murders are almost identical. Elisa was lured with the excuse of a gift, as happens to another potential victim – there is testimony in the investigation documents, in the book we call her ‘the other Elisa‘ -. Barnett is killed after Restivo goes to her house saying he has a gift for his wife. Both Elisa and Heather have locks of hair cut off, the bras of the two victims are cut in the middle in the same way, and so are their pants folded like a book with their panties half-lowered. For both victims there was dragging and in both cases Restivo takes off his shoes. We have also investigated further: Restivo was suspected of the murder of two Korean girls, including Erika Ansermin, who disappeared in Aosta: there was a photo of her on Restivo’s computer. And speaking of seriality, Restivo was also a serial collector of disturbing things”.
That is to say?
“In Potenza, pornographic photographs of women with disabilities were found, while in his house in London there were images of missing girls.”
There have been a few types of alleged misdirection over time. Perhaps the most interesting one involves a website. Can you tell us about it?
“In the days leading up to Elisa’s disappearance, Restivo harasses his neighbors. He writes many letters and in these letters he expresses three personalities. These personalities emerge within a forum on a website, ‘The People of the Net‘, in the thread ‘How many doubts about the Claps case‘, opened by chance by a man who did not know Restivo, but who viewed critically the activities on the case conducted by ‘Who saw it?‘, a program through which he had learned about the story. Restivo found fertile ground here and began to write with different nicknames, telling true things but peppering them with imaginative details related to his own defense line, to divert suspicion from himself”.
It wasn’t the first diversion.
“No, in the past he had sent to the site about Elisa’s disappearance
an email in which he said that the girl was in Brazil and did not want to be searched. He sent an email to a newspaper I worked for at the time, attaching photos with bullets and claiming that Gildo Claps had sent them to him”.