A man was arrested on Friday
on suspicion of murdering Lidia Macchi, a student who was
stabbed to death in the northern town of Cittiglio, near Varese,
in January 1987.
It was one of two notorious cold cases reopened Friday.
The suspect has been named as Stefano Binda.
He is a former fellow student of the high school that
Macchi attended, sources said.
Her body was found in a forest with 29 stab wounds after
she had gone missing following a visit to a friend in hospital.
Investigators believe Binda raped Macchi and then killed
her because he convinced himself that she had let herself be
taken and this was against his religious beliefs.
Both the man and the victim were followers of the
Communion and Liberation (CL) lay Catholic movement, according
to the sources.
The case was reopened in 2013.
A key part of the process of identifying the suspect was
the results of analysis of the handwriting of an anonymous
letter sent to Macchi's family on the day of her funeral
containing disturbing references to the murder.
Police said the also recently found a note in Binda's
diary saying "Stefano is a barbaric murderer".
A preliminary investigations judge said Macchi may have
wanted to save Binda from heroin.
Friday also the reopening of another, even more notorious
cold case in Italy.
The 1975 case of rape, torture and murder at the plush
Circeo resort south of Rome was reopened when the body of one of
the perpetrators, Andrea Ghira, was ordered to be exhumed in the
Spanish North African city of Melilla where he was buried under
a false name.
The latest DNA technology will be used to definitively
establish that the body is that of Ghira, who was buried as
Maximo Testa De Andres.
An initial DNA test in 2005 identified it as Ghira but
Italian prosecutors now want to be absolutely sure he is dead
and not hiding somewhere.
The case was reopened after a report by a missing persons
show on RAI TV, 'Chi l'ha visto?' (Who Has Seen Him?).
Ghira and two other neo-Fascists, Angelo Izzo and Gianni
Guido, were handed life-sentences in July 1976 for murdering 19-
year-old Maria Rosaria Lopez and attempting to murder Donatella
Colasanti after torturing and raping them at a villa owned by
Ghiri's father at Circeo, a wealthy seaside resort about 100km
south of Rome.
The three, all from well-off and well-connected families in
Rome's Parioli neighbourhood, all managed to elude justice for
several years, some by escaping abroad.
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