The murder of Luigia Borrelli, known in Italy as delitto del trapano[1] (English: Drill Crime) is a notorious crime in Italy. The murder was carried out on the night of 5 September 1995, in Vico degli Indoratori 64R, in the historic centre of Genoa.[2][3] The victim was Luigia Borrelli, a 42-year-old former nurse, also known by the name of "Antonella", who worked as a prostitute in the alley[it] where she was murdered.
The murder is known as the Drill Crime, taking its name from the tool used to kill the victim. It is remembered in the news as one of the most brutal crimes committed in the capital of Liguria in recent times and remained unsolved for many years until the case was reopened in 2023.[1] The presumed culprit and suspect was then identified in 2024 thanks to DNA analysis, as Fortunato Verduci, a body shop mechanic.[4][5][6]
Background
Luigia Borrelli was born in the 1950s in Iglesias, Sardinia, but at the end of the 1970s she moved to Genoa, where she found a job as a nurse at the San Martino Hospital[it].[7] In the city she also met the man she went to live with, Mario Arnaldo Andreini, a divorced warehouse worker, with whom she had two children. Towards the end of the 1980s, Andreini tried to open a bar in the same neighbourhood[it] where Luigia worked. He did not have the money necessary for renovations, and went into debt with loan sharks owing 250 million lira. In February 1990, Andreini died of a heart attack.[8] Luigia was left with the task of supporting her two children and repaying the large debt, of which she had been unaware until after her husbands death.[9]
Genoa Cathedral near the scene of the crime
Threatened and pressured by loan sharks, in 1992 Luigia was forced to make a difficult choice. She quit her job as a nurse and began to prostitute herself under the fictitious name of "Antonella" to pay off her debts.[10] She even resorted to renting a property in the alleyway of Vico degli Indoratori at number 64, a few steps from Genoa Cathedral, where she could ply her trade. In July 1993 she was evicted, and moved to live from Corso Gastaldi, in the Foce[it] district, to via Monticelli in Marassi[it],[11] but it was in the Molo district that she managed to generate a rather large clientele, so much so that she could pay her rent and her debt. This however also attracted the antipathy of other prostitutes under pimps. She told her children that she was a carer for an elderly lady, Adriana Fravega, who was a former prostitute and owner of the property where Luigia organised the appointments.[12]
On the day of her murder, Tuesday 5 September 1995, "Antonella" was seen having breakfast at the bar, around 10.30 in the morning, on the corner between Piazza Carloforte and via Bonifacio, a few steps from her house, a regular stop, as the owner of the bar recalled. She was later seen at around 1PM in a pizzeria where she usually ate, near Vico Indoratori, and an hour later in a bar in Piazza San Matteo[it], in the company of another prostitute. This was the last sighting of her alive.[11]
The morning of the following day, Wednesday 6 September, at the request of her 19-year-old daughter Francesca, who had not seen her mother return home, Adriana Fravega went to check the premises in vico Indoratori, which she was able to enter at 8:30 due to the intervention of the carabinieri. The body was found there.[13] She was covered in blood, in a room turned upside down by what had been an apprent fight between the attacker and the victim. The woman had broken teeth, several bruises and a drill stuck in her throat, a tool that gave the crime its media name, although none of the ten wounds, including the one inflicted by the drill, were immediately fatal. From the autopsy examination by the coroner, Dr. Enzo Profumo, it emerged that Borrelli had been attacked between 9 and 11pm the previous evening and had died from the serious injuries she had sustained.[11] Investigators described the crime scene as "overkill".[14]
The investigations and the suspects
Sopraelevata Aldo Moro, the bridge where Ottavio Salis jumped to his death.
The first among the suspects became Luigia's son, 22-year-old Roberto. He was described as an unemployed reckless man who often returned home late at night, who in the past had raised his hands on his mother and, according to the archives, had also been seen in the company of local criminal figures. Not finding any evidence against him, despite the long interrogations on the day the body was discovered, he was eventually released. On 11 September 1995, the investigations moved on to a local electrician, 52-year-old Ottavio Salis. Also Sardinian, he was a resident in Teglia and was married with two children. He was accused by Fravega and was revealed to have worked on the renovation of the studio flat where Borrelli worked (and of which he was known to have been a customer). The most striking clue, however, was that the drill found at the crime scene was his.[15] Furthermore, the man contradicted himself several times during the interrogations complicating his position before the investigators. Also because of the presence of scratches on his arms that he was unable to justify, a DNA test was requested, and the following day he was included in the register of suspects for the murder. Salis, having been splashed across the pages of the newspapers as one of the main suspects in the death of Borrelli, fell into despair. At around 6:30 pm on 14 September 1995, he threw himself off the Aldo Moro elevated road[it] in front of the Lighthouse of Genoa, dying shortly after in hospital. He had been due to appear in court the following day.[16] In his pocket he had five handwritten notes addressed to the marshal who had interrogated him, to his wife, to his family, to his friends and to his lawyer in which he declared himself innocent. A week later the DNA test proved him right, exonerating him too late.[17]
The investigations then began to explore the world of prostitutionoutside[it] the European Union (EU) and international drug dealing. Deputy Prosecutor[it] Patrizia Petruzziello also questioned the local loan sharks closest to the woman, but without any promising results. On 25 March 1996 another suspicious death in the case occurred.[18] The landlady Adriana Fravega was found lifeless in her home after having taken a large quantity of barbiturates in another apparent suicide.[19] This was suspected to be perhaps because she knew of some further clues about Borrelli's death or because she had unjustly accused Salis, who had then committed suicide.[18] However, the culprit was not found and the investigations ran aground. The hypothesis gained ground that the murder had been a targeted killing, a theory supported by Commissioner Silvio Bozzi of the Bologna scientific police in the episode "Antonella and Luigia" of 21 April 1999 in the programme Blu notte - Misteri italiani[it] hosted by Carlo Lucarelli.[11][20]
In August 2004, a letter was delivered to the Public Prosecutor[it] Office in Genoa, also to Patrizia Petruzziello, which revealed that it had been written by the alleged murderer of the prostitute: "I am the monster of the drill. Years ago I committed a murder, I have never been caught. I am afraid of ending up in jail forever, my life is changing".[21] The letter was considered credible because it provided information that only the murderer could know, but there was no trace of saliva on the stamp, leaving investigators with only hypotheses and an unsolved crime.[21]
On 14 November 2014, Luigia's son Roberto Borelli took his own life, throwing himself from the Monumental Bridge (Ponte monumentale[it]) in Genoa. He had been undergoing treatment for mental health problems for some time and was thought to have committed suicide because he had never gotten over the sudden death of his father and the murder of his mother.[22][23]
New DNA tests
Following the broadcast, in May 2022, of the programme Mostri senza nome - Genova, on Sky Italia and NowTv, a production of Crime + Investigation[it], with an episode on the "drill crime" narrated by Matteo Caccia[it].[24] The episode was made with the participation of Petruzziello and the journalist Marco Menduni, reporter for Il Secolo XIX.[25] The daughter of a former nursing colleague of Borrelli reported that she remembered a head physician at the San Martino Hospital who had come to work covered in bruises and scratches in the days following the crime.[17] He had reportedly been a client of Borrelli and had allegedly been blackmailed by her.[17] The programme opened new leads.[26] The DNA of a male had been found under the victim's fingernails.[27] In 2023 the investigations were reopened with new DNA tests that exonerated the new suspect, who died in 2021, along with all the previous suspects.[28]
The turning point in the investigation: the culprit
On 9 September 2024, the police and the Guardia di Finanza identified Fortunato Verduci, a 65-year-old Genoese man (thirty at the time of the crime), as a suspect.[29] Verduci, a body shop mechanic in Staglieno[it], was investigated after new DNA tests.[30] His home outside Genoa was searched,[31] as was his workplace; he was subsequently charged with murder and robbery.[32]
Thanks to the development of more advanced forensic genetic techniques, there was also a DNA database that allowed multiple comparisons. The investigators of the mobile squad traced Verduci through the genetic heritage of a distant relative of his in the prison of Brescia. Salivary and blood traces of the man were found at all the locations in Vico degli Indoratori 64 related to the assault and the murder. Borrelli earned well, between 400 and 500 thousand lire a day, while Verduci, a compulsive gambler, was deeply in debt. Furthermore, DNA matching Verduci's was found on a pack of Dianacigarettes, a brand Verduci always smoked, found in the basement on 27 October 2023.[33][34] DNA was also found on blood traces present in the basement: on a separation curtain, on a shelf next to the sink and on a copy of the Corriere Mercantile[it] of 5 September 1995.[33] However, preliminary investigations judge Alberto Lippini did not permit public prosecutor Petruzziello's request for Verduci's arrest, recognising that there was much evidence against the suspect but maintaining that, after so many years, the relevance of the precautionary requirements of risk of escape and preventing other crimes had not been proven. In a tapped telephone conversation a few months earlier, Verduci had said he had killed Borrelli "for fun"[35] by hitting her with a stool and attacking her with a drill.[36] His probable involvement in another unsolved murder also emerged:[37] on 8 April 1998, the wealthy haberdasher Anna Rossi Lamberti was found killed in Marassi.[38]
The consultants of the Prosecutor's Office, the psychiatrist Pietro Pietrini and the forensic psychologist Marcello Garofano, reported that Borrelli was killed with lucidity and control and not in the throes of a psychotic crisis.[39] On 20 November 2024 the Court of Cassation confirmed the arrest of the accused, to be put on trial rather than to prevent further crimes,[40] after further complete analyses of his DNA.[41] In February 2025 the analyses confirmed that the genetic profile of the samples was uniquely compatible with that of Fortunato Verduci, with no possibility of error.[42][43][44] The Supreme Court then rejected the appeal of the Genoa Public Prosecutor's Office on the failure to arrest the accused: "The silent period, that is the passage of an appreciable period of time between the issuing of a measure and the commission of the contested facts, if not accompanied by other factual elements is incompatible with the precautionary measure";[45] consequently, even in the case of a conviction at trial, Verduci who could be subject to life imprisonment for the crime, would not go to prison until all appeals were exhausted.[46]
A member of the Genoese underworld, considered close to the Riesi clan[it], a mafia group from the Certosa district, provided investigators with a possible different motive than robbery for the crime. It could have been due to a debt of 150 million lire owed to a close relative of Verduci connected to the underworld; prosecutor Petruzziello had considered this "loan shark" theory, which conflicted with the robbery theory.[47]
Andrea Casazza, Max Mauceri, Liguria criminale. Dieci casi insoluti di cronaca nera, Genova, Fratelli Frilli Editori[it], 2005.
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