| Murders of Antonio Maso and Mariarosa Tessari | |
|---|---|
| Location | 4 Via San Pietro, Montecchia di Crosara |
| Date | 17 April 1991 |
Attack type | double homicide |
| Deaths | 2 |
| Victims |
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| Perpetrators |
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| Motive | Taking possession of the inheritance |
The murders of Antonio Maso and Mariarosa Tessari, also known as the Maso case, and known in Italian as omicidio dei coniugi Maso or the Montecchia di Crosara crime, was a case of double parricide committed on 17 April 1991 in Montecchia di Crosara, in the province of Verona. [1] [2] The crime is remembered as one of the most emblematic cases of children killing their parents, on a par with the Graneris case of 1975 and the Novi Ligure murder of 2001. [2] [3] [4] [5]
In order to get his share of inheritance, Pietro Maso (19-years-old at the time) killed both his parents Antonio Maso and Mariarosa Tessari. He was helped by three friends: Giorgio Carbognin (18-years-old), Paolo Cavazza (18-years-old) and Damiano Burato (17-years-old). [1] He was arrested on 19 April 1991 and then definitively sentenced to thirty years in prison, with the recognition of semi-mental infirmity at the time of the crime; [6] after having spent twenty-two years as a prisoner, he was released in 2013, [7] [2] he underwent rehabilitation in a psychiatric clinic in 2016, [8] and then became a gardener and carried out social reintegration activities in a non-profit organization (ONLUS ).
His accomplices, Giorgio Carbognin and Paolo Cavazza, were sentenced to twenty-six years, while the minor Damiano Burato was sentenced to thirteen years. [6]
The victims, Antonio and Rosa, were two well-off farmers with three children. They had two daughters, Nadia and Laura, and a son, Pietro. The daughters got married in their twenties and moved out to live elsewhere. Pietro enrolled at the agricultural institute but dropped out in the third year. He was expelled from the seminary and exempted from military service continuing to live with his parents and lead a highly expensive life together with a group of friends. [4] In the months leading up to the crime, his parents seemed more worried than usual as Pietro had left his job as a clerk in a supermarket and even his occasional collaboration with a car dealership. [9] Furthermore, on 3 March 1991, the mother found in the cellar of the house two gas cylinders with a control unit for psychedelic disco lights and an alarm clock set a few minutes after the discovery, as well as cushions blocking the fireplace. [9] All of this seemed like part of a system that was supposed to cause an explosion aimed at killing the parents. [2] Pietro justified himself to his mother by telling her that everything was needed for a party.
The explosion did not occur because the safety valves on the cylinders had been removed and they remained closed, and due to his inexperience, Pietro did not carry out his first plan to exterminate his family. [9] In an autobiographical book published decades later, he said instead that he lacked the courage to carry out the original plan. [2]
A few days before the crime, Rosa found approximately 2 million lire in her son's trouser pocket. As he was not in a position to have such a large sum of money his mother asked him for explanations and Pietro replied that it was the last commissions that his last employer had just given him and, indeed, suggested that she go and ask for confirmation of this at the car dealership. Rosa accepted and had her son and Giorgio Carbognin accompany her in the car, who, armed with a meat tenderizer, was supposed to kill his mother. However, he did not have the courage and Pietro was forced to invent another lie about the banknotes so that Rosa would give up speaking to the owner of the car dealership. [9] [2] He had apparently received that money from an acquaintance who he had discovered, by chance, to be responsible for computer trafficking; this acquaintance had paid him so that he would not report it. Mariarosa wished to believe this version, but her worry continued.[ citation needed ]
A third attempt saw Giorgio Carbognin once again give up. He supposedly planned to hit Pietro's parents in the garage of their house, but Carbognin lacked the courage to carry out the act. [9]
The banknotes found by Maso's mother came from a bank loan taken out by Giorgio Carbognin, for which his employer, Aleardo Confente, had acted as guarantor. The money was originally intended to be used by the young man to buy a used car; however, Giorgio's family subsequently opposed the purchase, and the boy gave up the car but did not return the money to the bank. He and Pietro squandered it on restaurants, nightclubs, bars, and jewelry stores.
When it was time to return the money, Carbognin asked his friend for help, who decided to write a cheque for 25 million from his mother's account, imitating her signature; the crime therefore had to be carried out before the mother noticed the shortage in the account. [9] [4] Maso, worried that his parents would cut off his supply of food this time, decided to kill them and, together with his friends, organised a plan that would guarantee the accomplices a share of the inheritance: 200 million each for Cavazza and Burato and the rest divided equally between him and Carbognin. [4] The crime was committed during the night between Wednesday 17th and Thursday 18th April 1991. That evening Maso, Carbognin, Cavazza and Burato met to discuss the final details. With them there was a fifth friend, Michele, who had been informed of the plan so that he would take part in it but thought it was a joke so much so that he accompanied them to Maso's house and later left, continuing not to believe his friends. At 11pm Pietro's parents, who had taken part in a meeting of the Neocatechumenal Way, returned home. When the two entered, the father tried in vain to turn on the light but the bulb had been unscrewed by his son. Thinking it was a power problem, he went up the stairs to reach the meter on the first floor and, having arrived in the kitchen, he was hit by his son with an iron pipe and by Damiano with a saucepan. The two then kicked him in the head. Shortly afterwards his mother arrived and suffered the same fate. She did not die instantly and was then suffocated with cotton wool in her throat. [9] [2] [4]
After the murder, Maso and Carbognin went to a disco to create an alibi while Cavazza and Burato returned home. After a few hours, Maso returned home to stage the fake discovery, telling the neighbors that he had seen his parents' legs lying on the floor. The bodies were then discovered by one of the neighbors who entered the house to verify what Maso had said. [2] [4]
At first, as the boys had hoped, the trail of a murder for the purpose of robbery was followed by police, but it was soon discovered that it was a staged burglary. [4] The sisters, Nadia and Laura, began to become suspicious when they discovered that 25 million lira had been withdrawn from their mother's account. [2] The investigations, however, facilitated by the fact that the same friends had begun to go around talking about the fact, as well as Maso's strange behaviour after the crime, led to his arrest first and then to the rest of the accomplices; Maso confessed shortly after the arrest. [4]
All of them were arrested for voluntary homicide, a charge which at the end of the investigation became double premeditated voluntary homicide with multiple aggravating factors. The aggravating factors were in fact cruelty, futile motives and, in the case of Pietro, also the family ties. For the psychiatric assessment , requested by the public prosecutor Mario Giulio Schinaia, the psychiatrist, teacher and writer from Verona Vittorino Andreoli was called. [10] [11]
The professor's verdict contemplates the sanity of all three defendants (Burato, not being yet an adult, will be judged by the juvenile court which will sentence him to 13 years) [2] and therefore the full capacity to understand and to want. In the specific case of Maso, leader as well as son of the victims, Andreoli speaks of narcissistic personality disorder, specifying that it is not a form of mental illness.[ citation needed ] Categoria:Informazioni senza fonte At the trial, at the Corte d'Assise of Verona, the public prosecutor asked for life imprisonment for Maso and just under thirty years for the other two. [9] The sentence was issued on 29 February 1992, with Pietro Maso condemned to 30 years of imprisonment with the recognition of semi-infirmity, Cavazza and Carbognin were condemned to 26 years each, a sentence later confirmed in the subsequent levels of judgement. [2] [12]
For several months, Maso demanded his share of the inheritance; only the urging of his defense attorney, in order to increase his chances of avoiding a life sentence in the first instance, convinced him to officially renounce it.
In 1996 Maso wrote a letter to the bishop of Vicenza Pietro Giacomo Nonis, stating that he felt repentant and asking God for forgiveness. The bishop himself (who performed the funeral of the Maso couple) went to the prison in Milan to speak with the young man and understand the reason for his actions.
Pietro Maso served his sentence in semi-liberty in the prison of Opera, in the province of Milan. In the past he had obtained some special permits: the first in autumn 2006 and the second, for Easter, from 7 to 9 April 2007. With the pardon, the official term of his sentence was set for 2015 and no longer 2018. Maso had taken part in re-education programmes, studied and had returned to faith. He had also participated in a musical theatre course (including a performance of the famous musical Jesus Christ Superstar where he played an angel). [13]
In the interview with La Repubblica on 5 February 2007, Maso declared that many young people write to him because they would have liked to do what he had done, and that he invited them to hold back and try to mend their relationships: "I couldn't save myself: at least I try with others". However, the writer Cinzia Tani, an expert in the social history of crime, states that "in prison his worries are the care of his person, from perfume to tanning lotion, from gymnastics to sunbathing. He doesn't feel any remorse. He receives letters from thousands of fans". [14]
On 14 October 2008, Maso was granted semi-liberty by the Milan Surveillance Court . [15] [16] Since 22 October 2008, he has been working in Peschiera Borromeo in a computer and component assembly company (Elettrodata Spa, which has now ceased its activity), leaving at 7:30 am and having to return to prison by 10:30 pm. On his first day at work, there was no shortage of journalists and onlookers outside the company. A passer-by shouted: "Kill him, that murderer".
The end of the sentence was scheduled for 2018, but was later brought forward to 2015. On 15 April 2013 Pietro Maso was released [17] and began working for the Catholic broadcaster Telepace, [17] followed by the director and spiritual father Don Guido Todeschini. [18] In April 2013 the book written together with the journalist Raffaella Regoli was published, entitled Il male ero io (Mondadori), where he recounts the crime, but above all his journey which he defines as one of redemption during the twenty-two years spent in prison.
On 21 January 2016, the Verona Public Prosecutor's Office entered Pietro Maso in the register of suspects on charges of attempted extortion. His sisters, threatened by him, were placed under police protection. [19] [20] On 4 March 2016 he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital for mental disorders and cocaine addiction. [21] On 16 April 2016, the newspaper Libero published a letter written by Pietro Maso to Manuel Foffo. [22] On 29 July 2020 , Il Messaggero , anticipating the newspaper Oggi and quoting it, announced that Pietro Maso had been receiving citizen's income since 2019. [23]
The "Maso case" has sparked numerous debates in newspapers and on television. The last homicide case so brutal to receive such widespread media attention was, up until that point, the Graneris case ; the crime committed by eighteen-year-old Doretta Graneris from Vercelli, who, together with her boyfriend, killed her father, mother, grandparents, and brother in 1975. After the Maso case, another case that generated just as much media attention was the Novi Ligure murder in 2001, committed by then sixteen-year-old Erika.