Murder of Luigia Borrelli

The murder of Luigia Borrelli, known in Italy as delitto del trapano^[1] (English: Drill Crime) is a notorious crime in Italy. The murder occurred 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 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.^[4] The presumed culprit and suspect was then identified in 2024 thanks to DNA analysis, as Fortunato Verduci, a body shop mechanic.^[5][6][7]

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. 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 where Luigia worked. Due to not having the money necessary for renovations, he went into debt with loan sharks owing 250 million lira. In February 1990, Andreini died of a heart attack leaving Luigia as a widow. She 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.

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. 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 practice her trade. In July 1993, due to eviction, she moved to live from Corso Gastaldi, in the Foce district, to via Monticelli in Marassi,^[8] but it was in the Molo district that she managed to create 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.

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. Subsequently, the she was later spotted, around 1PM, in a pizzeria where she usually ate, near vico Indoratori and an hour later in a bar in Piazza San Matteo, in the company of another prostitute. This was the last sighting of her alive.^[8]

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 where she then entered at 8:30 thanks to the intervention of the carabinieri. It was here where the body was found. She was covered in blood, in a room turned upside down by what had been a 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 with 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 11 pm the previous evening and had subsequently died from the serious injuries she had sustained.^[8]

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.^[9] 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 and went to commit suicide. At around 6:30 pm on 14 September 1995, he threw himself off the Aldo Moro elevated road in front of the Lighthouse of Genoa, dying shortly after in hospital. He was due to appear in court the following day.^[10] 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 as innocent. A week later the DNA test proved him right, exonerating him too late.^[11]

The investigations then began to explore the world of prostitution outside the European Union (EU) and international drug dealing. Deputy Prosecutor 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. The landlady Adriana Fravega was found lifeless in her home after having taken a large quantity of barbiturates in another apparent suicide.^[12] 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.^[13] However, the culprit was not found and the investigations ran aground. The hypothesis gained ground that the crime had been the result of a punitive expedition of professionals, 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 hosted by Carlo Lucarelli.^[8][14]

In August 2004, a letter was delivered to the Public Prosecutor 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." 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. Ten years later another tragic event occurred. On 14 November 2014, Roberto Borelli, decided to take his own life, throwing himself from the Monumental Bridge (Ponte monumentale) in Genoa. He had been undergoing treatment for mental health problems for some time and was thought to have committed suicde because he had never gotten over the death of his parents, the sudden death of his father and the murder of his mother.^[15][16]

Following the broadcast, in May 2022, of the program Mostri senza nome - Genova, on Sky Italia and NowTv, a production of Crime + Investigation, with an episode on the "drill crime" narrated by Matteo Caccia^[17] - with the participation of Petruzziello and the journalist Marco Menduni, reporter for Il Secolo XIX -, the daughter of a former colleague of Borrelli reported that she remembered a head physician at the San Martino Hospital who in the days following the crime had come to work covered in bruises and scratches, who had been a client of the woman and who had allegedly been blackmailed financially by Borrelli herself. In 2023 the investigations were reopened with new DNA tests which exonerated the man, who died in 2021, along with all the suspects from the years following the crime.^{[18][19][20][21][22][23]}

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), an employee of a body shop in Staglieno, as a suspect in the crime. The man is being investigated thanks to new DNA tests and was searched and charged with murder and robbery, even though he declared himself innocent.^{[24][25][26][27]}

Thanks to the evolution of forensic genetic techniques that allow for the extraction for more analysis than in previous years, there was also a DNA database that allows for 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 right at Vico degli Indoratori 64, located at all the key points that marked the phases of the assault and the murder. Borrelli earned well, between 400 and 500 thousand lire a day, while Verduci had always been full of debts and a compulsive gambler. Furthermore, the same DNA as Verduci was found on a pack of Diana cigarettes found in the basement, which the man has always smoked and which was found on 27 October 2023 during a summons to the Public Safety Commissioner's Office.^[28][29] 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 seized copy of the Corriere Mercantile of 5 September 1995.^[28] However, the preliminary investigations judge Alberto Lippini rejected the arrest, as requested by the public prosecutor Petruzziello, recognising the great evidence against the suspect but maintaining that, after so many years, the relevance of the precautionary requirements of risk of escape and repetition of the crime has not been proven. In a telephone interception from a few months earlier, Verduci claimed to have killed Borrelli "for fun"^[30] by hitting her with a stool and attacking her with a drill.^[31] His probable involvement in another unsolved murder also emerged.^[32] On 8 April 1998, the wealthy haberdasher Anna Rossi Lamberti was found killed on again in Marassi.^[33]

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.^[34] On 20 November 2024 the Court of Cassation confirmed the non-preventive arrest of the accused^[35] pending a trial after further complete analyses of his DNA.^[36] In February 2025 the analysis confirmed that the genetic profile is uniquely compatible with that of Fortunato Verduci, with a probability of error equal to zero,^[37][38][39] even if the investigations are closed. 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";^[40] therefore, even in the case of a conviction in the first instance, Verduci who risked life imprisonment for the crime, would not go to prison at least until the final sentence, therefore until the possible conviction on appeal.^[41]

An exponent of the Genoese underworld, considered close to the Riesi clan, a mafia group from the Certosa district, has provided investigators with a different hypothesis from the accusation - which would then conflict with the motive of the robbery. The hypotheis links the murder to a debt with the "underworld" for 150 million lire with a close relative of Verduci, who in turn had close relations with the clans, a lead, that of the loan sharks, already explored for a long time by Petruzziello.^[42]

• Andrea Casazza, Max Mauceri, Liguria criminale. Dieci casi insoluti di cronaca nera, Genova, Fratelli Frilli Editori, 2005.