Postage Stamp Leads To Killer Of Teen Girl

Thirteen-year-old Yara Gambirasio went missing on the evening of Friday, November 26, 2010, only to have her partly decomposed, frozen corpse found three months later on February 25, 2011, as reported by Newsweek. The question for the past four years has been, “Who is Yara’s killer?”

The police got a lucky break in the fall of 2012 when they went to the home of a bus driver in a small town in northern Italy. According to MSN, the bus driver’s widow provided her spouse’s paper driver’s license, which much to the police’s pleasure, had a postage stamp affixed. Police had hopes that the stamp would have the bus driver’s saliva, which would provide a DNA sample if he had licked the stamp.

According to the Baltimore Sun, forensic scientists state that “even scant cells in old, dried saliva can yield enough DNA to link a suspect to a crime or location,” which is what helped nail the Unabomber years ago.

After not having any success with DNA testing over the previous two years without any matches, the police were not holding their breath for a match for fear of another letdown. However, lab results came back, revealing that the DNA from the stamp was a very close match to that found on the underpants and leggings of the murdered teen, as revealed by MSN.

Relieved and thinking they could close the case, all hopes were dashed when the police discovered that the bus driver died in 1999, which was 11 years prior to Yara’s murder.

However, at least they weren’t back to square one. The police still had an incredible break and could begin to follow the DNA path that had been set before them.

Yara Gambirasio loved gymnastics, and on the night of her disappearance, she had been at the local gym about a half-mile from her home in an extremely quaint town, Brembate di Sopra, where crime is nil. It is quiet, and very rare that anything bad ever happens.

Yara left the gym and began walking home at 6 p.m., and by 7:30 p.m., her parents became very worried. The snow began falling heavier, and they had been unable to reach their daughter by cell phone. They called the police for help in finding their missing daughter.

Three months later, her body was found in a field about six miles from her home.

After many efforts in DNA testing and continuous long hours, days, weeks, months, and years of hopes being dwindled of finding Yara’s killer, the police finally had a legitimate path to follow. Lieutenant Colonel La Russo explains their breakthrough, per MSN.

“Finding the marca da bollo on the ­driving licence in the house of the bus driver’s widow was a significant step. It connected the killer with a real person at last – even if he was dead.”

Giuseppe Guerinoni, the dead bus driver, had three children with his wife, who were quickly excluded as suspects. It was then determined that Guerinoni must have had an illegitimate child who was the killer — a son. The DNA determined that the killer was, in fact, a male, narrowing their search. However, in order to 100 percent sure, MSN reports that officials exhumed the dead man’s body, and retrieved more DNA from Geurinoni’s femur.

The next step for the police was to find the illegitimate son’s mother.

Newsweek reports that Vincenzo Bigoni, another bus driver who knew Guerinoni, told police, “Yes, he was a ladies’ man and lots of young women travelled on his bus to and from work. One, at least, he got into trouble.”

After investigating 532 women who had known Guerinoni and possibly had sex with him, police found 67-year-old Ester Arzuffi, whose DNA was the perfect female match for that found on the murdered body of Yara. They had found the mother of a killer.

Although Arzuffi, having been married to the same man since 1967 when she was 19, vehemently maintains that she has never had an affair, she can’t deny the DNA results. Arzuffi and her husband, Giovanni Bosetti, have three children consisting of twins (one boy and one girl) born in 1970, and a younger son, as reported by Newsweek.

The DNA results unequivocally reveal that Bossetti is not the father of her twins — but Guerinoni is. The male twin, ­Massimo Giuseppe Bossetti, was believed to be the alleged killer.

Police staged a road block on Massimo’s street, where the 43-year-old lived happily with his wife and three children ages 13, 10, and 7. As Massimo approached the roadblock with his family in the car, police asked him to do a breathalyzer test. When Massimo complied, the police had acquired his DNA.

According to Newsweek, lab results showed a clear match. The results showed “21 compatible markers (16 to 17 are normally considered enough). This means that the police, and their forensic experts are almost completely sure that he is the killer.”

Massimo was quickly arrested and taken into custody, where he continues to claim his innocence. His wife swears he was home having dinner with the family at the time of the murder, and Arzuffi continues to claim she never had an affair with Guerinoni, stating, “I did not have an affair with him unless my mind is playing me absurd tricks.”

The question now is determining if the DNA results actually prove Massimo to be guilty — or could there be a freak occurrence in which forensics and science just don’t add up.

[Photo Credit via Newsweek]