TO distance of more than thirty years from brutal murder (still without guilt) of Simonetta Cesaroni, this evening it airs at 9.20pm on Rai 2 Via Poma – An Italian mystery. Documentary that tries to shed light on one of the most famous crimes of recent history.
Crime via Poma. An Italian mysterythe plot of the doc
On August 7, 1990, Simonetta Cesaroni, a twenty-year-old Roman, was killed with twenty-nine stab wounds in the office of the youth hostels in via Poma, in the center of Rome. Since then more than thirty years have passed without any truth about the murderer. Many suspects, such as the building’s doorman Pietrino Vanacore; errors in investigations; three degrees of judgment against Simonetta’s boyfriend; clear misdirections. The one in via Poma has become like this one of the most debated Italian cold cases evera true Italian mystery.
Narrated by the deputy editor of Republic Carlo Bonini and with the contributions of Corrado Augias and Franca Leosiniin addition to telling the story that ended in newspapers and TV, Via Poma – An Italian mystery shines a spotlight behind the scenes of the case. In this sense, two unpublished testimonies given by people who have never spoken before will be decisive.
Simonetta Cesaroni in an image from the time. (Rai Press Office)
The crime of Simonetta Cesaroni
Born in Rome in 1969, Cesaroni was 21 years old at the time of the crime. Daughter of a simple family from the Don Bosco neighborhood, she was engaged to Raniero Brusco for a couple of years, and had been working as an accounting secretary for about a year in an accounting firm. On the afternoon of August 7, 1990, Simonetta goes as usual to the studio located in via Carlo Poma (office closed to the public) and will never return home. Her family, after waiting in vain for dinner, raise the alarm. Shortly before midnight, the sister together with her boyfriend go to the office, where they find Simonetta half naked and bleeding to death on the floor.
With them is one of the building’s goalkeepers: Pietrino Vanacore. That August 10th he is stopped by the police as the first suspect in the crime, and is then released at the end of the month. But without stopping focusing on him, a 58-year-old man who the investigators later classified as a probable abettor or silent witness. Until the investigating judge archives the documents that concern him. By taking Vanacore out of the picture, for the moment.
The goalkeeper Pietrino Vanacore in an archive image from the documentary “Via Poma. An Italian mystery”. (Rai Press Office)
Suspicions and investigations that lead nowhere
In 1992 an Austrian came out and said: to know who killed Simonetta Cesaroni. Is called Roland Voller, and claims that the person responsible for the brutal murder is Raniero Valle, son of Cesare Valle, an architect who lives in via Poma. Also this lead, however, turns out to be fruitless – and for twenty years silence fell on the matter. Until a twist, in 2008, which brings Raniero Brusco, Simonetta’s boyfriend at the time, to the dock. With the help of new technical-scientific tools, they are identified some traces of DNA on the clothes of the girl, and the genetic code recovered could match that of the boyfriend.
In the meantime Vanacore returns to the scene, called again to testify in 2010 at the trial against Brusco. Except that the former doorman – three days before testifying in court – commits suicide, leaving a note on the dashboard of the car: «20 years of suffering and suspicion lead you to suicide”. In the next months, Brusco was convicted at first instance but then acquitted in subsequent stages of trial. And the crime in Via Poma still remains without a culprit.
Two new fundamental testimonies
The idea for the documentary was born after the success of the podcast released in 2021 by Giacomo Galanti, The shadows of via Poma – available on RaiPlay Sound. In which some obscure points of the story were already being analyzed like never before. Since then, the case has been reopened by the Rome Prosecutor’s Office – following a complaint from the Cesaroni family – and the Anti-Mafia Commission also opened an investigation. Because in this crime more than one element suggests that someone important had the power to sidetrack the investigation.
And precisely to shed light on this point of the crime, Via Poma – An Italian mystery features two previously unpublished testimonies from people who have never spoken before today. The first is that of a former youth hostel employee, the same association for which Simonetta Cesaroni worked. From her words they emerge some important details that make you think about the crime in a different way. Indicating a path never taken by investigators. The second is that of a resident of the neighborhood where the murder was committed which, on the afternoon of 7 August 1990, had a strange encounter which could be linked to the crime.
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