Serena Mollicone was an eighteen-year-old born and raised in Arce, in the province of Frosinone.
A lover of music, she played the clarinet in the village band and was in her final year at the “Vincenzo Gioberti” psycho-pedagogical institute in Sora.
Having lost her mother, she lived with her father Guglielmo and, for a few months, had been engaged to twenty-six-year-old Michele.
On June 1, 2001, she left home to undergo an orthopantomography at the hospital in Isola del Liri and, once finished, she went to a bar, where she bought some pizza and four croissants.
She had to return home by 2:00 p.m., because in the afternoon she was supposed to meet with Michele and finish writing her thesis for her high school graduation exam.
Thesis that remained unfinished because, after two days of incessant searches, Serena was found dead 8km from Arce, in a wood.
The body was in a supine position, half hidden by shrubs and foliage: hands and feet were tied in a tangle of scotch tape and wire, the nose and mouth were closed with multiple layers of adhesive tape, the head was wrapped in a plastic bag and, on the left side, a significant wound was clearly visible. Death, the investigators affirmed, had occurred due to asphyxiation.
The first to be entered in the register of suspects, in September of the following year, was the body shop mechanic Carmine Belli who, according to a note, was supposed to meet the girl on the very day of her disappearance.
Belli, however, was definitively acquitted in 2006.
The story gets even more red: on April 11, 2008, Santino Tuzi, a sergeant from Arce, took his own life, a few days after having declared to the Prosecutor's Office that on June 1, 2001, at 11:00, a girl who corresponded to Serena Mollicone had entered the Arce barracks and remained there until at least 2:30 p.m., when Tuzi had finished his shift.
Maria Tuzi, daughter of the suicide victim, stated: "I am sure that my father knew something and that he had been threatened with retaliation against the family"
In June 2011, former Marshal Franco Mottola (Commander of the Arce station at the time of the crime), his wife Annamaria, their son Marco, Marshal Vincenzo Quatrale (the latter also accused of inciting Santino Tuzi to commit suicide) and finally Corporal Francesco Suprano, accused "only" of aiding and abetting, were entered into the register of suspects, with the charge of voluntary homicide (only Marco), complicity in homicide and concealment of a corpse.
Thirteen days after the preliminary hearing, Guglielmo Mollicone suffered a severe heart attack, the aftermath of which led to his death in May of the following year.
Finally, after two decades, the trial of the five defendants began on March 19, 2021.
What was the motive for the murder, though?
According to the RIS, Serena was killed by Marco Mottola, at the end of an argument that arose from the girl's desire to report an alleged drug ring in which the Marshal's young son was involved. The crime allegedly took place inside the barracks itself: the forensic medical report established, in fact, a compatibility between the breaking down of a door of the Arce Carabinieri barracks and the skull fracture suffered by the girl who was, presumably, pushed and, following the trauma suffered from the fall, tied up, carried into the woods and abandoned. Continue reading
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