The 2004 disappearance of Denise Pipitone in Sicily was so strange that she has been dubbed “Italy’s Madeleine McCann”.
On 1st September 2004 Denise, then aged four, was playing outside her house in Mazara del Vallo [Trapani] while her mother was preparing lunch. She was last seen at 11.45 am. By noon there was no trace of her.
On 18th October 2004 a bank security guard saw a child who resembled Denise in Milan. The child was with a group of people who appeared to be travellers or Roma. The guard called the police but the group left before they arrived. The guard took a videoclip with his cellphone and in it the child speaks to a woman in the group in Italian. Denise’s mother, Piera Maggio, told the press that she believed the child was her daughter and a police analysis of the clip found physical resemblances to Denise but it was not possible to confirm the child’s identity.
Since then, as in the Madeleine McCann case, there have been many unconfirmed “sightings”, most notably of a child found on Kos in 2008. However, DNA tests confirmed that the woman looking after that child was her biological mother.
Piera Maggio has never given up her efforts to find Denise and she was largely responsible for the passing of a law making the abduction of a minor without demanding a ransom a crime in Italy and for an amendment imposing more severe penalties.
Now, however, the case has taken on an upsetting and sinister twist: Denise’s 22-year-old stepsister, Jessica Pulizzi, has been indicted on charges of complicity in kidnapping and her trial began, in her absence because of illness, yesterday. Jessica’s mother, the first wife of Piero Pulizzi, is also under investigation. The hypothesis is that Jessica Pulizzi abducted Denise in order to avenge Piera Maggio, the woman she blamed for the break-up of her parents’ marriage. Pulizzi’s former boyfriend is also being tried for giving false statements to the prosecutor.
Meanwhile Piera Maggio’s agony continues.
