Louis Dassilva acquitted of Pierina Paganelli murder after 16-hour deliberation in Rimini

The verdict

Louis Dassilva, a 35-year-old Senegalese man, was acquitted of murdering his 78-year-old neighbour Pierina Paganelli by the Corte d'Assise of Rimini in the early hours of Wednesday 10 June 2026. The judges deliberated for over 16 hours before delivering their verdict shortly after 2 a.m. Dassilva, who had been in prison since July 2024 and faced a possible life sentence, was released immediately. He was met outside the prison by his wife Valeria Bartolucci and a crowd of supporters.

Justice has been done. Justice has won. It's the rebirth of justice.

Prosecutors had requested a life sentence, but the court found Dassilva not guilty of the crime. His defence lawyers, Riario Fabbri and Andrea Guidi, accompanied him to a different address from the Via del Ciclamino apartment block to avoid the press.

The crime

Paganelli was killed on the evening of 3 October 2023 in the underground garage of her condominium on Via del Ciclamino in Rimini. She was stabbed 29 times, a level of violence that criminologists describe as "overkilling," suggesting the killer knew her and harboured deep hatred. Her body was discovered the following morning by her daughter-in-law, Manuela Bianchi. The crime scene showed signs of staging: the victim's underwear had been cut, an apparent attempt to mislead investigators into believing a sexual assault had occurred. Paganelli was a devout Jehovah's Witness and was returning alone from a congregation meeting when she was attacked. A surveillance camera captured her screams, establishing the exact time of death at 10:13 p.m.

The investigation

Suspicion fell on Dassilva, who lived a few metres from Paganelli's apartment. Investigators learned that he was having an extramarital affair with Bianchi, Paganelli's daughter-in-law. The prosecution's theory was that Dassilva feared Paganelli would discover the relationship and react harshly, given her religious convictions. Bianchi's husband, Giuliano Saponi (Paganelli's son), had been struck by a hit-and-run driver five months before the murder and was in a coma during his recovery, a period when the affair continued.

Prosecutor Daniele Paci built the case largely on Bianchi's testimony and on a pharmacy surveillance video that he argued showed Dassilva disposing of the murder weapon and clothing shortly after the killing. However, the video was grainy, and during an evidentiary incident (a court-supervised reconstruction), defence lawyers demonstrated that the figure in the footage was not Dassilva but an unrelated neighbour. Court-appointed experts had already excluded Dassilva based on height: the person in the video was shorter than the defendant.

The evidence

No forensic evidence on the victim's body linked Dassilva to the crime. A long black hair was photographed on Paganelli's face but was never collected as evidence. Among the material presented at trial were wiretap recordings in which Dassilva asked a witch doctor to perform voodoo rites to curse the police and prosecutor working on the case. Bianchi initially told investigators she had met Dassilva shortly before finding the body and that he had instructed her on what to do and say to police. She later changed her account, revealing that Dassilva had discovered the body and called her to the garage, involving her in a chaotic report to authorities.

What remains open

The acquittal leaves the murder without a named perpetrator or active suspect. The case has captivated the Italian public for nearly three years, fuelled by revelations of the affair, coded messages between the lovers, and a televised altercation between Bianchi and Bartolucci days before Dassilva's arrest on 16 July 2024. The investigation may continue with supplementary inquiries, and the prosecution could appeal the verdict. For now, the question of who killed Pierina Paganelli remains unanswered.