Italian Prosecutors Launch Double Murder Inquiry After Ricin Poisoning Confirmed

Italian investigators have opened a double premeditated murder inquiry after laboratory tests confirmed that Sara Di Vita, 15, and her mother Antonella Di Ielsi, 50, who died between December 27 and 28, 2025, at Cardarelli hospital in Campobasso, were killed by ricin, one of the most lethal substances known to science. The two women had initially been believed to have died of food poisoning after falling ill in the hours preceding Christmas at their home in Pietracatella, a small town in the province of Campobasso in the southern Italian region of Molise. The breakthrough came when toxicological analyses conducted at laboratories in Italy and abroad — including the Maugeri Poison Control Center in Pavia, the Policlinico of Bari, and facilities in Switzerland and the United States — detected traces of ricin in the blood of both victims and, crucially, in a hair sample taken from Antonella Di Ielsi. Investigators now believe the poison was administered on multiple occasions, likely through food or drinks, inside the family home, which has been under seizure since December 2025.

Surviving husband tested negative, but questions remain Gianni Di Vita, 55, the husband of Antonella Di Ielsi and father of Sara Di Vita, is a former mayor of Pietracatella and a noted accountant who also fell ill around the same time as the two victims but survived. He was hospitalized for approximately ten days at the Spallanzani hospital in Rome, where a series of toxicological and microbiological tests returned a negative result for ricin — a finding that stands in stark contrast to the results obtained for the two women. Investigators are now working to determine whether Di Vita may have ingested or inhaled a minimal dose of the substance insufficient to compromise his vital functions, or whether his illness had a different cause entirely. His eldest daughter Alice, 18, was not present at the family dinner on December 23 and did not show suspicious symptoms when she was placed under observation. According to reporting by La Stampa, both Di Vita and Alice are expected to be questioned again in the coming hours, along with other people close to the family. The family home remains the central focus of the investigation, with new inspections planned to search for residues of ricin on surfaces, utensils, and household containers. Investigators have not publicly named any suspects, but the particular method of administering the poison has directed attention toward the family circle.

„The case file has passed to the Prosecutor's Office of Larino because they are now investigating for double willful murder and the hypothesis is that the mother and daughter from Campobasso were poisoned in their home in Pietracatella, which is therefore territory under the jurisdiction of the Larino investigators.” — Fabio Albino via Fanpage

Five doctors face manslaughter charges over missed diagnosis A parallel legal thread concerns five doctors from Cardarelli hospital in Campobasso who are under investigation for manslaughter, accused of alleged negligence after sending the mother and daughter home on multiple occasions between December 24 and 26 without admitting them, having diagnosed what appeared to be food poisoning. The case file for manslaughter, originally held by the Campobasso prosecutor's office, has now been transferred to and merged with the murder investigation at the Prosecutor's Office of Larino, led by Chief Prosecutor Elvira Antonelli, creating a single unified case file covering all hypotheses of crime. The transfer of jurisdiction was determined by the fact that the most serious of the alleged crimes — the poisoning itself — occurred in Pietracatella, which falls under Larino's territorial remit, and preceded the alleged medical negligence in time. The lawyer for one of the five doctors under investigation argued that ricin would have been undetectable under the standard diagnostic guidelines in place at emergency rooms across Italy, and that even specialist laboratories required months to identify the substance. The defense position is that a dismissal of the manslaughter charges against the doctors should be expected. Investigators, led by the head of the Campobasso Mobile Squad Marco Graziano, continue to conduct forensic surveys of the family home and to sample every possible surface and object in an effort to reconstruct the sequence of the poisoning.

Dark web and local shops searched for ricin's origin With the source of the ricin still unidentified, investigators have broadened their search to include the dark web — the encrypted, unindexed portion of the internet associated with illegal commerce — as well as physical shops in the Lower Molise region, where the castor bean plant from which ricin is derived reportedly grows. Ricin is not freely available and requires specialized knowledge to produce from castor bean seeds, a factor that has led authorities to treat the act as premeditated. The substance gained wide public recognition through American television productions, and has a documented history of use as a weapon: according to ANSA, Soviet intelligence services used a modified umbrella tip to inject a Bulgarian journalist with a lethal dose in the late 1970s. While some products derived from the castor plant — including castor oil used in cosmetics and castor cake used as organic fertilizer — are commercially available, the conversion of seeds into a lethal toxin requires a specific treatment process. The investigation remains open against unknown persons, and no arrests have been announced.

The castor bean plant, Ricinus communis, is the sole known species of the genus Ricinus and belongs to the Euphorbiaceae family. Ricin derived from its seeds has historically been associated with political assassinations and acts of terrorism. The Pietracatella case follows a pattern of domestic poisoning cases in Italy that have come to light only through sophisticated scientific analysis conducted over extended periods.

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