When a Rome court last week ruled that two university research assistants, Giovanni Scattone and Salvatore Ferraro, be convicted for the May 1997 killing of 22-year-old student Marta Russo, its decision seemed merely to add to the sense of frustration generated by a killing that was nothing if not inexplicable and by a trial that was nothing if not controversial.
Amid the confusion of an enigmatic case, only one thing is certain, namely that at 11.41 a.m. on the morning of May 9th, 1997, Marta Russo was killed by a .22 bullet which hit her just behind the ear as she walked alongside a friend close to the Law Faculty building on the campus of Rome's mega-university, La Sapienza.
From the start, the case aroused huge public interest, with Italians, academics, students and investigators alike all puzzled by its sheer inexplicability. Why, and by whom, was an apparently ordinary young student from a respectable middle-class family shot to death in the relatively safe haven of the university campus?
Initial investigations revealed little other than that the fatal bullet was most probably fired from the window of Law Faculty Room 6. One month into the investigation, however, prosecutors registered a major breakthrough when Gabriella Alletto, a secretary in the Law Faculty, claimed that she had seen Ferraro and Scattone in Room 6 at the time of the killing.
Ms Alletto claimed that she saw Scattone fire the killer shot from a window and that, furthermore, she then saw Ferraro put his hands to his head in a gesture of desperation before relieving Scattone of the gun and taking it away.
Subsequent ballistic tests found traces of gunpowder on the Room 6 window-ledge, traces that were identical to those found on clothes belonging to Scattone and Ferraro and also on the bag in which Ferraro is alleged to have carried away the killer gun.
Ms Alletto's testimony was borne out by two other witnesses who claimed that Scattone and Ferraro were in Room 6 at the time of the killing. At that point then, the case was all sewn up? Not quite.
For a start, this is a killing that has remained without either motive or murder weapon. Why would two ambitious young postgraduate research students want to kill a student whom they did not even know? How come the murder weapon has never been found? Why did Ms Alletto, a key witness, wait one month before finally accusing Scattone and Ferraro, thus contradicting her own denials of the previous month?
A videotape recording of Ms Alletto's interrogation by prosecutors also clearly suggests that she came under huge pressure to change her evidence. Indeed, after that tape had been aired on state television last autumn, the then prime minister, Romano Prodi, was moved to intervene, expressing his concern about the prosecutors' methods and thereby rekindling the nationwide political debate about the role and powers of the magistrature.
Another key witness, Francesco Liparota, who was also in Room 6 at the time of the killing, also changed his evidence. At first he claimed that Scattone and Ferraro had done the killing before claiming he could no longer "remember" anything. During the trial, however, the prosecution produced a statement from Mr Liparota's mother in which she claimed that her son had changed his evidence only under threats on his life.
Last week's ruling found the two teachers guilty of the equivalent of manslaughter, with Scattone being sentenced to seven years in prison for having fired the fatal bullet, while Ferraro received a four-year sentence for aiding and abetting.
Both sentences were suspended as the defendants, who have already served two years in prison, announced they would appeal. Charges of obstructing justice and aiding and abetting against Ms Alletto, Mr Liparota and faculty professor, Bruno Romano, were all dismissed.
In practice, the court's decision meant that although it held both defendants responsible for the killing, it did not consider their action to have been premeditated murder. The court's ruling would seem to imply that the two researchers were fooling around with a gun and shot Russo by mistake. The ruling would also imply that Ms Alletto's original reticence was based on fear and that her subsequent all-important testimony was the truth.
The ruling also meant that as soon as the trial was over the two defendants, although found guilty, were free to walk away and offer themselves to waiting TV crews, all too eager to pay for interviews.
Despite the controversy it generated last week, it could well be that the court's ruling was absolutely right. The prosecution had tried to portray Scattone and Ferraro as evil pranksters in search of the "perfect crime".
The court suggested they were merely irresponsible young men who had made a tragic mistake and then tried to cover it up. While they await an appeals hearing, it remains difficult not to sympathise with Marta's parents, Aureliana and Donato Russo, who commented last week:
"It hurts us to see the people who killed our daughter walk free . . . Nothing, but nothing, however, can ever pay us back for the loss of a child."
On a happier note, and closer to our home in Trevignano, nearly 300 Etruscan tombs have been found at Cerveteri, 40 km north-west of Rome in the Lazio region.
Lazio was controlled by the Etruscans from the ninth century BC until 350BC, when the ascendant Roman empire became the dominant power.
A rich heritage of Etruscan remains has been found in the area. However, the recent find, which came about because police had put some tombraiders (in Trevignano we call them tombaroli) under surveillance, is remarkable by any standards, and will be the subject of future correspondence.