“When he disappeared he was in the grip of anxiety, he told me: 'Be careful when you are out and about'. I fear he ended up in a psycho-sect: the judges should not close the case”. The appeal of Alessandro Venturelli's mother

“Dear judges, the missing are not archived” : this time the desperate appeal is launched by Roberta Carassai, mother of Alessandro Venturelli , who disappeared in Sassuolo on December 5, 2020. “Since that day I have survived in suspense, fighting a very painful battle. I have traveled by taking trains and planes to reach the places where someone gave me even a small hope of finding my son,” she tells FqMagazine today.

The investigations In less than a month, on July 8th, there will be a hearing for the third request to close the case by the Modena Public Prosecutor's Office. A request that comes after Roberta had asked the same Public Prosecutor's Office to issue, together with her lawyers Claudio Falleti and Giovanna Ferrari, a European investigation order. It is a simple authorization (not yet granted) to proceed with searches in foreign countries from which reports of sightings of the boy have come. For Roberta, everything started off on the wrong foot right from the start in the investigation: " The Public Prosecutor's Office initially opened a file for voluntary absence , 'it must be a prank', they told me but I knew it wasn't like that. It was necessary to intervene immediately. They didn't help a boy who really needed help, he was in a deep crisis", she tells us. Roberta meanwhile, in the hours immediately following the disappearance which we know are the most important, presented the investigators with the medical reports that certify the state of fragility in which the boy was. Only two days earlier she had accompanied him to therapy with the psychologist and he had asked his mother to participate in the session. “In these four years nothing has been done because he is an adult boy , they told me. The images from the video surveillance cameras should have been taken, he should have been searched for immediately”. Among the countries where the woman went in person to look for her son is Holland because four days before disappearing, Alessandro had done some research on the subject on his phone and had always been attracted to the country of tulips . “On my son's cell phone (which he left at home before disappearing, ed.) – she adds – there was also an open Google page with the translation of what appears to be an exchange of messages in English. From the content it seemed he was communicating with someone who knew Alessandro's habits well, he also knew that he often had lunch at his aunt's during the week”. On this phone Roberta, together with an IT consultant, Salvatore Filograno, found only the translations but not the person to whom they were addressed. “Unfortunately, we may have overwritten information on past conversations. If investigators had immediately taken the phone, we could have found this person .” In the two weeks following her disappearance, investigators deployed all available resources to search for her body in the Sassuolo area , which led to an unexpected result: they found the lifeless body of a woman who disappeared ten years ago.

Alexander Why was the boy in such difficulty? His mother tells us that “he had been sleeping with me for ten days, he was in a constant state of anxiety . 'Be careful when you're out and about,' he would tell me, he wanted to protect me. At 15 and a half he had a bad motorbike accident, and went into a coma . Since then he had always been a bit agitated but things got worse when he witnessed the death of my brother to whom he was very close. Shortly after, I also got cancer, and when I finished the last chemotherapy he had a mental breakdown. I had taken a leave of absence from work to look after him, there was a special bond between us. Many times I told myself that he linked my illness to my brother's death, in his fragile mind he refused my possible disappearance. We had an extremely beautiful relationship and he was terrified of losing me. He depended on me for everything”. Of his friends, the same ones for a lifetime, no one expected Alessandro to disappear without a trace. For her mother, she looked for a place where she could take refuge, to escape from a situation she didn't want to face. Roberta has been to Holland and also to Romania, after some fairly credible reports from Bucharest, "but without authorization for investigations from Italy, they can't proceed with the search. I was the one who gave the Modena squad directions and numbers of people who said they had seen him, but my son is not their priority, they told me," she explains. Carassai has more than a hope, a certainty inside her: "My son is alive, I'm sure he didn't do something extreme, also because the only thorough thing that was done by the authorities was the search for his body. I fear he lives as a tramp or that he was involved in a psycho-sect . He can't go back, because he's not capable of it, he will have completely lost his lucidity."

The Jackals Along with the more plausible reports, there has been no shortage of mockery or scaremongering in this story, as always happens to the families of missing people, whose vulnerable condition is fertile ground for all of this. Like the anonymous phone call in which Roberta was told: “Your son is here but he doesn’t want to talk to you”. “The police asked me to go to the telephone company with which I have a telephone contract to try to find out something on my own. I went to the carabinieri who discovered that it was a terrible prank by a group of kids from Fano. I was also scammed by someone who extorted money from me by telling me that my son was in the hands of Mexican cartels. After a first attempt, I understood and reported it. Every now and then I get a phone call from someone who tells me that Ale is resting in peace as someone wanted. All of this wouldn’t happen if they weren’t given space, I’m talking about that legislative loophole where the lives of the disappeared end up”, concludes the mother of the boy who disappeared five years ago.