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Updated: April 30, 2025
A very close intimacy was proved to have existed between the prisoners, so much so, indeed, that Starna had frequently been reproved by his parents for his friendship with a man who stood in such ill repute as Volpi. The fact that the murdered man was, or was believed to be in possession of money, was shown to be well known amongst the Volpi family.
Thereupon Volpi proposed that they should follow the old man and rob him, adding, "he has got a whole lot of coppers." Starna, according to his own story, refused to have anything to do with the matter; on which Volpi said, in that case he should do it alone, and asked Starna to go and fetch the tool he wanted, and bring it to him where they were standing.
"Considering," nevertheless, "that though Starna was an accomplice in the crime, from his having assisted Volpi, and from having, by his own confession, shared in the booty, yet that his guilt was less, both in the conception and in the perpetration of the crime, there being no proof that he had taken any active part in the murder of Ugolini," therefore, "in the most holy name of God," the court sentences Volpi to public execution, and Starna to twenty years at the galleys.
These appear to have been all the facts which could be established against either Volpi or Starna by positive evidence, and, at the worst, such facts could only be said to constitute a case for suspicion.
Assuming, as one must, the correctness of these facts, there can be no doubt that a very brutal murder and robbery had been committed. For some reasons, what, we are not told, the suspicions of the police fell at once on one of Volpi's sons, called Serafino, a lad of about 22, and on a friend of his, Bonaventura Starna, about two years older than himself.
Starna admitted that he then took eight pauls as his own share in the booty, and told Volpi to wash off some spots of blood visible on his sleeve. He also added, that later on the same day he met Volpi again, and then expressed his alarm at what had happened; on which he received the answer, "If you had been with me, you would not be alive now."
We are told, that "the confession of Starna is confirmed by a thousand proofs;" that "it is clearly shown" that Starna "in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;" and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime.
Serafino too had mentioned himself, to a neighbour, his suspicion of the tinker's having saved money. On the morning of the murder, Starna was known to have come to the Volpi's cottage, to have talked with Serafino, and to have left again in his company, shortly after Ugolini's departure.
Previously, however, to the trial, Starna turned, what we should call, "King's evidence," and, in contradiction to his foregoing statements, made a confession, on which the prosecution practically rested the whole of its case.
The chief object indeed of the very lengthy sentence of the court, recapitulating the evidence already stated, is to establish the comparative innocence of Starna, who, for some cause or other, seems to have been favourably regarded.
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