The Cogne Murder

A morning in Montroz

Samuele Lorenzi was three years old when he died on 30 January 2002. He lived with his parents, Annamaria Franzoni and Stefano Lorenzi, and his older brother in a villa in Montroz, a hamlet of Cogne in the Aosta Valley, the mountain region in Italy's far north-west. The couple had lived in the village since 1993.

Shortly before 8:30 that morning Franzoni called the 118 emergency line, saying her son was vomiting blood. Rescuers found the child with severe head injuries, and he was flown to the hospital in Aosta, where he was pronounced dead at 9:55. The medical examiner attributed his death to repeated blows to the head. The object used was never found.

The mother's account

Franzoni told investigators that she had briefly left Samuele alone in the house while she walked her elder son to the school bus, and that when she came back, after roughly eight minutes by her account, she found him bleeding. From the start she insisted that an intruder must have entered during those minutes, a position her husband has supported throughout.

The investigation and the forensic evidence

The Carabinieri's scientific unit, the RIS of Parma, examined the house and reported no sign of forced entry and no traces pointing to an outsider. Prosecutors relied heavily on blood found on Franzoni's pyjamas and clogs, arguing that the pattern placed the wearer close to the child during the attack. The defence countered that the pyjamas had simply been lying on the bed and were stained there. Experts also disputed how many blows were struck and exactly when the child died.

On 14 March 2002 Franzoni was arrested on a judge's order and placed under investigation for murder. On 30 March the review tribunal in Turin released her, judging the evidence at that stage too weak to justify custody, and she spent most of the following years at liberty while the case moved through the courts.

Three verdicts

Franzoni chose the rito abbreviato, a fast-track procedure decided on the case file that automatically cuts any sentence by one third. On 19 July 2004 a judge in Aosta convicted her of murdering her son and imposed 30 years, the maximum available under that procedure. The appeal opened in Turin in November 2005. During it Franzoni dismissed Carlo Taormina, the high-profile lawyer who had led her defence since July 2002. On 27 April 2007 the appeal court upheld the conviction but reduced the term to 16 years after granting mitigating circumstances. Italy's Court of Cassation made that verdict final on 21 May 2008, and Franzoni was taken that evening to the Dozza prison in Bologna. She has never admitted the killing.

Prison, release and the cases that followed

After about six years behind bars, Franzoni was moved to house arrest in June 2014, once a psychiatric assessment concluded she no longer posed a social danger; she had already been working for a cooperative outside prison. A three-year reduction under a collective pardon, plus remission earned for good conduct, shortened her 16-year term to little more than ten. She completed it in the autumn of 2018, although the news only became public in early 2019.

Two side proceedings grew out of the case. In 2004 Franzoni and her husband had accused a neighbour, Ulisse Guichardaz, of the killing; he had a verifiable alibi, and a later inquiry found that evidence had been fabricated to support the complaint. A Turin court convicted Franzoni of calunnia (knowingly accusing an innocent person) in 2011 and sentenced her to one year and four months. Reports differ on the date of that first ruling, and according to Il Post the offence later lapsed under the statute of limitations. Separately, Taormina sued over unpaid fees. A civil court ordered Franzoni to pay him more than 275,000 euros, a sum that rose to about 450,000 with interest and costs. In 2020 a court in Aosta refused to shield the Cogne villa through the family's asset trust and allowed it to go to auction. The sale was halted once the family began paying the debt.

Why Cogne still matters

Cogne became one of Italy's defining media crime stories. On the night of Franzoni's arrest the talk show Porta a Porta drew more than eight million viewers, and its scale model of the villa became a symbol of a new style of crime coverage that critics still call "trial by television". Her first lawyer later observed that the media had become part of defence strategy. The case also showed how much weight Italian courts would give to bloodstain analysis when there was no weapon and no confession.

Interest has not faded. At the end of 2021 the family returned to the villa for the first time in twenty years. In July 2025 journalist Stefano Nazzi revisited the killing on television, and reports noted that Franzoni now runs a bed and breakfast with her family in her native Emilia-Romagna. With the conviction final, the case is legally closed.