The first to speak was Silvia, then her boyfriend Mirto and finally her sister Paola.
What has been renamed "the criminal trio" has also confirmed its unity almost two years after the murder of Laura Ziliani, the former traffic warden of Temù, in the Brescia area, stunned with benzodiazepines and then suffocated on the night between 7 and May 8, 2021 and then buried near the Oglio river in the Brescian town of Vallecamonica.
During the hearing before the Court of Assizes of Brescia, which lasted 11 hours, the first to answer the questions of the prosecutor Caty Bressanelli was Silvia Zani, the eldest daughter of the victim.
She that she talked for four hours.
"When I killed my mother, I was 300 percent convinced that she wanted to poison us. I would have put my hand in the fire. Now, after so many months in prison,
I'm not so sure anymore.
We were terrified.
He wanted to kill us two sisters and Mirto would have been collateral damage,” said Silvia Zani.
He then recounted the phase of the murder, crying: "Mirto wanted to give up, he didn't want to go ahead with this bloody idea, this monstrous idea, but to gain courage I went into his room and Paola followed me while Mirto stayed out and didn't want to. We choked it and it wasn't as we imagined, it wasn't at all painless and quick".
"I start to suffocate her with my hands around her neck and Paola with her weight has kept her still. It happens that she squirms and in the end she dies. I think that when Mirto intervened it was all over", she said she added.
But Mirto himself, in his deposition, admitted: "The three of us took the idea of suffocation together after seeing it from the TV series The Borgias. I heard a muffled cry and I realized that everything was happening.
I thought about running away.
I saw Silvia strangling her mother and Paola holding her still.
If I left I would have lost the girls, who were everything to me.
After I entered the room and I too put my hand on Laura's neck". For the first time since their confession - which took place in May 2022, a year after the murder - the criminal trio showed signs of repentance.
"
I want to apologize to everyone.
To my mother that I killed, to my uncles, to my sister, to my grandmother, to all the people of Temù.
I realize that I hurt everyone.
I'm sorry for everything", the words of Silvia Zani. Then Mirto Milani. "I want to apologize for what I did to Laura and - he added - I want to apologize for all the bad I've done.
I pray for Laura every day.
We shouldn't have done what we did". The last to speak was Paola Zani, the youngest of Laura Ziliani's daughters. She too cried: "I am very sorry.
We never should have done that.
What we killed wasn't my mom, but the monster that had taken over her body.
I had dehumanized my mom.
We had called her the monster.
Now I've realized that in addition to killing my mom, that maybe she didn't even mean us any harm,