The Italian justice files the case for the death of Mario Biondo but suggests that it could have been a murder

The family of the Italian cameraman Mario Biondo, who was the husband of the Spanish presenter Raquel Sanchez Silva when he was found dead at his home in 2013, has always maintained that the young man was murdered. Although in Spain the investigation considered that he had taken his own life involuntarily, it was classified as a case of suicide and the matter was closed, the Biondos have never accepted this hypothesis and have been fighting it all these years in the Italian and Spanish courts. Now, a judge in the Italian city of Palermo has filed the case for alleged homicide, but, for the first time, has questioned the theory of suicide and has suggested that, indeed, it could be a murder. According to the relatives of the cameraman and his legal team, in the opinion of the magistrate in the summary handled by the Public Prosecutor’s Office there are elements that could disrupt the thesis of suicide and that “suggest that Mario Biondo was murdered at the hands of an unknown author and successively placed in a certain position to simulate a suicide”.

Despite this, the judge has decided not to continue with the case, “due to procedural limitations”, that is, due to the impossibility of carrying out new investigations after so much time that could help identify the possible culprits of the alleged homicide in question. It has already been more than a decade old.

The Biondos have issued a long statement in which they detail passages from the judge’s filing order and in which they are pleased that justice has “accepted” for the first time the thesis that they have been defending for years. In fact, the judge endorses the family’s complaints about how the case was handled in Spain and is particularly critical of the work that the Spanish investigators carried out on the ground in their day. “At the time of the discovery of the body, in the immediacy of the events, investigative activities should have been carried out (environmental and telephone interceptions) that were not carried out and that, given the time that had elapsed, could not be carried out by the judicial authorities. Italian”, writes magistrate Nicola Aiello.

The judge highlights in his brief some of the inconsistencies that, according to him, the case presents. Like the “innumerable contradictions in the statements of Biondo’s widow.” And he points out that, in his opinion, “the Spanish investigators should be induced to immediately establish telephone and environmental tapping to obtain all the possible useful elements to find out the truth of the facts.” In his study of the case, Aiello also dwells on one of the pieces of evidence most questioned by the numerous investigations and autopsies of Biondo that have been carried out: a hematoma on the skull that the corpse presented and that, in the opinion of the magistrate, is “incompatible with suicidal dynamics”.

Throughout the long legal battle, Italian investigators have even traveled to Spain to take statements from some witnesses. At least three autopsies have also been carried out on the body, one in Spain and two in Italy, with the aim of clarifying the causes of death. They have all aimed at suicide. The second, carried out by a Palermo coroner seven months after the death, pointed out “particular deficiencies in the judicial inspection carried out by the Spanish police, in the inspection of the corpse and in the autopsy carried out by the Spanish forensic doctor.” The last one was held in 2018 in Palermo, when the Sicilian prosecutor’s office authorized the exhumation of Biondo’s body. The judge’s current brief does not mention this third study, but points out in relation to the second that it cannot be considered “reliable”, despite the “good faith of the assessment”, since the results have been compromised by the excessive time elapsed.

The Biondo family has thanked the work of the Italian justice system. And, although the case has been shelved, he has celebrated “a triumph after years of very tough legal battles” by obtaining, for the first time, a decision from the Magistracy that maintains that “the death of his relative should not be attributed as it was now held to a hypothesis of suicide, but to a hypothesis of homicide”. It has also asked the Italian State to support and promote “any useful procedural initiative, through diplomatic channels, that may ultimately lead to the opening of a case file for homicide in Spain.” They also demand that the “very serious omissions of the Spanish authorities” be investigated “in depth”.

At the time of his death, Mario Biondo was married to the Spanish presenter Raquel Sanchez Silva. The couple met on the recordings of the reality show the island of celebrities, in 2011, where he was a camera and she was in charge of the program from Honduras. In 2012 they said “I do” and, just over a year later, in May 2013, the Italian was found dead at the marital home.