Twenty years have passed today since Denise Pipitone, just 4 years old, disappeared into thin air while playing in front of her house in Mazara del Vallo, in the province of Trapani.
Two decades in which the mother, Piera Maggio, never stopped in the search for her daughter with unshakable courage and faith in knowing she was alive and in being able to hug her again. Intimate certainty despite the false sightings and the hopes, betrayed every time, of DNA tests that did not confirm that the young women sighted even in more recent times were the lost daughter.
Denise was with her grandmother when she left the garage-kitchen to chase a little cousin that morning on September 1, 2004. After turning the corner of the street, while her mother was working, nothing more was heard of her.
The last sighting was by an aunt who said she last saw her around 11:45 am heading home, but she never returned.
Piera Maggio, Denise Pipitone’s mother (Getty)
“On the day of the sad anniversary, our pain is renewed even more strongly, mixed with anger for the failure to find Denise and for the lack of justice!”. This is what she wrote on her social profile together with Pietro Pulizzi, the biological father of the child: “After twenty years from the kidnapping of our daughter – she continues – we have nothing more to add than what we have already said in all these years”.
For them “this case is one of the Italian shames: the absolute failure of the poor in spirit and human sense. We will never stop asking for justice and truth. As we will not forget the wickedness suffered: not everyone has a conscience”.
And they write again: “Our Denise has become the daughter of all of Italy, we are convinced that sooner or later the guilty will pay for the harm they have caused, whether it be an earthly or divine punishment. Missing minors must be sought, not forgotten”.
There are many dark points surrounding the story of the disappearance of the child and related to family dynamics. Denise, even though her last name is Pipitone, was not actually the real daughter of her mother’s husband, but the fruit of a relationship that the woman had with Pietro Pulizzi.
“I definitely remember that day the total change in my life, from bad to worse – Piera Maggio declared to Italpress – I lived a daily life that however, for the personal part was assembled in an appearance of a life lived. It was a montage of appearances in which we maintained an almost normal core, but there was nothing normal between us as a couple but we moved forward. From September 1st onwards everything that has been highlighted in all these years emerged, even my personal life was dissected”, the woman who has never shied away from interviews and public appearances to launch the appeal every time has said several times.
missingdenisReconstruction of what Denise Pipitone would be like today – September 1, 2024emp (x/missingdenisemp)
The investigations have not ruled out any leads, starting with the gypsy one. But the intricate story has led, among the most disparate sightings, to the accusation against Jessica Pulizzi of complicity in the kidnapping of a minor.
According to investigators, the girl, Denise’s father’s sister, driven by the motivation of “revenge and jealousy” would have plotted the kidnapping of her half-sister with her ex-boyfriend Gaspare Ghaleb. The case of Anna Corona, investigated in a second line of inquiry for kidnapping of a minor, was archived by the investigating judge in 2013.
Little Denise Pipitone disappeared from her home in Mazara del Vallo on September 1, 2004. (ansa)
Also in 2013 and, therefore, 11 years after the disappearance, the accusation against Jessica Pulizzi was also shelved for “insufficient evidence”. The hypothesis that the girl had taken Denise to take her to her father’s house with the aim of having confirmation that she was his daughter and that, not finding him, she handed the child over to people who were never identified, was not enough for the prosecution.
No fifteen-year sentence as requested by the Court of Appeal and innocence confirmed also by the Supreme Court.
Denise Pipitone (Getty)
Giacomo Frazzitta, Piera Maggio’s lawyer, said in a recent interview: “That Denise was kidnapped is proven by the documents. I would speak of a “fluid procedure”. There are important circumstantial elements in the file, but they do not reach the threshold necessary for a possible conviction or for the exercise of criminal action. Elements that all lead in one direction. Denise wasn’t lost, she was kidnapped. The maniac trail? We never considered it. Moreover, that morning there was also a child on the street, why would they have taken her? I insist: the contrast between two family units has been established. Even if I have always said, sentences must be respected”.