night at the house of a certain Andrea Volpi which lay on his road, and where he had often slept before. On the following morning, about eight o’clock, he left Volpi’s house and went on his journey towards Viterbo. Nothing more is positively known about him, except that on the same day his body was found on a bye-path, a little off the direct Viterbo road, covered with wounds. No money was discovered about his person, while there was every indication of his clothes and pack having been rummaged and rifled.
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. Both of these persons, who were common labourers, were, in consequence, arrested on the 7th of May. They were not tried, however, till the 27th of April, in the year following, when they were arraigned for the murder before the lay criminal and civil court of Viterbo.
The two prisoners, nevertheless, are not tried on the same charge. Volpi is arraigned by the public prosecutor on a charge of wilful murder, accompanied with treachery and robbery, while Starna is only brought to trial as an accomplice to the crime, not as a principal. Before the actual guilt of either prisoner is ascertained, the public prosecutor, that is, the Government, decides the relative degree of their respective hypothetical guilt. The justice of this proceeding may be questioned, but its motive is palpable enough. There was little or no direct evidence against the prisoners, and to convict either of them, it was necessary to rely upon the testimony of the other.
“With both the prisoners,” so runs the sentence of the court, “a criminal motive could be established in the fact of their avowed poverty, as they each clearly admitted, that neither they nor their families possessed anything in the world, and that they derived the means of their miserable sustenance from their daily labour alone.” 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. Two of Serafino Volpi’s brothers were reported to have spoken to third parties of Ugolini’s savings, and one of them expressed a wish to rob him. Why this brother was neither arrested nor apparently examined, is one of the many mysteries, by the way, you come across in perusing these Papal reports. 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. After about an hour’s absence, Serafino Volpi returned home, and therefore had time enough to commit the murder. He was shown, moreover, to have been in possession of a knife, about which he could give no satisfactory account, and which might have inflicted the wounds found on the corpse.
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. 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. According to this confession of Starna’s, on the morning of the murder he called by accident at the Volpi’s, and stopped there, till after the tinker, who was an entire stranger to him, had left the house. Serafino Volpi then offered to accompany him to his (Starna’s) house, on the pretence of borrowing some tool or other. They walked quickly to avoid the rain, which was falling heavily, and shortly overtook Ugolini, who exchanged a few words with Volpi about the weather, and then turned off along a bye-road. 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. Starna then left Volpi running across the fields to overtake the tinker, and went home to find the tool. In a very short time afterwards, as he was coming back to the appointed meeting-place, he met Volpi in a great state of agitation, who told him that the job was finished, and Ugolini’s throat cut, but that only 20 pauls’ worth of copper money, about eight shillings, were found upon him. 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.”
One can hardly conceive a more suspicious story, or one more clearly concocted to give the best colour to the witness’s own conduct, at the expense of his fellow-prisoner. No evidence whatever appears to have been brought in support of this confession. The court, notwithstanding, decides that the truth of this statement is fully established by internal and external testimony, and therefore declares that the
alleged crimes are clearly proved against both the prisoners. “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.