The Monsters of Ponticelli

Naples, July 2, 1983. At around 10 o'clock in the evening at the Carabinieri barracks in Pontecelli's Rione Incis, a district on the eastern outskirts of Naples, the parents of Nunzia and Barbara - two little girls, aged 7 and 10 - reported the girl's disappearance after they seemed to have vanished into thin air a few hours earlier.

Carmine Mastrillo, the brother of little Antonella, the young friend of the victims, was the super witness who pointed the finger at Ciro, Giuseppe and Luigi. He attended numerous interrogations at the barracks during those weeks without ever offering anything useful for the investigation. Then, in early September, came an account that seemed to leave no room for doubt.

On October 9, what by then seemed to everyone to be the only possible outcome duly arrived: the three were pronounced guilty. Ciro Imperante, Luigi Schiavo and Giuseppe La Rocca were sentenced to the maximum, life imprisonment.

Ciro, Giuseppe and Luigi now live in Spoleto, a quiet town in Italy that was home to the prison where they spent 27 years in the same cell. They are in their early 50s, have children and jobs, and despite everything, they have managed to rebuild their lives. That is precisely why they continue to fight for a review of the trial that convicted them.