The 41-year-old had begun seeing Moris Panza, a customer at the bar where she worked: “He knew about our relationship, he was jealous after the marriage. I brought her to the Almenno police station on Saturday.”
Valentina Sarto, a 41-year-old barista, was killed by her husband, Vincenzo Dongellini, 49. The husband is currently hospitalized and under arrest.
A man nervously paced in front of the white and brown gate of an apartment building on Via Pescaria. “I’m here regarding the woman who was killed,” he repeatedly told someone on his cell phone. Moris Panza, of Almenno San Bartolomeo, identified himself as the man Valentina Sarto “was in love with,” and said he repeatedly urged her to leave her husband and report him to authorities. “But she always said, ‘I grasp how to keep him calm.’” He shook his head, adding, “She was a really good person.”
Panza displayed his phone as evidence, saying, “I have the voice messages she sent me here. I told her to record everything when he got angry, and she would send them to me.” He also claimed to have messages containing threats sent to Sarto over the past three months. Panza was wearing Atalanta soccer team apparel, referencing the beginning of his relationship with the victim. “I’m an Atalanta fan and I frequented the bar near the stadium where she worked; that’s how we met.” Their relationship began in early February. “He knew, she told him she had fallen in love with another man.” They spent a lot of time together, sometimes she would sleep at my place.” Despite Valentina Sarto wanting to leave her husband, there was no formal separation underway: “She didn’t leave home because he threatened her.”
Vincenzo Dongellini “was extremely jealous,” according to Panza. He said this situation hadn’t surfaced during their ten years together but escalated after their marriage last May: “It started with a very heated argument about her wanting to join a gym. He initially said there were no problems, but then he unleashed heavy insults.” Panza stated there were only two instances of physical violence in recent months: “The first time she showed up with marks on her neck, I told her not to go home. I told her a thousand times to come stay with me or at least with her friend in Seriate.” He also tried to convince Valentina Sarto to report her husband to the police: “On Saturday morning, we went to the Almenno police station to request for information; they explained that I couldn’t file a report and that she would have to do it in Bergamo. Valentina replied: I’ll wait a week and then we’ll see, if it continues like this I’ll leave home and report him.” Sarto didn’t believe her husband’s verbal rage would turn into murder: “The last time I saw her was Wednesday evening and she was calm, not afraid.”
Neighbors say they had no idea what was happening behind the door at number 26A on Via Pescaria, above which a dusty Christmas decoration with a dried-out branch remains. Among the onlookers in front of the police tape sealing the entrance to the ground floor and the adjacent garage, some simply recall the couple moving in a couple of years ago (“renting,” they repeat). But they say they didn’t really know the couple and hadn’t heard any particular noises. The numerous residents of the long courtyard facing the back door of the apartment, also sealed, said it “was never used.” Only a resident of a house on the opposite side of the street said they heard shouting coming from the building at 4 a.m. On Tuesday.
Moris Panza reflected on his last attempts to help Valentina Sarto on Tuesday: “I advised her to talk to her husband’s psychiatrist, but she forgot and told me she would do it today (yesterday).” She sent him one last message that evening: “I knew there was a lot of tension at home and I told her to go to her friend in Seriate, but she wouldn’t listen to me and this is what happened.”
