© Missing - We are looking for Denise
On the morning of September 1, 2004, at 8:30 a.m., I got ready to leave the house, as at that time I was attending a computer course that I had started in March 2004. This course included a vacation break for the entire month of August, to resume on September 1. That explains the reason for my going out....... Read >> The Morning of September 1, 2004 (pdf)
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PREMISE
Mr. Pietro Pulizzi, the biological father of Denise Pipitone, was married to Mrs. Anna Corona, with whom he had two daughters, Jessica and Alice Pulizzi. The marriage ended even before he began a romantic relationship with Mrs. Pietra Maggio, from which Denise was born, a much-wanted child.
Denise's surname was given to her by Mrs. Piera Maggio's then-husband (the marital relationship had ended emotionally even though they lived in the same household). Since immediately after the abduction, the investigations, posters, etc. had been distributed nationally and internationally with the surname Pipitone, they did not proceed to change it to that of her biological father to avoid further confusion in the ongoing searches. The choices made were solely for the good and interests of Denise and not to satisfy or assert a personal right.
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Little Denise Pipitone was born on October 26, 2000, in Mazara Del Vallo (TP), Sicily.
Just enough time to serve the pasta for lunch and Denise Pipitone had disappeared from the sidewalk in front of the house door (AND NOT PLAYING OUTSIDE ON THE SIDEWALK). That morning, in fact, Denise was with her grandmother while playing inside the garage-kitchen (CLARIFICATION: THERE IS A DOOR IN THE GARAGE-KITCHEN). The disappearance occurred around noon on September 1, 2004, in Mazara del Vallo (Trapani) in via Domenico La Bruna, corner of via Castagnola, which quickly leads to the highway. Denise turned the corner of the street to chase after a little cousin, where an aunt of the child lives who reported seeing her for the last time around 11:45 peeking out and then heading back home, where she never returned. It all happened in a few minutes.
A month and a half after her disappearance, exactly on October 18, 2004, a security guard, who worked for a security company, noticed in front of the bank in Milan where he was on duty, a group of nomads: a man, two women, and three children.
One of them, a little girl who resembled Denise Pipitone, had her head covered by the hood of a jacket despite the warm day. The group left before the police patrol, promptly alerted, could arrive, even though the man tried to keep the girl occupied. The security guard still managed to record some images with his cell phone. In one of the videos, immediately handed over to investigators, you can hear the woman (presumed mother) say to the girl "Danàs" and she replies in perfect Italian "Where are you taking me?". One of the filmed documents, lasting only a few seconds, was shown for the first time on the evening of Sunday, March 20, the day after Denise Pipitone's mother told the press she was convinced the girl filmed was her daughter. Furthermore, the security guard noticed the scratch under the left eye just as Denise had at the time, and even from the examinations carried out on the face of that girl by the Carabinieri RIS, they declared that there was a high probability that the girl could indeed be Denise Pipitone, because they found many similarities in the faces of the two girls, but not certainty due to lack of DNA test confirmation.
Despite the various appeals made by Denise's mother, and the searches carried out by the authorities immediately in all the local Roma camps, no one claims to have seen that woman, that girl, and that group, no one knows anyone. Vanished into thin air.
It is not believed that Denise was abducted from outside her home by the Roma, but that she may have been entrusted to them at a later time, or (second phase) of the abduction. Denise could already be settled with another family, a hypothesis that, given subsequent events, cannot be ruled out.
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The Story of Denise, "The Kidnapped Girl"
I am often asked to talk about Denise's story.
I thought it appropriate to specify the context in which the events involving my daughter took place, a little girl who played and smiled like so many others and who loved her family, and who one day was kidnapped in front of her home by a vile hand. There is a social fabric that generates, maintains, and protects illegality.
The common opinion regarding the kidnapping of minors is naturally one of firm condemnation. We all declare ourselves to be on the side of the prosecution when someone is arrested for violating the innocence of a child or killing them. But this is only in words. In fact, the fear of getting involved in problems that do not concern us helps to increase the opportunities for criminals to act; our guilty silence hides and distorts the reality of a monster that exploits omertà to harm the innocent; in some cases, backward and ignorant thinking justifies the actions of those who do evil because they think they are avenging a supposed wrong suffered.
This is how criminals are born: they are born from the people around them, who raise them, who tolerate them, and who stand by them. Alone they are nothing and remain nothing, but instead, they draw full support for their mindset from those they have contact with, including those who think they have not contributed to the evil because they turned their faces the other way.
Not acting is acting in favor, because this is a game that can only be won with a clear and counter-trend stance, not with the pleasant tranquility of one's own home, which collapses irreparably when the criminal then targets us as well. We let him grow, and he did not "spare" us just because we did not oppose his existence.
There are those like me, every day, who fight not only with those who stole my life by taking away my daughter, who was everything to me. I also and above all fight with the mentality that in a complicit and sneaky way justifies what happened and with a respectability made only of sterile and empty words.
It is useless to make fine speeches and then pretend not to see and not to hear. First of all, we must ask ourselves if there is a wrong so great that it can be paid for with the life of a little girl. But what harm could ever require this price to be "repaid"? And so, among the prudent indifference of many, those who did evil walk calmly down the street and even feel authorized to laugh at the problems they have caused, surrounded by people lacking any degree of humanity and sociability.
Instead of isolating the criminal, he even finds the company of the weak, who are brainwashed by this apparent security and themselves become emissaries of evil. I am not afraid to look in the face of those who have committed such heinous acts against me, but I am repulsed by the idea of associating the concept of "human being" with the indifference of these people.
Years later, their silence is increasingly guilty and the presumed innocence cannot justify those who did nothing to help a little girl. There are many children in the world who are missing from home because of unscrupulous criminals who did not stop in the face of their innocence.
Missing children do not have the chance to ask for help and so we must become their voice; our actions must restore their hope of returning home.
Pietra Maggio
© Missing - We are looking for Denise