On the morning of September 1st 2004, at 8:30 am, I got ready to leave the house, as at that time I was attending a computer science course that I had started in March 2004. This course included a holiday break for the whole month of August, and then resume on September 1st. This explains the reason for my exit....  
 watch: Morning of September 1st, 2004 (pdf)

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PREMISE

Mr. Pietro Pulizzi, Denise Pipitone's natural father, was married to Mrs. Anna Corona, with whom he had two daughters, Jessica and Alice Pulizzi. This marriage ended even before he established a sentimental bond with Mrs. Pietra Maggio, from whose relationship Denise was born, a strongly desired child.

“Pipitone”, the surname of Denise, was given to her by the then husband of Mrs. Piera Maggio, (marriage relationship sentimentally ended despite the fact that they lived in the same family unit). The surname was not changed with the one of the natural father in order to avoid further confusion in the searches that were already started. In fact, immediately after the kidnapping, the investigations and posters had already been disseminated nationally and internationally with the surname Pipitone. These choices were made only for Denise's good and interests and not to satisfy or assert a personal right.

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Little Denise Pipitone was born on October 26th 2000, in Mazara del Vallo (TP), Sicily , Italy .

  In the short time her parents were serving lunch, Denise Pipitone, who was playing just outside the front door, disappeared. It happened around midday on September 1st, 2004, in Mazara del Vallo, near Trapani , in a street named ‘via Domenico la Bruna ’, at the corner of ‘via Castagnola’, very close to the highway. Denise followed his cousin around the corner, where her aunt lives. Her aunt said to have seen her for the last time around 11,45, then Denise went back towards her house – but never got there. All of this happened in a few minutes. 90 days after she went missing, exactly on October 18th 2004, a security guard noticed a group of nomads – a man, two women and three kids – in front of the bank where he was working, in Milan .

  One of the kids looked like Denise Pipitone, and, even though it was a hot day, was wearing a coat with a hood that concealed her head. The guard called the police and tried to engage in a conversation with the child, but the group walked away before the police car could arrive. The security guard made a few videos with his mobile and delivered them to the examining magistrates. In one of the videos you can hear the woman (who said to be the kids’ mother) calling the child by the name of “Danàs” and the child answering in perfect Italian “Where are you taking me?”. One short video, no more than a few seconds of filming, was broadcast on March 20th, Sunday, the day after Denise’s mum had confirmed her belief that the child in the video was her daughter. Moreover, the guard noticed the girl had a scratch under her left eye, just like Denise. Also, from the exams carried out by RIS (a special unit of Carabinieri for scientific and forensic investigations), the probability that that child was Denise is very high, as they found many facial traits the two have in common. It was not possible to obtain DNA certification, though.

  Despite the many pleas by Denise’s mum and the search of the authorities near all the Rom camps in that area, no-one seems to have seen that woman, that child and that group, nobody knows anybody. They’ve vanished.

The authorities do not think that Denise was kidnapped by the nomads, but she could have been left in their care from someone else, in a second phase of the kidnapping. Denise might already be living with another family.

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THE STORY OF DENISE THE “KIDNAPPED CHILD” Denise the "Kidnapped Child" >> (pdf) I'm often asked to talk about the story of Denise. I thought it appropriate to specify which is the context in which the events that affected my daughter took place. Denise is a girl who played and smiled like any other, and loved her family, and that one day was seized outside her house by a ignoble hand. There is a social fabric that creates, maintains and protects illegality. The common opinion about the kidnapping of minors is of course a strong condemnation. Each one of us is ready to point the finger at a criminal when he/she is arrested for violating the innocence of a child or killing her/him. We act, however, only through words. In fact, the fear of being involved in issues that don’t concern us contributes to criminal action, and our guilty silence hides and mystifies the reality of a monster that uses silence to hit the innocent. Moreover, in some cases the retrograde mentality of ignorant people justifies who commits evil actions because he/she thinks to avenge an alleged grievance. That’s how criminals come to life: the people around them foster, tolerate and support them. By themselves they are nothing, but in their mindset they draw full support from those with whom they have contact - including those who think they have not contributed to evil just because they have turned their faces away. The failure to act means to act in their favour, because this game can be won only by taking a strong position against them, not by passively staying within the pleasant tranquillity of our homes - which can be deadly struck when the criminal picks on us. We let him flourish, and the fact we did not oppose his existence was not enough to save us. Some people like me, every day, fight not only against those who ruined my life by taking away my daughter - who was everything to me. I am fighting every day especially against that mentality which subtly justifies what happened with a sterile conformism which is made by empty words. To make pretty speeches and then pretend not to see and not hear is useless. We should first ask ourselves whether there exists so great a wrong that it has to be paid by a child’s life. And so amid the cautious indifference of many, the one who has done evil walks the streets in quiet and feels entitled to laugh at the problems he has caused, surrounded by people who lack any kind of humanity. Instead of isolating the criminal, he finds the company of the weak, who let themselves be affected by an apparent safety and become themselves the emissaries of evil. I'm not afraid to face who committed acts of such cruelty against me, but I find that to associate the concept of "human being" to the indifference of these people is disgusting. Now that years have passed, their silence is all the more guilty and their presumption of innocence cannot justify those who did nothing to help a child. Many children in the world are missing from home because of unscrupulous criminals. These children are not able to ask for help, so we must become their voice, our actions must give them the hope of a return.                                                                                                                                             Piera Maggio