Anna Zilio, a 39-year-old marathon runner who was found dead in her bed a month ago, is at the center of an investigation opened by the Verona Prosecutor’s Office, which is prosecuting an unknown person on charges of forgery and voluntary manslaughter. On Monday, prosecutor Silvia Facciotti will assign forensic toxicologist Donata Favretto, a professor at the University of Padua, the task of carrying out new and unrepeatable tests on biological material that had been taken during the autopsy. Experts must verify whether the substances that could potentially cause (or contribute to causing) the death are present in the athlete’s blood.
Possible outcomes
If positive results emerge, investigators must reconstruct how the substances got into the athlete’s hands and who may have prescribed or supplied them.
This claim of forgery instead concerns competing medical certificates: the last certified certificate is from 2021, while subsequent certificates are fake, so much so that the doctor who signed them denies having created them. In the appeal there are also no documents that expire in 2025, which Zilio should have obtained at the end of 2024, even though this year it has participated in several competitions that require such certificates. This is possible because the checks are carried out by sports clubs who only list expiry dates on the Fidal platform which can be easily changed from year to year. As secretary of the Km Sport Team, Zilio can access the system and update his position independently. Investigators also want to clarify the reasons for the suspension of competition in 2021, when the athlete was detected to have heart problems, which were later deemed to have resolved.
Family reaction
The runner’s family, “overwhelmed with pain” and assisted by lawyer Marco Pezzotti, is now awaiting an inquest to explain the cause of his death. Meanwhile, a few kilometers away, the Vicenza Prosecutor’s Office is also investigating the death of Alberto Zordan, 48, another athlete from the same team, found dead in his home in early November. The two don’t have a direct relationship and follow different paths, but the dual grief within the team raises many questions. However, Zordan’s certificate is regular.
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