In a very short time afterwards, as he was coming back to the appointed meeting-place, he met Volpi in a great state of agitation, who told him that the job was finished, and Ugolini’s throat cut, but that only 20 pauls’ worth of copper money, about eight shillings, were found upon him.  Starna admitted that he then took eight pauls as his own share in the booty, and told Volpi to wash off some spots of blood visible on his sleeve.  He also added, that later on the same day he met Volpi again, and then expressed his alarm at what had happened; on which he received the answer, “If you had been with me, you would not be alive now.”

One can hardly conceive a more suspicious story, or one more clearly concocted to give the best colour to the witness’s own conduct, at the expense of his fellow-prisoner.  No evidence whatever appears to have been brought in support of this confession.  The court, notwithstanding, decides that the truth of this statement is fully established by internal and external testimony, and therefore declares that the alleged crimes are clearly proved against both the prisoners.  “Considering,” nevertheless, “that though Starna was an accomplice in the crime, from his having assisted Volpi, and from having, by his own confession, shared in the booty, yet that his guilt was less, both in the conception and in the perpetration of the crime, there being no proof that he had taken any active part in the murder of Ugolini,” therefore, “in the most holy name of God,” the court sentences Volpi to public execution, and Starna to twenty years at the galleys.

Of course, both the prisoners resorted to their invariable right of appeal, but their case did not come on before the lower court of the Supreme Clerical Tribunal at Rome for upwards of a year, namely, on the 17th of May, 1859.  At this trial, no new facts whatever appear to have been adduced.  I gather indistinctly, that Volpi’s defence was that he had not left his father’s house at all on the morning of the murder, but that his attempt to prove an “alibi” was unsuccessful.  The chief object indeed of the very lengthy sentence of the court, recapitulating the evidence already stated, is to establish the comparative innocence of Starna, who, for some cause or other, seems to have been favourably regarded.  We are told, that “the confession of Starna is confirmed by a thousand proofs;” that “it is clearly shown” that Starna “in this confession did not deny his own responsibility; a fact which gives his statement the character of an incriminative and not of an exonerative confession; and that though he might possibly have wished, in his statement of the facts, to modify and extenuate his own share in the crime, yet there was no reason to suspect that he wished gratuitously to aggravate the guilt of his comrade;” and that also taking into consideration the villainous character of Volpi, it cannot be doubted, that he was the principal in the crime.  The court at Viterbo had decided that the crime of the prisoners was murder, coupled with robbery and treachery.  The Court of Appeal decides, on what seem sufficient grounds, that there is no proof of treachery, and therefore, the crime not being of so heinous a character, reduces the period of Starna’s punishment from twenty to fifteen years, while it simply confirms the sentence of death on Volpi.