A criminal court in Parma has sentenced Chiara Petrolini to 24 years and three months’ imprisonment for the premeditated murder of her second newborn son and the concealment of both of her infants, yet it acquitted the 22-year-old of the killing of her first child—a split verdict that instantly reshapes a case that has riveted and horrified Italy. After slightly more than three hours of deliberation, the Corte d’Assise delivered its ruling before a packed chamber, where Petrolini, a university student and babysitter from the hillside hamlet of Vignale di Traversetolo, sat expressionless. State prosecutors had sought a 26-year term, while the defence had argued for full acquittal, insisting that the children were stillborn.

The case first fractured the quiet of the 600-soul village in August 2024, when the family dog unearthed the remains of the second infant in the garden of Petrolini’s home. That discovery—followed days later by the exhumation of an older set of bones from a birth in May 2023—unveiled two concealed pregnancies that Petrolini had apparently managed without the knowledge of her parents or her boyfriend. The dual concealment transformed the property on the edge of Emilia-Romagna’s prosperous farmlands into the scene of a profound domestic tragedy.

The court’s decision to convict only for the 2024 killing reflects a pivotal distinction between the two deaths. For the second child, judges found sufficient evidence of premeditated murder; for the first, they rejected the murder charge while still condemning Petrolini for the concealment of the corpse. In a further nuance, the panel reclassified the more serious charge of suppression of a cadaver to the lesser offence of occultation of a body regarding the second infant. The verdict also included provisional damages of €100,000 awarded to Petrolini’s former boyfriend and his parents, who were recognised as injured parties, with final compensation to be fixed in civil proceedings.

Viewed from within Italy, the outcome will test public tolerance for a partial acquittal when two hidden pregnancies ended in burial. Italian media have lingered on the contrast between Petrolini’s work as a babysitter and the violence inflicted on her own newborns, with some outlets reporting that a psychiatric evaluation has now been ordered to assess her mental state. That assessment, analysts in Rome suggest, could become central to any appeal and may probe whether a dissociative denial of pregnancy influenced the acts.

Argentine coverage, which followed the proceedings closely, framed the story as that of “the babysitter of Traversetolo” convicted in a contradiction that unsettles easy judgment. The Clarin newspaper emphasised the paradox of a young woman caring for other people’s children while burying her own—an angle that reflects how Latin American audiences, all too familiar with high‑profile infanticide cases, received the Italian drama as part of a universal, if deeply uncomfortable, narrative about hidden maternity.

Observers in London note that the split verdict pulls the case into a legal grey zone. The acquittal for the 2023 death implies that the court found something less than murderous intent in the first birth, perhaps insufficient proof of viability or the lack of forensic evidence to establish criminal agency. This ambiguity will almost certainly be challenged if prosecutors decide to appeal, while the mandated psychiatric report may introduce a mitigating narrative that could influence the final sentence. For the village of Traversetolo, the ruling brings a measure of judicial resolution but leaves behind an unresolved question: why one infant’s death counted as murder, and the other did not, when both were buried in the same garden.