Kriti Mehrotra
When 30-year-old Italian native Mario Biondo was found dead inside his Madrid, Spain, home on May 30, 2013, it honestly shocked not just his loved ones but also both nations to their very core. After all, as carefully explored in Netflix’s ‘The Last Hours of Mario Biondo,’ he actually passed away under such circumstances that many wondered whether he was killed or if it was suicide. So now, if you simply wish to learn more about the biggest believers of the former — his kind, loving parents, Santina D’Alessandro and Pippo Biondo — we’ve got the necessary details for you.
Who Are Santina D’Alessandro and Pippo Biondo?
It was on July 18, 1982, when Palermo, Sicily, natives Santina and Pippo welcomed their second child Mario into this world, just to raise all three of their kids with compassion as well as support. Thus, of course, this next generation was always quite open, which extended to the middle one’s love affair with being a cameraman, television host Raquel Sánchez-Silva, and Madrid in the early 2010s. Though little did the parents realize not everything is as it seems, only for it to begin coming to light following their brilliant young son’s untimely demise in the early hours of May 30, 2013.
“It was a beautiful, sunny day in Palermo,” Santina vividly remembers, as per the aforementioned documentary series. “[Me, my husband, our daughter Emanuela, and one of our grandkids were in the car]. It was approximately 6:30 in the afternoon. Before we got on the highway, Raquel called. She kept saying over and over, ‘Santina, he’s dead, he’s dead… Mario.’ [As my husband stopped the car], I started banging the window, the dashboard, and everything because I couldn’t believe it. I thought he was in a motorcycle accident… [but I later heard he’d] hanged himself.”
To this, Pippo added, “I was shocked. He seemed happy in Madrid. He had a job [and Raquel],” before his wife continued, “How could someone just suddenly kill himself? We had talked that [previous] afternoon, and he seemed to be fine. He was making plans. He was eager to see us.” Pippo then said, “It’s impossible, and nobody seems to notice… Mario had no reason,” just for his wife to again voice, “It didn’t take us long to realize what had actually happened. We never believed our son had killed himself.” That’s when they began their journey to prove his death to be a homicide.
Where Are Santina D’Alessandro and Pippo Biondo Now?
Although Santina and Pippo did go to extremes in their battle for justice by nearly harassing Raquel along with her mother, making countless media appearances, as well as releasing photos of Mario’s body, per the original production, they ultimately began to get the answers they craved. Yes, they had to face two exhumations and three autopsies of their son, plus three judicial trials across two nations in the span of a decade, but in August 2022, an Italian judge finally ruled there was enough evidence to “deny the suicidal thesis and suggest Mario was killed by unknown hands.”
This verdict further read, in part, that Mario was “subsequently placed in a position capable of simulating a suicide… [Yet] the distance of time from the facts from which one proceeds has, in fact, prejudiced the possibility of carrying out investigations that could have allowed identify the perpetrators of the hypothesized murder; for this reason, he ordered the filing of the file.”
In other words, it was officially ascertained the 30-year-old’s “suicide” was staged; however, because of the time to have passed and the limited evidence available, no one could be charged with murder, leading to the case being indefinitely closed. It hence comes as no surprise Santina and Pippo (a self-employed camera operator as well as a video editor) are still fighting to get Mario the justice they believe he deserves, all the while still being based in Palermo.
Read More: Emanuela and Andrea Biondo: Where Are Mario Biondo’s Siblings Now?
