The Marta Russo Homicide: Disinformation and gratuitous illations against Tomponzi Investigations "In an interview published Saturday 5 July in the daily 'La Repubblica, Mrs. Miriam Tomponzi, sole heir of the investigative activity of the great Tomponzi and therefore the only legitimate owner of Tomponzi Investigations (the most famous Italian detective agency, which has been run by Mrs Ponzi for five years and whose central offices have been located in Via Veneto in Rome for over thirty years), declared precisely as follows with respect to her alleged participation in the defensive pool of one of the persons under investigation: "We are negotiating with some members of the defence. Nothing has been yet defined'. Adding: 'In this phase I don't deem it appropriate to express any opinion about a case that still has to be properly evaluated. Quotations published in other newspapers had the same tone. Tomponzi Investigations' therefore assumed a clear stand right from the start and, to avoid all misunderstanding, reaffirmed it with a press release written and distributed to the various press agencies and the leading mass media by one of our collaborators, Carmelo Lavorino, editor-in-chief of the 'Detective & Crime' magazine and an expert defence-pool consultant and coordinator. This notwithstanding, on the following day &endash; Sunday 6 July &endash; some of the major Italian daily newspapers quoted inappropriate statements by a member of another investigative agency whose 'polite' observations will be brought to the attentions of the court. Unfortunately though, nuisances never come alone. Apart from our competitors' gratuitous statements, various newspapers made their own contribution to the matter by making great confusion between the historic agency of Tomponzi and the one founded by his younger brother Tony, two entities that have been completely separate for decades and not just for the time of a day. In this regard it should be made clear: 1) that the great Tomponzi, founder of the Agency of the same namehas not been dead for a year but died only two months ago, as the Italian press has underlined dedicating entire pages and front-page headlines to the event; 2) that no division whatsoever occurred after his death and his daughter Miriam remained firmly at the head of the Tomponzi Investigations Agency; 3) ihat Tom's younger brother Tony runs an activity of his own that has nothing in common with Tom's agency, which had been created two decades earlier and has since become a synonym of private investigation in Italy; 4) that in the light of the previous considerations, the news according to which Tony Ponzi is the head of Tomponzi Investigation or that the agency has in some way been split after its founder's death are completely groundless.