ON the second day of the trial, shortly after completing his day and a half opening of the prosecution case, Michael Bowes QC was huddled with members of his team and police officers outside court two.

As he delivered his opening speech Bowes did what all lawyers do in criminal cases without anyone ever really noticing. He assessed the reaction of the most important people in the courtroom. He was pleased.

“The jury are locked into this,” he said.

“They are focussed. They get it.”

Bowes had made it clear to the jury that they were not trying Danilo Restivo for the murder of Elisa Claps, only for that of Heather Barnett.

But in reality they were.

Because by linking the cases so inextricably, the Crown was inviting the jurors to come to an inescapable conclusion – Restivo must have been responsible for the deaths of both women, nine years and hundreds of miles apart, because of the “striking similarities” between the deaths.

So in an extraordinarily complex prosecution, the Crown built half of its case around an incident that happened nearly two decades ago and for which Danilo Restivo has never faced a trial.

It was a case of two halves. The English evidence relating to the killing of Heather Barnett and the Italian evidence on the murder of Elisa Claps.

And such big a part of the Barnett case was that of Elisa Claps, that Heather’s name barely came up in proceedings for days on end when the Italian evidence was being heard.

At the start of 2010, the prospect of Restivo facing trial still looked doubtful – at least from the outside, despite many thousands of police hours, countless appeals and constant attempts at using the latest DNA technology.

But things changed on March 17, when Elisa’s remains were found in the loft of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Potenza – the very place she had reportedly last been seen 17 years earlier.

Here was the breakthrough.

If prosecutors in England could show similarities in the deaths of the two women, it might be enough to convince a jury. If so, the Italian evidence would be admissable.

What now transpired was a race to arrest and charge Restivo, between Dorset police and the Italians, who wanted their cases closed and justice done.

As one former detective told the Echo: “As soon as Elisa’s body was found we knew it was a question of who got Restivo into court first.”

In April at a hearing in London, Mr Justice Burnett, ruled the evidence from Italy could be admitted into the trial.

Bowes’ strategy was to show the jury that Restivo was guilty through the overwhelming weight of circumstantial evidence.

He succeeded.

Bowes branded Restivo “evasive in the extreme” and said his explanations and excuses ranged from absolutely absurd to completely ridiculous.