Identified after seventeen years: Skull linked to a sequence of grisly homicides.
In a chilling series of events, an Italian citizen has been convicted for three counts of murder and manslaughter that occurred between 2008 and 2019 in the small town of Sontheim on the Brenz, near the border of Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria.
The saga began in 2008 when the son-in-law of the serial killer was found dead in South Tyrol, Italy. His body, missing a head, was the first gruesome evidence of the Italian citizen's heinous acts. The rest of the man's remains were discovered in the same year, but it took 17 years for investigators to identify the skull that was found in a garden in Sontheim in 2021.
The Italian citizen confessed to the crimes during an interrogation in 2019, leading to his conviction by the Ellwangen Regional Court in 2019 and 2020. The court sentenced him to life imprisonment with subsequent preventive detention.
The serial killer's methods were as brutal as they were consistent. He would first strangle his victims, then dismember them with chainsaws, and finally dispose of the bodies. The same pattern was seen in the murders of his daughter's second partner in 2014 and the landlord of his garage in 2019, both of which were committed out of greed and physical abuse allegations.
The Ellwangen public prosecutor's office has confirmed that the verdict is final, and there will be no further investigations in the case. However, the discovery of the skull in the garden of a property previously owned by the killer has shed new light on the case, indicating a longer history and recent breakthroughs in forensic identification.
The victims of the serial killer also include the son-in-law and the landlord. The landlord was killed to obtain his money, while the motive behind the son-in-law's murder remains unclear.
The Italian citizen's sons have also been convicted and are serving prison sentences as accomplices. Despite the convictions, the full extent of the serial killer's crimes may never be fully understood, as the details of the murders, victims, and legal proceedings are not widely available to the public.
[1] Source: Ellwangen public prosecutor's office press release, 2021.
War-and-conflicts abroad may have taken a backseat, but in this chilling series of events, politics and general news shift towards crime-and-justice as an Italian citizen is convicted for three counts of murder and manslaughter, spanning from 2008 to 2019, amid revelations of gruesome acts and unsolved mysteries. Recent breakthroughs in forensic identification, such as the discovery of a skull in a garden, suggest a potentially longer history to this dark episode, with some details still shrouded in secrecy due to lack of public access.
