Elena killed with seven stab wounds, her mother: "Someone had taken possession of me"

A lucid and planned murder according to the investigators , something that not even she realized according to the defense of Martina Patti, a 23-year-old mother who killed her daughter Elena , aged 5, and staged the kidnapping before collapsing, mass in the face of the thousand contradictions of his testimony.

She admitted the guilt and said she had acted alone, the same investigators speak of a "horrendous crime committed in a solitary manner", but on the motive she made a silent scene.

"She remained vague - explain the carabinieri -, as if she did not realize what she did, as if she said 'I did it but I don't know why'".

A PREMEDITED MURDER, THE MOTIVE THE JELOSY

For the investigators there is a motive, jealousy towards the current partner of the child's father , her ex-partner Alessandro Del Pozzo, 24 years old. Little Elena felt affection for what would soon become his stepmother and she " could not tolerate her becoming attached to her."

An investigation that brought to light a "sad family picture": behind the girl's "apparently serene" management there were instead tensions and disputes. An anger brooded for a long time, to the point of leading her to premeditate the crime with a plan studied in detail .

The spark could have gone off the night before the murder. Elena had spent it with her paternal grandparents, she was happy with them and with her father's new partner . She had also slept there, the next day her aunt accompanied her to kindergarten and her mother went to pick her up at 1.30pm and then returned home to Mascialucia. Shortly afterwards Martina went out in the car again to create a diversion, then returned home. During that time he killed the little girl with a kitchen knife (not found), hitting her seven times when the girl was from behind, hid the little body in five black plastic bags and half buried it with a shovel and a pickaxe. in a plot near the house.

Then the fake kidnapping was staged . He associated it with some threats that in 2021 the former partner had found in front of the gate of the house for a robbery for which Del Pozzo was arrested in 2020 and then acquitted for not having committed the fact. A version that did not convince the investigators and which was immediately denied by the images taken by the security cameras of the affected area. There was no armed commando who kidnapped the child at the time and place indicated by Martina . So the young woman, put under pressure for hours, confessed.

An autopsy was arranged to establish with certainty how Elena died, an initial examination "revealed wounds from stabbing and stabbing to the cervical and intrascapular region ".

THE DEFENCE

The woman's lawyer, lawyer Gabriele Celesti, speaks of a " dramatic interrogation ", of a "destroyed and very tried woman who did something that not even she thought she could do", acting as if "someone had taken possession of her" and proving to be "anything but cold and calculating". Martina herself said to those who questioned her: " Someone had taken possession of me ".

“ I will make my client meet a renowned psychiatrist - adds the criminal lawyer - to check her conditions and then we will decide on the report. I must acknowledge great fairness to the carabinieri and the prosecutor's office ".

THE DESPERATION OF GRANDPARENTS

In the field where Elena's little body was found, her paternal grandparents arrived, upset and in tears. “You couldn't imagine what happened - says the grandfather, Giovanni Dal Pozzo - it all seems so strange, absurd to me. Elena's mother was a very closed girl, but I can't explain the reason for what happened. But now whoever did it must pay, even those who eventually helped her ". The paternal aunt, Martina Vanessa Del Pozzo, explicitly accuses her sister-in-law: "Martina Patti wanted to frame my brother". And the maternal grandmother brings to light an episode: " I remember a day when he was beating her very hard and we had to intervene to literally take it out of her hands ".

(Unioneonline / L)