Anna Lucia Lupelli , the 81-year-old woman found dead at home two days ago, in the Carrassi district of Bari, was killed for money, with various signs of stab wounds.

The killer, 51-year-old Saverio Mesecorto, an employee of the building's cleaning company, has confessed to the crime and is now accused of voluntary murder aggravated by premeditation. He killed her, he said, because he needed the money.

THE RECONSTRUCTION - The murder, according to the reconstruction of the men of the flying squad coordinated by the prosecutor Claudio Pinto, would have taken place at lunchtime on 13 September, hours before the body was found.

The victim was intent on preparing lunch: he had set the table, put the pot on the fire (which remained on until the body was found, with the food now completely burned). Mesecorto entered the scene at that moment: he rang her on the intercom, asking to enter the house to drink a glass of water. The 81-year-old had no qualms about opening the door to that man: he knew him, because he had been cleaning the building for over ten years.

But after closing the door behind him, Mesecorto immediately put his criminal project into action: he stabbed her in the abdomen, killing her in a short time. Then he took away all the cash he found in the house, about a thousand euros, and the victim's ATM.

Then he got rid of the knife, still undiscovered, the gloves used to commit the crime, the bank card and the purse that had been robbed, throwing them in some undifferentiated bins.

THE TALE TO THE DAUGHTERS - The 51-year-old, however, was unable to keep the secret for long. According to the investigators, he told everything to his daughters: "I killed a person and took home 1,500 euros", he told the girls, also explaining that "he had procured a knife by buying it from a shop run by Chinese and that, using some gloves, he had rang the bell of a lady who lives in Carrassi and asked her for a glass of water. The lady had made him sit down and he had killed her ". The whole story was also confirmed by what was filmed by the surveillance cameras of a shop not far from the house where the victim lived.

Mesecorto is now in prison in Trani. In the detention order, the prosecutor justifies the urgent precautionary measure, highlighting "the absolute inability to control himself and the unusual violence demonstrated in the affair" which "constitutes a concrete reason to believe that the aforementioned may flee".

(Unioneonline / D)

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