He killed his in-laws with an axe in Ploaghe: Baule appeals against life sentence

Fulvio Baule, the forty-two-year-old from Ploaghe sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his in-laws, Basilio Saladdino and Liliana Mancusa, with an axe on February 26, 2022 in Porto Torres, reducing his wife Ilaria Saladdino, from whom he had just separated, to the brink of death, has appealed to the Court of Assizes of Appeal against the sentence of the Court of Assizes of Sassari.

Defense attorney Nicola Lucchi filed the request today, urging the recognition of mitigating circumstances for Baule and therefore a redetermination of the sentence. According to the defense, the defendant must be recognized as mitigating his psychological fragility , exacerbated at the time of the facts by the separation from his wife, the fear of not seeing his children again and the stress accumulated in the previous months precisely because of the misunderstandings with his wife and the arguments between the families of origin of the two spouses.

In the first instance trial, the Court of Assizes of Sassari, based on a psychiatric assessment it had ordered, established that Baule at the time of the facts and in his current state is capable of understanding and willing . He was therefore sentenced to life imprisonment, with daytime isolation for one year, perpetual disqualification from holding public office, forfeiture of parental responsibility, and also the payment of provisional benefits to the relatives of the victims who had joined the civil action.

The double homicide occurred on February 26, 2022: Baule, after arguing in the street with his wife Ilaria, in front of the building where she lived with her parents in Porto Torres, took an axe from the trunk of his car and hit his father-in-law Basilio in the head, killing him instantly, then his wife and finally his mother-in-law, Liliana Mancusa, who died in hospital after a month in a coma. His wife was seriously injured. Baule ran away, abandoning his two one-year-old twin children who had witnessed the massacre on the street, and then turned himself in shortly after to the Porto Torres Carabinieri .