NEIGHBOURS SAID they heard three shots. When they got to her, Maria Montanaro was dying. But she was able to say three words: “It was Gaetano”.
For months she had been threatened by her 55-year-old former lover, Gaetano de Carlo. But on the day before he arrived on her doorstep, things suddenly became more frightening.
The 36 year-old graphic artist from Riva di Chieri near Turin received a text message: “I’m coming there and I’ll kill you.” After fulfilling his pledge, De Carlo drove to Rivolta d’Adda near Milan. There, he shot dead another former girlfriend, Sonia Balconi. He then killed himself.
But the murders formed part of a series that was anything but over. In the eight weeks to last Sunday, eight Italian women died in strikingly similar circumstances that indicate a change in the usual motivation for “crimes of passion”. Their deaths have prompted anguished discussion about the interaction between the sexes in today’s Italy. All the women were killed by men who were unable to accept rejection.
“There is no infidelity at the root of these crimes,” said Fabio Piacenti, the president of Eures, a social research institute. “On the contrary, infidelity is even tolerated so long as the relationship continues. What some men find intolerable is the breaking up.”
The first of the killings was on May 11th. As Cristina Rolle and her estranged husband sat, calmly discussing the custody of their children with a social worker, he took out a knife and stabbed her to death. The latest victim was Eleonora Noventa, aged 16, from Mestre near Venice. A few weeks earlier she had broken up with Fabio Riccato (30). On July 11th, she found him waiting for her at a crossroads on his scooter. He pulled out a Magnum 357 gun, shot her three times and turned it on himself. – (Guardian service)