" Go get her, I threw her off a cliff, I locked her body in a suitcase ." In the middle of the night, in the offices of the Rome police headquarters, the confession arrived. Mark Antony Samson, 23 years old and an architecture student, admitted to killing his ex, Ilaria Sula, 22 years old and a student originally from Terni who had disappeared on the evening of March 25.
Yet another femicide took place in the apartment where the young man lived with his parents , on via Homs in the African quarter, in the northern quadrant of the capital. It was there that he struck Ilaria with a series of stabs inflicted with a kitchen knife. A violent action with the clear intent of killing her, carried out by Samson while his parents were at home . The two are not currently under investigation but the aim of the investigators is to ascertain whether they played a role in the affair that would have led to the charge of complicity in the murder.
"I'm sorry for what I did," the boy simply said during questioning in front of the prosecutor who is accusing him of the crimes of voluntary homicide and concealment of the body. During the confrontation with the public prosecutor, Samson did not want to provide answers about the motive, the day the crime occurred, and the hours preceding the dramatic attack. The investigators, however, have put together the pieces of what the suspect said in the very first hours of his arrest.
THE RECONSTRUCTION – Presumably Ilaria was killed the same evening of her disappearance, therefore Tuesday 25 March, in what appears to be a crime of passion . But investigators and detectives are working to find evidence of a possible premeditated action. After having put an end to the life of the girl, with whom he had had a relationship that lasted several months, the 23-year-old put the body in a suitcase that he dragged to his car. From via Homs he reached the area of Poli, a town about 40 km from Rome. There he got rid of the body by throwing it into a ravine . Immediately after, he got back into his car. Once back in the city - or so he said - he threw the knife in a dumpster and then threw the girl's phone in a manhole in the Montesacro area.
WEAPON AND CELLPHONE ARE SEARCHING FOR – Investigators are looking for the weapon and, above all, the cell phone, with which the suspect, in order to mislead the search, allegedly sent laconic messages of reassurance to Ilaria's relatives and friends. It was precisely the analysis of the cells and the phone records that incriminated Samson: the girl's phone led investigators to the house on via Homs. And further answers could come from the surveillance cameras in the area, which could have captured the phases preceding the crime or the "operations" to remove the body.
THE MESSAGES AND THE MISDIRECTION – In the days following the disappearance, in an attempt to divert suspicion, the student went to Ilaria's friends to find out what had happened to his ex-girlfriend. The investigators will also analyze the boy's cell phone, trying to recover any communications between the suspect and the victim in the hours before the stabbing. The deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Cascini, who is coordinating the investigations of the Flying Squad, will request the validation of the arrest and will order an autopsy on Ilaria's body, before giving the green light for the funeral.
THE FAMILY – The family of the girl who was studying statistics arrived in Rome from Terni. « We can't explain it. Why did she do it? We don't understand why she did it », says her brother Leon through tears, adding that he last spoke to Ilaria two weeks ago. «She came to visit us in Terni - he recalls - She was calm and didn't tell me about any problems. Then only messages, but at this point I'm not sure she wrote them». The brother hypothesizes that there was a diversion : «Ilaria was probably already dead when we got worried because we couldn't find her. Maybe it was already too late. Who knows if it was really her who wrote in the previous days. Her friends saw her for the last time on Tuesday». About Samson «I knew him – explains the boy – they were together for a year but they broke up. My parents were never convinced by that story». Ilaria, of Albanian origins, left Terni after finishing school to move to Rome and was attending the three-year course at the Faculty of Statistics at Sapienza . In the capital she met Mark, a twenty-three-year-old of Filipino origins. He studied architecture and also had a job in a fast food restaurant, described by his neighbors as "kind and smiling". In recent days his gaze crossed that of Ilaria's parents in the corridors of the police station. "We met him at the police station on Sunday, we didn't know they had broken up," Ilaria's father said on TV. " He told us he was very sorry, that he was worried about her disappearance. He seemed calm, he even gave me a hug ." The father remembers having last heard from Ilaria on Tuesday. "She told us she would be home on Saturday," he explains. "That was the last phone call, then we received some messages from her cell phone. It was as if it were my daughter writing: 'Ciao da', don't worry. I'm fine. I went away with a boy and a girl. I'll be back in Terni in a month.' And then she repeated to me: 'Don't worry, I'm fine.' This made us suspicious , if it had really been my daughter she would have called me. So on Saturday we went to file a missing person report.'
(Unioneonline/vl)
