The Court of Cassation has declared admissible the appeal , presented by the defense lawyer Nicola Lucchi, against the life sentence issued on March 31 by the Assize Court of Sassari against Fulvio Baule , the 43-year-old bricklayer from Ploaghe, sentenced to the maximum prison term for killing his in-laws, Basilio Saladdino and Caterina Liliana Mancusa, with an axe , and for brutally attacking his ex-wife, Ilaria Saladdino, from whom he had recently separated.
The hearing has been set for February 3, 2026.
The request was filed in July by the lawyer who claims there is "an erroneous application of the legal provisions regarding mitigating circumstances, with the assessment of the positive elements of the offender's conduct overlapping with his mental state."
In the first-instance ruling and subsequent appeal, the Court denied the mitigating circumstances requested by the defense for a re-sentence. Baule was sentenced to life imprisonment with one year of solitary confinement, banned from holding public office, stripped of parental responsibility, and ordered to pay provisional benefits to the victims' families, who had joined the civil action.
The double homicide occurred on the evening of February 26, 2022 , when the bricklayer from Ploaghe was taking his children back to his wife, Ilaria Saladdino, who had moved to Porto Torres, to her parents' home on Via Principessa Giovanna. The woman was attacked in the street following a furious argument, then the bricklayer took an axe from the trunk of his car and repeatedly struck his father-in-law Basilio. He then chased his mother-in-law, Liliana, who, savagely beaten, died after a month in a coma.
Baule fled the scene of the murder, committed in front of his two one-year-old twin children, later handing himself in to the police.