Murder case in Italy solved after 35 years

Rome, Jan 19 (IANS/AKI) A convicted criminal has confessed to killing an elderly woman in the central Sicilian town of Piazza Armerina - 35 years after she was found beaten and strangled to death in her apartment.

“I’m the monster who killed that poor woman. I haven’t been able to forget how she clenched a crucifix in her hand as I throttled her,” 57-year-old Aldo Consoli told police.

Consoli was referring to the murder of his 83-year-old neighbour Irene Salanitro Aug 27, 1975 when he burgled her apartment.

Police said it was the fact that Consoli knew Salanitro had died with her rosary beads in her hand - information that her killer alone could have possessed - that gave investigators “significant indications of his guilt”.

Police found jewellery and other valuables to have been stolen from Salanitro’s apartment, and suspected Consoli, then a young man of 21, but lacked sufficent proof to convict him of the pensioner’s murder.

Prosecutors delivered an arrest warrant for Salanitro’s murder to Consoli in prison, where he is currently serving a jail term of 18 years and nine months for ordering the murder of another felon.

Nicknamed ‘the scientist’, Consoli was arrested in 2009 on suspicion of ordering the murder of Giuseppe Avvenia. He was tried and found guilty.

Consoli confessed to murdering Salanitro during questioning after police re-opened the investigation into her murder, one of several unsolved ‘cold cases’ which have been reopened.

–IANS/AKI