ITALY: Italian couple confess to killing four neighbours, including a child, over noise feud in Erba

An Italian couple will appear before magistrates on Friday (January 12) after confessing to the killing of four neighbours, including a toddler. The couple's confession is the latest twist in a murder case that has held the country enthralled. Thirty-year-old Raffaella Castagna, her two-year-old son, her mother and a neighbour were found with their throats slit on December 11 in Castagna's apartment in the wealthy northern town of Erba. Their home had been set on fire. The press immediately blamed Castagna's husband, Azouz Marzouk, a Tunisian immigrant recently freed from jail under a mass pardon. One newspaper headline described Marzouk as "a monster." Many of the same newspapers on Friday printed rare front-page apologies when it emerged that at the time of the murders Marzouk was on a trip to his homeland. The vicious nature of the murders fuelled talk of a vendetta linked to the Tunisian's previous conviction for drug dealing. Right-wing politicians pinned blame on the centre-left government for letting out Marzouk and about 25,000 other inmates in recent months to reduce prison overcrowding. But earlier this week police arrested Olindo Romano and Rosa Bazzi, an apparently respectable middle-aged couple with no criminal record living in the same building. They confessed in a 10-hour interrogation, with Bazzi admitting she killed the two-year-old, according to investigators. The neighbours had a long-running feud with the Castagnas, whom they accused of being noisy. "They have taken away the most beautiful things in my life, my love, my son, my home - I haven't got anything, I am a destroyed man," said a grieving Marzouk, who is father of the two-year-old. He said it was impossible for him to forgive the killers. Investigators said they believed the murders were premeditated. Police were eventually led to the culprits by a 60-year-old neighbour who was attacked and left for dead when he tried to help the victims. They also found blood in Romano's car.

ITN Source | January 13, 2007

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