He was sentenced to life in prison Antonio De Marcothe young student guilty of the murder of the Lecce referee Daniele De Santis and his girlfriend Eleonora Manta, killed out of envy on the evening of 21 September 2020 in their home in via Montello, which they had shared with their killer for months. The sentence was pronounced today by the judges of the Court of Assizes of Lecce.
For De Marco, daytime isolation was not arranged for a year as the Prosecutor had requested, which instead saw the request for life imprisonment accepted. Neither De Marco nor his parents were present in the courtroom. Instead, there were the relatives of the victims.
The reactions
There are those who embrace; those who are moved and those, on the other hand, leave the classroom in a hurry for the emotion and thus escape the crush of journalists, notebooks and cameras. Daniele and Eleonora’s parents have just heard the verdict against the murderer of their children. “No sentence will ever fill the void it has left”. These are the only words Daniele’s father said after reading the sentence
The bunker room of the Borgo “San Nicola” prison is a flood of emotions and feelings that explode after months of waiting, almost exhausting silence and suffering. There is neither the strength nor the desire (but not forgiveness) to rage against the killer between the families of the two boys killed with 79 stab wounds on their first day of living together in the condominium in via Montello, a stone’s throw from the train station of Lecce. The carabinieri discreetly monitor the outflow but among the relatives of Eleonora and Daniele there is only the desire to let themselves go to emotion or in a liberating embrace. And this is also the case among their lawyers.
Boyfriends killed in Lecce, the criminologist in the classroom: “The murderer is a malignant narcissist, never seen a crime so planned in 20 years of work”
by Francesco Oliva
The fallen judge
The hearing had begun with an unexpected event. An alternate popular judge was declared forfeited for having released, shortly before the hearing began, an interview with some TV stations, making – it was explained – personal assessments on the outcome of the trial. The President of the Court Pietro Baffa ordered the forfeiture due to incompatibility.
Boyfriends killed in Lecce, asked for a life sentence for the 21-year-old confessed offender: “He acted with premeditation and cruelty”
by Francesco Oliva
The killer never in the courtroom
The prosecutor Maria Consolata Moschettini did not want to reply to the defensive arguments of the last hearing. The prosecutor had already invoked life imprisonment with the recognition of the aggravating circumstance of cruelty and premeditation, and daytime solitary confinement for a year. De Marco has always chosen to desert all hearings without ever appearing in the presence of judges and relatives of the victims to recite a mea culpa that who knows how much it would have served to sweeten the feelings of the boys’ families and wrest the clemency of the Court once closed in Council chamber. De Marco, in recent months, has only presented himself in front of doctor Elio Serra and psychiatrist Pasquale Carabellese (professor of criminology at the University of Bari) because the two partisan experts had to evaluate his ability to understand and want to undermine , according to his lawyers, from an existence (albeit so short) studded with love disappointments that would have destabilized him to the point of identifying in the young couple the easiest targets and closest to him on which to pour out his “life pain “And his” jealousy “on the evening of 21 September 2020.