A 23-year-old Sicilian mother confessed to killing her five-year-old daughter and falsely claiming she had been abducted for ransom.
Martina Patti told police she killed Elena, but did not say why she had done so, Ansa reported. According to sources, she reportedly said she could not explain the act herself.
Furthermore, she was unable to provide police with a satisfactory description of what had happened, sources at the Carabinieri said. They added she had been unable to come up with any plausible motive for what she had done, the police sources said.
Prosecutors said they are gearing to charge her for multi-aggravated murder and disposing of a body, judicial sources said.
Killed at home then buried
Police accuse Patti of killing her daughter Elena in the family home at Mascalucia, near Catania.
She then took her body to a nearby abandoned patch of ground where she buried the body with earth and lavic ash, sources said.
The alleged murder took place when she was alone in the house with her daughter. Her alleged ‘kidnapping by masked’ men was a false report to cover the murder, police said.
The mother had told Carabinieri police that three hooded men, one of whom was armed with a gun, opened the door of her car and grabbed Elisa after she had picked her up from nursery school.
Sources had said investigators did not believe organised crime was behind the alleged kidnapping. Neither did they think the child would have been abducted to obtain a ransom either. Elena’s family are not considered wealthy enough to be the targets of attempted extortion of this kind.
