The electronic bracelet ordered should have arrived tomorrow, together with the house arrest, for Santino Bonfiglio, 67 years old, confessed to the feminicide of his ex Daniela Zinnanti. The control device, which the investigating judge had prescribed in the precautionary custody order issued after the complaint for injuries presented by the victim on 5 February, was not available at the time of execution of the provision. Bonfiglio escaped from his home on Monday evening and stabbed his ex-partner to death.
Daniela Zinnanti, 50, massacred by her ex with around forty stab wounds, died in a bloodbath. “An announced femicide”, say the family, epilogue of the relationship she had with Santino Bonfiglio, 67, arrested for the murder and confessed. A violent relationship, punctuated by many episodes and culminating in the barbaric murder of the woman, who leaves behind two children from a previous relationship.
The crime took place in the victim’s home, in the Lombardo district of Messina. The man was under house arrest for assault, violence and threats precisely because of a complaint from the woman who had been beaten by Bonfiglio about a month ago and ended up in hospital with seven fractured ribs. Previously the victim had filed another complaint because she had been beaten but then withdrew it.
According to police investigations, Bonfiglio went to visit his ex to talk and killed her at the height of a violent argument, reports the suspect’s lawyer, lawyer Oleg Traclo, who found his client “annihilated, shaken in his thoughts”. He had met the victim to “clarify himself on the second complaint presented by Daniela Zinnanti for which he was under investigation for personal injuries and mistreatment in the family, even if they lived in different homes”, adds the lawyer. According to the suspect, the woman fractured her ribs because she had fallen while drunk and not because she had been beaten. The murder was discovered by the victim’s daughter who, upon seeing the body, felt ill and was taken to hospital for checks because she is 7 months pregnant. The body was found last night, but the victim was probably killed the day before. The flying squad officers found the murder weapon: a knife recovered near a dumpster not far from the victim’s home. According to testimonies collected by investigators, the couple’s relationship was troubled: the two broke up and got back together.
“As a family we are desperate over the death of my sister. My other five brothers and I had told Daniela several times to leave that violent man and not to have any more relationships with him. The last time, after yet another complaint, and after he had sent her to the hospital, she decided to definitively end relationships with this person who, however, did not give up. Another feminicide announced”, says Roberto Zinnanti, brother of the victim.
“I don’t know what he did – he says – my sister looked after our mother when she could. Daniela was a wonderful woman who loved all of us brothers, her daughter and also my mother and did everything she could to spend more time with her. Unfortunately she met this violent man and was convinced, at first, that she could change him and a first time, after reporting him for mistreatment, she also dropped the report. But not this second time. She had also lived with him, but – her brother recalls – then they didn’t get along and she sent him away. Both my mother and I often told her to leave him alone, and finally the last time she followed our advice, but yesterday the man brutally killed her.”
Santino Bonfiglio was retired: previously he did odd jobs driving a heavy vehicle. Daniela didn’t work and looked after her elderly mother. In memory of Zinnanti, a minute of silence was observed in the Chamber as requested by the M5s deputy, Gilda Sportiello, who was joined by the FdI deputy Carolina Varchi.
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