“I know there’s no going back” –

“I know there’s no going back.” These are the words that the 17-year-old from Paderno Dugnano, accused of stabbing his father, mother and little brother to death, told the acting prosecutor of the Juvenile Court of Milan, Sabrina Ditaranto. The magistrate during a press conference in Milan, said that during the interrogation “the boy began to realize the reality and gravity of what he had done. He understood that what he had done was irreversible and that he could not go back.” The young man is accused of the aggravating circumstances of premeditation, of the family relationship, of the minor age of one of the offended parties and of having acted at night, taking advantage of the victims’ sleep. The prosecutor has excluded the aggravating circumstance of futile motives, although the motive that pushed the young man to the extreme act is not yet clear. This aspect will be investigated in the interviews with the educators, who will provide an initial picture to the judge who will have to deal with the validation. Then the prosecutor will submit a request for validation in the next few hours, the judge will set the validation hearing and finally the precautionary measure will be carried out.

A terrible crime, which has shocked the country because of the young age of the boy arrested. “The night before, his father’s birthday had been celebrated, and in my experience this could have been a moment that exacerbated what was brewing. Because celebrations can increase unease”, said Ditaranto. At his father’s party “no alarming behavior was evident, as he is a boy who has always been reserved and his thoughtful attitude could have gone unnoticed”.

“We are investigating the music he listened to, the video games and any stimuli that could trigger a somewhat aggressive thought, but for now we have no solid certainties”, the magistrate declared. “We know that he listened to very sad music. He told us this”, he added. According to leaks, it seems that the 17-year-old frequently listened to the Beatles song “The Long and Winding Road”, a famous song by Paul McCartney whose main theme is loneliness.

The boy spoke for almost an hour and a half between a few tears and a lot of lucidity. With a “large kitchen knife” he allegedly first hit his brother who was sleeping in the same room. The 12-year-old “wakes up” and the screams call his parents then, according to his confession, “he hits his mother and only when she collapses does he start hitting his father who was trying to help the family”. Investigators speak of “many stab wounds, including to the neck” for each of the victims, but the autopsy will provide more precise details. Then he called 118 and when the Carabinieri from the Paderno Dugnano station arrived, he, apparently “serene and lucid”, was sitting on the entrance wall, with his clothes still stained with blood. The post-murder is “improvised”: he says he killed his father who had stabbed the rest of the family to death, but when the version creaks, the confession of a boy described as a good student, passionate about volleyball, begins immediately: “Nothing in the family had emerged until yesterday”.