BOLZANO. The life sentence is definitive for Benno Neumairthe man from Bolzano who killed his parents in 2001 and threw them into the Adige river: the Court of Cassation has confirmed the maximum sentence for the double homicide and the concealment of the parents’ bodies Laura Perselli e Peter NeumairThe 33-year-old, who is in the Montorio prison in Verona, the same as Filippo Turetta, was sentenced in the first instance in November 2022 and then on appeal in October 2023, always with the same verdict.
Benno categorically denied the crime in the first weeks, then confessed to having killed his parents by strangling them with a rope following the discovery of his mother’s body, in early February 2021. Laura Perselli’s body was recovered in the waters of the Adige south of Bolzano, about a month after the murder. The body of his father, Peter, was instead found only at the end of April, at the height of Ravina, over 60 kilometers further downstream. According to the investigators’ reconstructions, Benno first killed his father, aged 63, and then his mother, aged 68, who returned to the family home at a later time. During the investigation into the disappearance of the two spouses, Benno also carried out some attempts to mislead, trying to wash the car and asking a young woman from Ora to say that on the evening of the crime they were together and had smoked marijuana.
During the second-degree trial, defense lawyers insisted on Benno’s non-imputability, noting that his “serious personality disorders” would have made the impulse to kill his father at the end of an argument “uncontrollable”. According to the lawyers, the 33-year-old’s ability to understand and want would have been “totally abolished or at least seriously diminished” even at the time of his mother’s killing.
In the first-degree conviction, the Court of Assizes, in addition to highlighting Benno’s full capacity to understand and want in both murders, had also recognized the aggravating circumstance of premeditation, while no elements for the existence of mitigating circumstances had been identified. This morning the hearing in the Supreme Court lasted three hours and then, in the late afternoon, the final sentence arrived: appeal rejected and no new trial in Trento, which could have led to a reduction in sentence.
2024-09-16 02:52:29