Life imprisonment, this is the decision of the first section of the Court of Assizes for the so-called “diabolical lovers”, namely Luana Cammalleri and Pietro Ferrara, accused of the murder and concealment of the body of Carlo La Duca, husband of the first and best friend of the second, disappeared into thin air in January 2019 by Cerda.
The sentence was issued by the panel chaired by Sergio Gulotta (alongside Monica Sammartino) and the judges accepted the requests of the Prosecutor’s Office, represented by the deputy prosecutor Ennio Petrigni and by the deputy prosecutors Alfredo Gagliardi and Luisa Vittoria Campanile, who had requested the maximum punishment, also on Valentine’s Day. Cammalleri and Ferrara, defended by lawyers Giovanni Marchese and Accursio Gagliano, have always rejected the accusations.
Dreams, lies and perversions behind the murder: “He appears to me like a saint to make me repent”
According to the reconstruction of the prosecutors, the two would have gotten rid of La Duca, even if for a reason never truly clarified (the man, in fact, would not have been an obstacle to their relationship, given that he himself openly frequented a other woman). Ferrara would have been the last to see the victim alive, whose remains were never found, on January 31st five years ago, while the woman would have followed her husband’s car in her car up to via Minutilla , in Cardillo, where it was found completely cleaned.
“The choice he made”: videos and wiretaps behind the arrests
The story of La Duca caused quite a stir because it was his wife and lover, later arrested for the crime, who go on television to launch appeals with the aim of finding him, showing pain and concern that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, they would never have felt. In the first instance, however, the investigators had not noticed the romantic relationship between the defendants, which instead had only come to light by listening to the wiretaps again. Which revealed a whole series of background stories, such as that when talking about La Duca the two would have used the past tense, they would have insulted him – they called him “the beast” – and also that Cammalleri would have repeatedly dreamed of her husband and he would have appeared to her “like a holy, like an angel who wants to make me feel guilty.”
The disappearance and the fake pain on TV: “He had debts and went to prostitutes”
The woman defended herself by claiming that she had nothing to do with the disappearance of her husband, who she had accused of being violent and frequenting prostitutes, explaining that he would have met other people that morning and that they would have been the ones to get rid of him: ” That day – the accused told the judges – I followed him, he met three people in a large, dark car… I was wrong not to say it before and I’m paying the consequences in prison”. In fact, it was only thanks to very complex investigations carried out by the police using telephone records that it was discovered that the woman had followed her husband in the car that day because she had said something completely different. “I had promised Pietro (Ferrara, ed) not to say it because otherwise our relationship would be discovered. We were afraid of being suspected, of those three people that Carlo had met and that we didn’t know who they were…”.
The accused: “I had nothing to do with it, she met other people”
Ferrara he also defended himself against the accusations: “We were friends, certainly the relationship had deteriorated a bit in the last period because Luana had told me about the violence and perversions that he forced her to suffer, but I had no reason to kill him, it wasn’t me”, he said in the classroom. She had reported that “that morning Luana had decided to follow her husband” and “her lawyer had suggested it to her because she was separating from Carlo and he was giving her almost nothing, she wanted to find out if she was having an affair”.
The accused: “He was violent with her, but I didn’t kill him”
But, as mentioned, the victim already had a relationship with another woman, precisely because her marriage had failed and everyone knew about this relationship. “Then – continued Ferrara – she saw that Carlo was meeting three men she didn’t know, she got scared and went back. In the afternoon she told me what happened and I was the one who advised her not to talk about it with the police. Now I give up I realize that I was wrong to tell her this, but we were scared, we didn’t know who those people were and Luana still lived alone with two children…”.
Tags: life imprisonment wife friend
