FOGGIA – The two videos of the murder of his 16-year-old daughter Jessica and the attempted murder of his wife Tefta, committed in the family home in Torremaggiore (Foggia) on 7 May 2023, were projected today in the courtroom of the Court of Assizes of Foggia during the second hearing of the trial against the 43-year-old Albanian Taulant Malaj. The man is accused of double voluntary homicide and multi-aggravated attempted homicide. In addition to killing his daughter, Malaj killed his neighbor Massimo De Santis because he believed, without any foundation, that the man was having an affair with his wife. The first video shown to the judges was recorded by the cameras of the house, the other with Malaj’s cell phone: in the latter the body of De Santis also appears on a landing of the building.
The accused remained in the courtroom for only a few minutes: a few seconds into the videos (which last a total of 15 minutes) he began to shout and bang his head against the bars of the cell. The president of the Assize Court then ordered his removal from the courtroom. The videos were shown at the request of prosecutors Sabrina Cicala and Antonio Laronga, to support the testimony of a carabiniere from the San Severo company’s operational unit, among the first to arrive on site and carry out the investigations.
The particularly bloody images capture both the moments of the massacre, immortalized by the cameras installed in the house by Tefta Malaj, and the behavior of the accused immediately after the very serious bloody incident. The man, in fact, filmed the corpses and his dying wife with his cell phone. Given the atrocity of the images shown, the Court ruled that the hearing should take place behind closed doors. His wife Tefta was also present in the courtroom and was also a civil party for her 5-year-old son, who witnessed the violence. The woman is assisted by the lawyer Roberto de Rossi. Also present were the lawyer Matteo Tenace, who represents the family members of Massimo De Santis, and the lawyer Anna Grasso, established for the cooperative ‘Il filo di Ariannà against gender violence.
«It was a very tough hearing for my client who retraced those dramatic moments in her mind and cried for the entire duration of the videos – commented the lawyer De Rossi -. They were moments with a high emotional impact, but I would like to reiterate that Tefta Malaj is not animated by any feeling of revenge, but by a legitimate desire for justice, especially for her daughter Jessica. She is physiologically in shock, today exacerbated by watching the videos of the murder, but she is going through a delicate process of psychological support with great determination.” Next hearing on June 7th.
