Cerciello Rega trial, the widow in court: 'He was supposed to take me to the beach and they killed him'.
Commozione in aula questa mattina nel processo per l’omicidio di Mario Cerciello Rega, il carabiniere ucciso nella notte del 25 luglio dello scorso anno nel quartiere Prati a Trastevere. Chiamata a deporre, la vedova del militare, Rosa Maria Esilio, ha detto di ricordare il marito sul letto dell’ospedale coperto da un lenzuolo. “Gli ho chiuso gli occhi e gli ho dato l’ultimo bacio. Poi sono rimasta con la testa poggiata sul suo petto come quando ci addormentavamo. Mi aveva detto che la domenica successiva saremmo andati al mare ma lo hanno ucciso”. Il processo che si svolge in corte d’assise a Roma, vede imputati per l’omicidio del vice brigadiere i due giovani americani Finnegan Lee Elder e Gabriel Natale Hjorth.
Mario Cerciello Rega's widow showed the judges of the first Assize Court the wallet with her husband's identification plate still with bloodstains. The woman was heard as a witness for the civil parties. "Mario - said Rosa Maria Esilio - always put his wallet in his front pocket as well as his handcuffs. That evening he did the same and he always had a purse. That evening we had dinner and he said goodbye affectionately to me to go work the night shift. That was our last goodbye. During that night we spoke on the phone twice".
During her testimony, the woman recounted what happened on the night of July 26 last year. “At four in the morning my brother-in-law Paolo called me to tell me that something had happened to Mario and that they were operating on him. I called the police station in Piazza Farnese and from the voice of the orderly I understood that something serious had happened. I took a taxi and went to the emergency room of Santo Spirito, I only had a rosary with me. After a while a nurse approached me to give me a small bag containing my husband's wedding ring, a chain and a bracelet. I was waiting and I noticed the wallet and the handcuffs on a low wall but they told me I couldn't take them”. The vice-brigadier's widow then added: “I went to the doctors who told me that Mario was dead and that they had done everything to save him”, she concluded.
Touching words from Rosa Maria Esilio. Moments of life reconstructed while barely holding back tears. Living in the house she shared with Mario, the plans of a lifetime gone up in smoke, the difficulties of being the wife of a carabiniere, but also the closeness and thanks of the people. She brought her husband's wallet to the courtroom still stained with his blood. Words that moved everyone, even Finnegan Lee Elder himself, accused of the murder together with Gabriel Natale Hjorth, who left the courtroom in tears. The new scheduling of the hearings sees their depositions set for November 6, a date on which almost certainly only Gabriel Natale Hjorth will speak, the young man who clashed that night with Mario Cerciello Rega's colleague, Andrea Varriale. Meanwhile, the next hearing is set for October 26 with other depositions.
The Court of Assizes of Rome has lifted the reservation and rejected the request for house arrest advanced by the defense of Gabriel Christian Natale Hjorth, defendant together with Finnegan Lee Elder. The murder dates back to the night of July 26, 2019: after an unsuccessful attempted drug purchase by the two twenty-year-olds, the two stole the backpack of Sergio Brugiatelli, the man they met on the street, in Trastevere, who had indicated the pusher to them. Brugiatelli called 112 for help, and Cerciello and his colleague Andrea Varriale intervened at the appointment set by Elder and Hjorth, who had asked Brugiatelli for 100 euros to return the stolen goods. When the soldiers tried to stop the two Americans, Elder reacted by stabbing Cerciello 11 times before fleeing with his friend. The next morning, the Carabinieri stopped the two Americans, who had slept in a room at the Le Meridien hotel, not far from the place of the murder. They were ready to leave Italy and had hidden the weapon used in the ambush in a false ceiling: an 18-centimeter fixed-blade knife, type 'Trenknife' Kabar Camillus, marines model, that Eder had brought from the United States, loading it into the hold of the plane during the outbound flight.
Article published on 9 October 2020 - 17:27
