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Why?

27th February 2008 by Helena 6 Comments  

I have just read the sort of story that makes me want to weep. In fact I am having to concentrate on not weeping. A man is being held in Italy for the murder of his two sons aged 12 and 14. He threw them down a 60-foot well in 2006.

Their bodies were discovered by accident when another boy fell down the same well on Monday night. Evidence suggests these two boys did not die when they were thrown in. Instead they suffered a slow and agonising death in the darkness. One of them was found curled up in the foetal position, his thumb in his mouth.

Their mother says her life is over. I can understand that. The agony of thinking what your boys must have gone through is more than any mother can bear.

There is nothing in the story to suggest a motive on the part of the father. But what motive could there possibly be for throwing your children to a hellish death?

No one knows how long Salvatore and Francesco survived down there. We’ll never know if they comforted each other, or if one of them watched the other die, we can only guess at the terror and desperation they must have felt. And we will probably never understand what drove their father to this most cruel and heinous act.

You worry about all sorts of things happening to your children; from accidents to abductions to illness. But not this. How could you ever imagine this?

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008


Filed Under: Children, Italy, blog -->

6 thoughts on Why?

  • Andrea says:
    28th February 2008 at 3:12 am

    This breaks my heart.

    There can be no reason for this…it’s just heinous.

  • Ella Fallgren says:
    28th February 2008 at 9:29 am

    It remains to be seen what the autopsy report comes up with. It may just have been a tragic accident. Either way it’s terrible.

  • sestofi says:
    28th February 2008 at 9:55 am

    Just a bit of background information: The parents were divorced, and were by no means on good terms. Published reports indicate that the boys were last seen with their father, but there has been no evidence as to whether they had run away or the father had anything directly to do with their disappearance.
    The other theory under examination is that this is that one of the boys had fallen into the well (just like the other child who fell in while playing and whose rescue led to the discovery of the bodies), and his brother went down to help him.
    That said, whatever the circumstances, this is a horrible tragedy.

  • helena says:
    28th February 2008 at 10:00 am

    I agree and hope it was a tragic accident, maybe the papers in England have got it all wrong, but they are reporting that the father was arrested in November for their murder?
    Either way it is too horrible to think about.
    Hx

  • Expatmum says:
    28th February 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Oh goodness, I sort of wish I hadn’t read this as I won’t sleep tonight. How utterly, utterly awful Poor kids; and poor mother.

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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor in chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. Helena is also working on a thriller called Thin Ice that will be published in spring 2021 as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

Her latest non-fiction work Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles came out in hardback in 2016 and in paperback in April 2018.

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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