The husband of a 43-year-old DJ found dead near Messina after a car crash with her four-year-old son said Friday she had not killed herself or the boy.
This was echoed by the lawyers of the family.
Viviana Parisi’s body was found on August 10, a week after she disappeared with Gioele Mondello after the motorway crash with a lorry on August 3.
The boy’s suspected remains were found not far from his mother’s body two days ago, on Wednesday.
Police think it may have been a murder-suicide by the woman, who had psychiatric problems. But the husband, Daniele Mondello, again rejected this idea Friday.
“Viviana did not kill herself, and she did not kill the little one,” he said. Meanwhile Mondello recognised a pair of blue shoes found near remains including bones and scraps of a t-shirt as belonging to Gioele.
The woman’s relatives, meanwhile, spoke of previous “failed searches”. Mondello has also criticised the initial search efforts which failed to find the boy’s suspected remains.
A retired Carabinieri volunteer found the remains just 200 metres from the stretch of motorway where Parisi and Gioele were last seen. “Five hours of work by a volunteer sufficed, compared to 15 days of (work by) 70 experienced men,” said Daniele Mondello. Experts have said they are “99% sure” that the remains belong to Gioele.
Searchers said the remains appeared to have been left by wild animals. The discovery spot is quite close to the Messina-Palermo motorway and not too far from where Parisi’s body was found 10 days ago. The DJ, who had reportedly been treated for persecution mania and mystic fits, disappeared with Gioele after the crash with a lorry on the motorway in the countryside near Caronia.
She had been reported as being “extremely agitated” after the crash, by an eye witness who also said Gioele had been alive and unhurt after the accident.
A local shopkeeper who often saw the mother and son, Tiziano Pitale, said Friday that “Viviana was very close to Gioele, perhaps too much so”.
ANSA
