Anguish over murdered toddler

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

A kidnapping saga that had gripped Italy for a month ended in tragedy this week, when police found the body of 18-month-old Tommaso Onofri. Two kidnappers last month burst into the Onofri home, tied up the parents, and snatched the baby from his highchair. Tommaso’s mother went on television appealing to the kidnappers to give the child, an epileptic, his anti-seizure medicine, but hopes faded as weeks passed with no ransom demand. This week, two construction workers confessed to the kidnapping and said they killed Tommaso soon after taking him, smashing his face with a shovel for fear that his crying would betray them to police. “Every Italian family is crying for the death of Tommaso,” said President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi. “When we heard the terrible news, my wife and I felt a bone-chilling horror that took our breath away.”