A 27-year-old security guard on Monday confessed to killing his former girlfriend by dousing her in petrol and setting her alight in a Rome suburb. Vincenzo Paduano faces charges of pre-meditated murder over the horrific slaying early on Sunday of Sara Dipietrantonio, a 22-year-old student, who had recently ended their two-year relationship. “In 25 years in this job I have never seen such an atrocious crime,” police superintendent Luigi Silipo told journalists. “Sara had got away from an unhealthy, obsessive love story,” he said, adding that police believe Paduano followed Dipietrantonio on at least three previous occasions before he burnt her alive and had tormented her psychologically.
Paduano lay in wait for Dipietrantonio in the early hours of Sunday after she dropped off her new boyfriend at his apartment in Rome’s southern Magliana district after an evening out with friends, according to investigators. He then approached her car, forcing her to stop, climbed into the passenger seat, began arguing furiously with Dipietrantonio and doused her and the inside of the car with petrol, investigators believe. Terrified, Dipietrantonio got out of the vehicle and began to run, crying out for help as two people drove by. But Paduano caught up with her and lit a match after setting her Toyota car ablaze, investigators said. Police found Dipietrantonio’s body in undergrowth about 200 metres from her burnt-out car. Paduano confessed to Dipietrantonio’s murder after police cross-questioned him for eight hours