Italian arrested over murder of Nigerian prostitute

 

An Italian man has been arrested over the murder of Anthonia Egbuna, a Nigerian prostitute, after police searching her apartment found a short story he wrote with close similarities to the killing.

The Carabinieri (Italian Military Police) disclosed that Anthonia was stabbed and her body was dumped in the river Po. It took some months for the police to identify the corpse and thereafter, her apartment was visited. While going through her possesions, a nine-page story, titled 'The Rose and the Lion', was found among her belongings.

The murder case is reminiscent of the 1992 Hollywood thriller movie Basic Instinct, and aspiring author, Daniele Piampaschet, was arrested last week because of similarities between his short story and the real murder, the police said.

After finding 34-year-old Piampaschet's short story, police say they discovered he had been in a relationship with Anthonia, who was then 19 years old, between February and August of 2011.

They alleged in a statement that he murdered her in November because their relationship was going badly and she refused to give up prostitution, which appeared to be the connection between the story.

An excerpt of the story reads thus: "He loved her and he loved her more every day, but she did not want to leave the streets. All his efforts to convince her to change her life had failed. And for this reason she had become his torturer."

In the short story, the murderer strangles the Nigerian prostitute and then commits suicide. "He wrote the story and gave it to her as a gift -- to make himself look good," says Piampaschet's lawyer, Stefano Tizzani.

Tizzani said Piampaschet had a "profound passion" for Africa and Nigeria, and saw Anthonia as an inspiration for his writing. "My client has declared his innocence and we are working to demonstrate it," Tizzani said.

While denying the murder, Piampaschet told investigators after his arrest that his relationship with Anthonia changed after he started dating another Nigerian woman last August, though he remained in contact with her.

His lawyer said his client stopped seeing Egbuna after he was threatened by people who control the Nigerian prostitution business in Turin. "He stopped calling her after he was threatened and intimidated and told not to see her anymore," said Tizzani.

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