Murdered Her Son Because He Surprised Her Having Sex With His Grandfather

Today’s case takes us to Santa Croce, Camerina, a municipality located in Sicily, Italy. It was there that, in 2004, a 16-year-old girl named Verónica Panarello met 18-year-old Davide Stival, with whom she immediately began a relationship.

Veronica, who at that time worked as a waitress, shared with Davide the complicated situation she was experiencing due to the strong arguments she had with her mother. In one of them the woman threw her out of the house so Davide offered her to go live with him and his parents, which she accepted.

Months later, Veronica became pregnant and everyone was happy thinking that this would unite them even more.

On June 18, 2006, the couple’s first child was born, a boy they called Loris Andrea and who brought joy to their parents and grandparents.

It is important to say that Davide works as a truck driver so he spent many hours even days away from home. Even so, the couple was very much in love and they didn’t stop making plans for the future.

In 2007 they got married and in 2010 Diego, their second son, was born.

Everyone describes Loris as a cheerful but introverted child with the people he didn’t know. He loved to sit in his father’s truck and take walks with him. His teachers say that he was extremely intelligent and very loved by his classmates.

His passion was Karate and he regularly attended classes... Unfortunately, one morning in November, someone decided to end the life of this little boy of only 8 years old.

The facts:

On November 29, 2014, at about 1 in the afternoon, Veronica went to pick up Loris from school, but there they told her something somewhat disturbing. According to the teacher, her son had not gone to school that day and no one had seen him.

At that moment, 26-year-old Veronica panicked and began to cry out who had taken her son.

The young mother went to a police station to report the disappearance of the little boy. Veronica stated that that same morning her children got into the car. First he took the baby to the nursery and then he left Loris at school. During the time that the children were in their classes, she attended a cooking course, a place where, by the way, everyone confirmed their presence.

After this complaint, the agents began to look for the child. The good thing was that since they were in a very small town, the news of the disappearance ran like wildfire and many locals came together to help in the search

For his part, Davide was with his truck in the Lombardy region, that is, quite far from his home. The woman called him to tell him what happened and he decided to return immediately. After they made a terrible discovery.

At 4 in the afternoon, the police received a call from a 65-year-old man named Orazio Fidoni. Apparently he was in a secluded area when suddenly in the ditch next to an old mill he discovered the lifeless body of a child.

All the agents traveled to the indicated place next to Veronica, mostly to see if the woman could identify if it was Loris.

Upon seeing the body, the woman in tears confirmed that it was her son and at that moment they saw her so badly that several agents had to hold her for fear that he would faint.

During his return home, Davide learned from a Facebook post that they had found his 8-year-old son dead.

The police the first thing they did was talk to Orazio, the man who had found the body. According to his version, he had joined the search convinced by his wife since he was a hunter and was familiar with the area.

However, the police were not convinced with this story and Oracio became the main suspect.

The agents took his car to analyze it thoroughly and he was also interrogated for several hours. But the man didn’t stop repeating the same version over and over again. In addition, in his car they did not find anything to indicate that the little one had been there, so they had no choice but to discard him as a suspect.

After they began to check the security cameras that were in the area of Loris’ school, mostly in case they could see the person who had taken him or if he had simply left on his own foot. And it must be said that what they found in them, or what they didn’t find, left them surprised.

After several hours reviewing the images, the agents found that Veronica had not taken her son to school. No camera recorded the woman that morning with the little one and at school they confirmed that the boy had never been there. At that moment they put the focus on her because she had obviously lied to them.

The investigation:

Since what the security cameras showed did not fit with Veronica’s version, the woman was interrogated again by the agents. When she learned that the cameras had not captured her, leaving her son at school, she changed her version.

According to her, on November 29, she did take her son to school but it was not recorded because she left the child a little earlier, right in an area where the cameras did not arrive. A few days later, the results of the autopsy arrived and they didn’t match the woman’s version either.

The autopsy determined that Loris had died at some point between 8.30 and 9.30 in the morning of November 29. The little one, despite the fact that he had been found with his pants down, had not been abused but he did have several scratches, bruises and marks on his wrists, as if he had been tied. In addition, the coroner established that Loris died suffocated with an electrical cable.

At the beginning of December, investigators found new recordings that totally contradicted Veronica. In them they can see how at 8.15 in the morning the children get into the car.

Then from a private video camera, Loris appears walking back to his house, however he is never seen leaving there again.

Thanks to that camera, it could be seen that shortly after leaving her young son in the nursery, Veronica returned to her home and parked her car in the garage. This was striking because the woman always parked outside.

From here, Veronica stayed in the house for 35 minutes alone with Loris and then went out again in her car. There was no trace of the child.

With all this, the agents decided to search the family house and it was there that they found some electrical cables that could be the weapon of crime.

On December 9, Verónica Panarello was arrested for the murder of her son. She vehemently denied the charges and even Davide at first supported her by stating that she had always been a loving and affectionate mother unable to do something bad to her children.

In a new interrogation, the police began to pressure her until she finally declared that the morning of the events Loris did not want to go to school. He insisted so much that she lost control and took his life.

But days later Veronica changed her statement again. On this occasion she said that she was innocent and that Loris’ death had been an accident. That after getting the children in the car Loris returned to the house because she didn’t want to go to school and that when she returned from leaving Diego in the nursery she found him dead with the cables around his neck. At that moment she panicked, so she grabbed her son’s body, took him down to the garage, put it in the trunk of her car and took him to the place where he was finally found.

But the agents still didn’t believe the woman since the forensic evidence didn’t correspond to what she said. For this reason, they continued to press for her to tell the truth. Again she changed her version but this time she said something that left everyone in shock.

A year later, while she was still detained waiting for the Trial, Veronica said that the person who took Loris’ life was Andrea Stival, her father-in-law.

The woman stated that she and Andrea, 52 years old, were lovers. Loris had surprised them by having relationships and threatened to tell her father. Grandfather, fearing that his son would find out about everything, decided to end the life of the little one in front of the mother. Then between him and Veronica they took him in the trunk of the car to the place where the body appeared.

Veronica added that if she didn’t tell the truth it was out of fear that her father-in-law would do something bad to his youngest son.

For her part, Andrea denied the accusation and did not understand how her daughter-in-law could tell something like that.

The police thoroughly investigated the man but still found no evidence against him. In addition, by the day of the events he had a fairly solid ali since he was with his new girlfriend far from the family home. Andreina, that’s the woman’s name, declared that she would never give someone a false alibi to cover something so horrible.

The only phone records showed were short calls between Andrea and Veronica months before Loris’ death that may correspond to the typical calls of a grandfather.

With all the evidence in their hand, the agents were clear that Veronica was alone with her son when she committed the crime.

Davide had no doubts about his father’s innocence. The man went so far as to affirm that this statement was just another of Veronica’s many lies and that his father had become an additional victim.

The trial:

The trial began on October 17, 2016. Veronica was accused of murder and disposition of a corpse but her defense tried to argue that she suffered from a borderline personality disorder and that she had tried to take her own life twice in the past.

Even so, the psychiatrists who examined her for the trial thought the opposite. In a 160-page report they determined that Veronica was perfectly sane and that she was aware of the crime she had committed. Therefore, it was judged accordingly.

Finally, Veronica Panarello was found guilty of all charges and sentenced to 30 years in prison.

The crime motive has never been clear but according to the reconstruction on the morning of the events the woman took the life of her son in cold blood. Then she took the body in the trunk of the car to get rid of it, but before leaving him in the place where he appeared, she lowered his pants to confuse the investigators. With this she wanted them to think that a man had kidnapped him to abuse him. Then she went to her cooking class to get an ali and finished her representation at the little one’s school, as if to show that he had disappeared there.

Some time later Andrea Stivel filed a lawsuit against her former daughter-in-law alleging that her lies and accusations had caused him stress and anguish.

When asked in this trial about all the lies she had made, Veronica said that she didn’t remember anything and that she had no intention of lying. According to her, she mixed memories from the previous day and thought that she had taken her son to school that morning. She also insisted that his father-in-law was the killer:

“I’m incarcerated and he’s free. I take responsibility for my actions, I was wrong to say that it was an accident.”

In 2021, Veronica was found guilty of slander against her father-in-law and sentenced to two more years in prison, but not only that... she was also sentenced to pay €24,000 in compensation.

At the end of the trial for slander, Veronica threatened her father-in-law when she left the court:

“Are you happy now? Do you know what I ask of God? That I find you dead or when I come out I will kill you with my own hands.”

It is known that in 2017 Davide started the divorce process and today Veronica does not have the right to receive visits from her young son but she does have information about his life.

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