Homicidal madness. Franco De Grandis, 66, an employee of a cleaning company, shot and killed pizza chef Luigi Carbone, 48, last January. The crime took place in front of a building in the popular neighborhood of via Popilia, in Cosenza. The motive? Nobody. Or rather: the murderer acted in the grip of the delusions that had been chasing him for some time. The man saw and heard things that others neither saw nor heard. The data emerged immediately, from the first interrogation in front of the chief prosecutor of Cosenza, Vincenzo Capomolla, and the prosecutor Veronica Rizzaro.
“They were shooting at me with compressed air weapons, they were trying to enter the house… you see the whole wall of the building is full of holes…”: the story given by the murderer was defined by the investigating magistrates as “extravagant”. De Grandis showed great conceptual confusion. “I can’t walk because my legs are full of holes from the shots they shot at me…”: it wasn’t like that. The man was and is forced to walk with difficulty due to back discomfort. Again during the same interrogation, in the presence of his lawyer, Amabile Cusino, he said that Carbone, the victim, was “linked to the Red Brigades” and that morning he had pointed a machine gun at him from the building’s parking lot. Nothing true: the victim was unarmed and was getting into the car. “I shot to intimidate him,” he specified, “not to kill him.” Then he spoke about his parents, claiming that they had been “killed”. An absolutely false figure. Further proof of the state of mental alteration.
The Bruzio investigating judge, Letizia Benigno, at the request of the lawyer Cuscino, ordered a psychiatric evaluation in the days following the arrest. A consultation carried out by the expert Antonio Ruffolo who revealed that the murderer’s capacity was “greatly diminished” at the time of the crime. The defense, through its consultant, Paolo De Pasquali, maintains that De Grandis was totally incapable of understanding and will. This is why this morning we will proceed to an evidentiary hearing with the filing of De Pasquali’s counterarguments. The hearing, scheduled at the courthouse, could prove decisive in defining the suspect’s judicial future. The sixty-six-year-old, moreover, had been subjected to psychiatric treatment in recent years which he then suspended. And giving up treatment certainly didn’t help him. The pain of Luigi Carbone’s family remains, who are assisted by the lawyers Paolo Coppa and Giuseppe Manna. They ask for justice and hope to get it. Franco De Grandis – and this is the most disturbing thing – legally held the gun used to commit the crime. A gun that he himself handed over to the police who searched his home. He hadn’t gotten rid of it. This latter choice also demonstrates how he had in no way attempted to hide his responsibilities. A well-structured murderer would have behaved differently. A question remains: could a man with mental problems have a weapon?
