So Far Utterly Passive US Reaction To Italy Sentencing Two American Cop-Killers To Life

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Omigosh, I just saw this: Rome convicts 2 US friends in slaying of police officer.

And sentenced both to Life Imprisonment. Wow!!! Rega’s integrity is defended.

I blame the dreadful Finnegan Lee Elder as the main culprit. He is now 21.

He stabbed the Carabinieri 11 times with a knife. A loose cannon roaming Europe. Shades of Knox. His defense claims he suffered with depression and once tried to commit suicide.

His friend Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, hid the knife in the hotel room, and is sentenced as accomplice in full. Very tough ruling.

Natale-Hjorth has dual U.S and Italian citizenship and was visiting his grandparents who live near Rome, as he often did in the summer.

Natale-Hjorth chose bad companions. These two young students were from San Francisco area in USA.  They went out at night to try to buy cocaine.

The drug deal in a dark alley went wrong. They were cheated by a middleman who gave them sugar tablets.

Soon afterward they were confronted by 2 Italian policemen. The boys did not cooperate and claimed the police didn’t identify themselves (likely story) so they fought them.

They thought they were hoodlums or thugs. The surviving policeman said they DID identify themselves as law officers.

The Murder

Vice Brigadier Mario Ceciello Rega tragically was killed in trying to subdue Elder.

Rega had just returned from his honeymoon, only to be knifed to death by a drug-mad idiot. It happened in July 2019. The legal case moved swiftly.

These two young men, it’s dreadful what they did and now, their lives are over. They’ve destroyed all their parents’ hopes as well.

Welcome to Knox-Sollecito Land where sorrow is the keynote. Stupidity is the gate. Suffering is the result for every entrant and those unfortunate enough to be related to them or who know them.

Yes, Hopeful, many lives now are not what they were because of stupid and unprovoked violence abroad.

As we’ve posted before, young Americans in Italy commit several murders a year and we noted in particular senseless deaths in Rome and Florence and on the coast south of Genoa.

Several or some or perhaps most had the same dangerous psychological mix as Elder did here. More than a few were found to be high as a kite or off their meds.

https://tinyurl.com/n2vxf7av

Was Elder on meds, and did his parents ensure that he stuck to a regime?  I bet they are kicking themselves now, for allowing a Knox-like loose cannon to head for Rome.

As did Curt Knox, they have some guilt in this.

Few people if any carry weapons in the evenings in Rome, and the location here, halfway between the Vatican and the Supreme Court, would be extra-safe. Here is a rough guide to how safe Rome is.

https://tinyurl.com/4t945hns

According to the European Union’s statistics-gathering wing, as of 2015, there were 0.7 homicides per 100,000 people in Rome as of 2015. That makes Rome safer than Venice (1.1 homicides per 100,000), Milan (1), Turin (0.8) or Naples (3.9).

In the U.S., the FBI’s 2015 data — the most recent available — shows that most U.S. cities remain far behind in terms of safety. There were 3 homicides per 100,000 people in the city of Seattle, 10.6 in Omaha and 8.6 in Anchorage, for example.

And as The Economist reported in 2016, out of the 50 cities in the world with the highest homicide rates, all are from Latin America and the Caribbean — except for South Africa and four cities in the U.S., led by St. Louis, with nearly 60 homicides per 100,000 people.

Finnegan Elder had zero reasons to feel unsafe.

Elder’s knife was huge, in itself a sign of a twisted psychology.

It was a US Marine partially-serrated, close-quarters combat knife with an 18 cm (7 inch) blade costing nearly $100 in the US.

https://tinyurl.com/4n4yrd85

Ownership of such a knife is ILLEGAL in Italy without a permit and it would normally have to remain at home, and one of the five charges the two were found guilty of was “carrying the attack-style knife outside of home without due cause”.

It would also be illegal in most countries to carry such a knife into the cabin of a plane, so it presumably was in Elder’s checked luggage for the flight.

@Peter Quennell, You posted a great video above, about Finn and Gabe. It revealed a lot. Both of them are into gangsta rap and idolize the worst. They flash guns and knives and try to look tough on social media. They send pix of drugs and fan out the money like a hand of cards, big bills.

Gabe’s mom rebuked him for selling drugs. He wasn’t working yet bought expensive things.  He lied when his Mom jumped on him about it and said it was only that he tried mushrooms twice and told her once “to be honest”. I think both young men are manipulative liars and drug dealers.

It was Finn’s selfish request to his own mom to allow him to leave Berlin and instead of going on to Spain as planned, to take a detour to Rome to link up with old friend Gabe. Another echo of Knox who got crazy after Germany.

Finn’s mom said OK and paid for Finn’s room in the Rome hotel (where later the knife was hidden) so he could stay. She also paid for him and Gabe to stay an extra night—yet Finn went to an ATM to teller out 80euros to pay for cocaine, yet borrowing $$$ from mom.

Finn got kicked out of Sacred Heart school, that says everything.
Why? he almost killed a “friend” a fellow football player in a fight about a girl, in the park one night.

According to the friend’s dad who almost lost his son, Finn was a sneaky fighter (as per video.) because

Finn threw his hands up like “let’s not fight”. Then as the man’s son was off guard and backing down, Finn sucker punched him in the side and knocked him to the ground. He hit his head.
Concussion led to a weeklong coma, a brainbleed. The young man took months to recover. He will always have a steel plate in his head.

The family wrote Finn a letter forgiving him and hoping he went on to finish high school and succeed in life.

Then later Finn fell off a ladder at work and tore off half his middle finger.

That ended his sports because he couldn’t handle the ball.

He also began to medicate for pain after surgeries on his finger. The doctors could not restore the severed finger. Now he only has half a finger.

The knife obsession has echoes of Raffaele (and Knox waved a knife around at Kokomani). Both Finn and Gabe were fans of showing off big knives on social media. They brag to their girlfriends about stuff on texts.

The video is excellent about both Finn and Gabe and their grieving families.

Finn’s father looks beaten down and exhausted and sad. He probably saw where Finn was heading years ago. He and his wife both seem truly sad about policeman Rega’s devastated young wife and all of Rega’s crushed relatives.

Like the Knox-Mellas clan, the parents of Finn and Gabe had to raid their life savings to buy lawyers for their awful offspring. And now all the appeals ahead. Detach with love.

The court reasoned that Gabe did more than hide the knife. While Finn fought with officer Rega, Gabe fought with Rega’s partner and thus pulled him away from defending Rega, who was then stabbed 11 times.

Gabe shared a big part of the blame for Rega’s death by preventing his partner from saving him.

One comment mentions Raffaele’s big knife that police asked him about. Raffaele’s reply about the knife: it is a hobby.

Where next:

Or to next entry Comments Under US Media Reports Almost Universally Scathing Of Rome Killers Defense

Or to previous entry Best of The Real-Crime Series: Strongly Recommending HBO’s “The Investigation”