Antique Shop Owner Accused of Killing Mother By Choking Her with Rosary Beads
LatestA 61-year-old woman is accused of killing her 93-year-old mother by jamming rosary beads down her throat. An attorney for Francesca Martire doesn’t deny that she placed the rosary beads in her mother’s mouth, fearing that the older woman had fallen because of the devil, but says she didn’t choke her.
Martire runs an antique shop in London, but was from Taranto, in southern Italy, where her mother, Maria Luigia Magazzil, still lived. The Guardian reports that Martire was taken to a psychiatric hospital after her mother died, then transferred to a prison in Naples. Neighbors called police in late May after hearing someone screaming for an ambulance from Magazzil’s apartment, where she was found dead. An autopsy revealed that she died of suffocation and had lacerations in her mouth and throat.