Italian with hair fetish mutilated his victims
Italian national Danilo Restivo, 39, is alleged to have entered the flat of his neighbour Heather Barnett in Bournemouth, Dorset, in 2002, bludgeoned her with a hammer and cut her throat down to the spinal column.
He then cut off the breasts of Barnett, 48, and put them by her head, while leaving a clump of someone else’s hair in her right hand and some of her own underneath her left hand, Winchester Crown Court heard.
The jury was told the manner in which Barnett was murdered could be considered Restivo’s hallmark, and linked the killing to the murder of 16-year-old Elisa Claps in Potenza, Italy, in 1993.
Michael Bowes QC, prosecuting, explained that Restivo, who then lived in Potenza, had arranged to meet Claps at the Most Holy Trinity Church on September 12, 1993. The teenager was never seen again and her body was discovered in a loft of the church almost 17 years later on March 17 last year.
The barrister said “a number of striking similarities” could be found between the two murders.
He said: “In particular, next to her body there were locks of her own hair which had been cut from her head shortly after her death. In addition, Elisa Clap’s trousers and pants were lowered to the same level as those of Heather Barnett and Elisa Clap’s bra was cut or broken at the front in the same way as Heather Barnett’s bra.”
Bowes explained to jury members that they did not have to establish Restivo’s guilt of the murder of Claps but the similarities provided “powerful evidence” he was the person who murdered Barnett.
He said: “The presence of cut hair after death in both cases, together with the other features relating to the clothing of both victims, is strikingly similar and is akin to a hallmark.
“The prosecution’s case is that the circumstances in which Elisa Claps was killed so closely resemble the circumstances in which Heather Barnett was killed that you can have no doubt that both of the killings must have been the work of one person, that is Danilo Restivo.”
Restivo, of Chatsworth Road, Bournemouth, denies murdering Barnett on November 12, 2002.
The court heard that Barnett’s children Terry, then 14, and Caitlin, then 11, found their mother’s body when they came home from school that afternoon.
Bowes said Barnett had been murdered in a premeditated manner and that the killing was “harrowing” and “distressing”. He added that Barnett probably knew her killer because there was no sign of a forced entry.
Restivo had lived across the road from Barnett and knew her.
