Teens Slaughtered 'Pregnant' Girl

3:47pm UK, Wednesday November 12, 2008

Nick Pisa, in Italy

Three teenagers in Italy have been jailed for 20 years for the brutal murder of a 14-year-old girl who had wrongly told them she was pregnant.


Miss Cultraro's body was found weighed down with a stone tied around her neck



The horrific case of Lorena Cultraro has sent shockwaves across the country because of its ferocity.

She was beaten, raped, stabbed, burnt and her body thrown down a well.

The three boys aged 15, 16, and 17, who cannot be named for legal reasons, confessed to police they had killed Miss Cultraro because she had told them she was pregnant by one of them.

An autopsy later proved she was not expecting, but the boys - who were arrested within days of the murder - immediately confessed to police the motive for the killing.

As the verdict was passed at the court in Catania, Sicily, the three accused burst into tears but the victim's father, Giuseppe, slammed the sentence as lenient.


This is not justice. My daughter's life has been treated as if it were that of a dog.

Lorena's father Giuseppe Cultraro slammed the sentence.

Mr Cultraro and his wife, from nearby Niscemi, did not attend the trial because they did not want to hear the harrowing details of their daughter's last moments.

He said: "We are talking about a young 14-year-old girl's life, not some animal. Twenty years is nothing, with time off and various reductions they will be out within a few years but my daughter will never come back.

"I know they are boys but the crime they committed was an adult crime - they deserved adult sentences, they deserved life. Lorena was beaten, kicked, stabbed, burnt and her body thrown down a well."



Distraught father Giuseppe Cultraro

Judge Alessandra Chierego took less than an hour to reach her verdict and afterwards Francesco Spataro, a lawyer for one of the accused, said: "Twenty years for a juvenile represents the end of his life and the destruction of every project for the future."

Miss Cultraro's body was discovered by police weighed down with a stone tied around her neck in a well 10 days after her parents had reported her missing.

In confessions to police the teenagers told how they picked her up on a scooter and then drove her to the well in an isolated stretch of countryside.

There they forced her to strip before she was strangled while being held down by the other two. Her body was then set on fire before being weighed down and hurled into the well.

This is terrible. When do we ever get good news?

This is awful..poor poor girl.Poor family too.

It is horrible