Italian ex-international "My father killed my mother with an axe"

Former Italian international Andrea Carnevale describes the horrific murder of his mother. The perpetrator: the father.

Domestic violence occurs time and again in Italy, which unfortunately also ends in death. Just recently in Nuoro (Sardinia), a man killed his wife and two children, shot his mother and a neighbor and then took his own life. Andrea Carnevale experienced a similar horror scenario.

The 63-year-old once played with Diego Maradona at Napoli. He also celebrated his greatest successes with the southern Italians (twice champions, once cup winner and Uefa Cup winner).

At the home World Cup in 1990, he seemed to be set as Gianluca Vialli's strike partner in the Squadra Azzurra attack, but the recently deceased Salvatore Schillaci outstripped him internally. Carnevale has now been chief scout at Serie A club Udinese for over ten years. In connection with the femicide in Nuoro, Carnevale spoke about his own experiences.

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Tragedy with an announcement

His tragic story was inevitable, he recalls in a report by "La Stampa" (via fanpage.it). "My father, who had returned home after a year in Germany - where he worked for the railroad - became increasingly strange and confused. He would beat our mother in front of us, even when we were eating together in the evening. He could do that at any time."

"I went to the carabinieri several times to be told that they couldn't do anything if they didn't see the blood. There was always a climate of fear at home, because from one moment to the next he became violent, especially towards my mother, who suffered from these outbursts of rage. For years, my mother was slapped and beaten in front of us," reports Carnevale.

He was still a young boy at the time, and there was practically no awareness of domestic violence in his environment in a small village. "Everything was kept a bit hidden. My mother was a decent woman, but my father was fixated on the idea that she was cheating on him - a madness that continues to this day. But the chief of police at the barracks said he couldn't intervene until he saw blood."

On September 25, 1975, tragedy struck: his father Gaetano killed his mother Filomena - who had six other children in addition to the then 14-year-old Andrea. "One morning, my father woke up, took the axe and went to kill my mother while she was washing clothes by the river near the house," Carnevale told La Stampa.

"One of my sisters was there, I was playing football nearby. I picked up my mother's brain from the river and took it to the barracks: 'Did you see what happened now?" I told the police chief. "How many times have I come here - now you can see the blood". Today, however, he no longer bears a grudge against anyone; his father was a sick man who had not been treated. Later, his father committed suicide in prison.