The mystery of the 69-year-old’s disappearance / Mother and 28-year-old son arrested for husband’s murder

A serious case is being investigated in Cutro, in the province of Crotone, Calabria, where a 60-year-old woman and her 28-year-old son are suspected of killing 69-year-old Salvatore Giglio.

The woman reported her husband missing in September 2024, seven days after he was last seen. Italian authorities suspect that the crime took place on September 21, 2024, the date the 60-year-old had given as the day of his disappearance.

In addition to murder, the suspects also face charges of concealing a body. According to the investigation, the body may have been thrown into the Tacina River, although searches have not yet led to its discovery.

The case is being handled by the Crotone Prosecutor’s Office. At its request, the judge for preliminary investigations ordered that the mother and son be held in pretrial detention in prison.

Prosecutors and investigators link the suspected motive to financial matters. The court ruling states that the objective may have been to eliminate a person described as “annoying,” with whom the arrested individuals had a deep conflict and who was selling his real estate.

After the incident, the mother and son allegedly tried to mislead the investigation. Authorities identified a delayed report of the disappearance, coordination of the accounts they would present to investigators, the purchase of several liters of bleach to clean the place where the crime allegedly occurred, as well as statements that contradicted one another.

Carabinieri forensic officers from the RIS, together with a diving unit from Messina, conducted inspections and searches for the body, but the operations have so far been unsuccessful.

During questioning, the 60-year-old presented a different picture of the family’s relationships. She described family life as unbearable and her husband as an extremely authoritarian man.

She stated that over the years she had suffered serious episodes of domestic violence, which she had not reported. According to her, her husband had tied her to a chair and electrocuted her using car battery cables, even when she was pregnant. These claims must be verified during the investigation.

Despite this account, the judicial authorities determined that the evidence collected at this stage justified the pretrial detention measure against both suspects.

The Prosecutor’s Office also claims that the woman had repeatedly searched Google for information about “the most effective interrogation techniques” and the method known as “good cop, bad cop.”

Investigators say the son had instructed his mother on how to behave during questioning, telling her: “When you don’t know what to answer, you don’t answer… you say ‘I don’t remember’… that’s it.”

The investigation is ongoing, while Salvatore Giglio’s body has still not been found. The charges against the mother and son remain allegations and will have to be proven in court.