The police in the Potenza region were becoming increasingly used to teenage girls absconding from home for the tantalising lure of Naples and all its gilt-edged temptations. Vanishing from the radar entirely was much rarer, however. Usually, it meant that a runaway had dropped out of society’s lowest social class, and was now living rough on the streets, begging, or turning to prostitution. In those circumstances, the outcome was unpredictable.
Some of those young women, inevitably, would catch sexually-transmitted diseases, even AIDS, and succumb to its inevitable outcome without ever receiving, or indeed seeking, medical aid. The lucky ones would be arrested, identified and reunited with their parents, before receiving an appropriate sentence that would frequently involve long-term term pastoral care and intensive counselling. At least in prison they would be fed hot meals, sleep in warm beds, and be weaned off drugs if addiction had become a problem, a common feature of most of these harrowing cases.
Violent death for runaways was always a risk. Some ended their lives dumped in rivers, in derelict buildings, on landfill sites or on waste ground, discarded like garbage. But sooner or later, they all surfaced, one way or another. Unless, of course, they had never run away in the first place. These are sobering thoughts when considering the undeniably lacklustre attitude of the police to Elisa Claps’s disappearance.
Serious Italian police investigations were conducted in a similar fashion as in France, with magistrates involved from an early stage, frequently instrumental in choreographing investigations, something that had a direct influence on Restivo’s actions and the final assessment by the police, who, in the first few years after Elisa’s disappearance, remained entrenched in two opposing camps. The elder faction was more cynical and took the view that Elisa had taken off voluntarily, probably with a secret lover; there was nothing further to do except circulate her name, a photograph and a description. The file could be downgraded to a bottom drawer. But their younger colleagues were the hard-core disbelievers. They refused to accept the most obvious theory at face value
One of the magistrates in Potenza was as sceptical as the police disbelievers over the theory that Elisa had run away and somehow simply disappeared into the ether. Even the local media would not allow her ‘ghost’ to be forgotten and kept prodding the police, a thorn in their side, to do more. The magistrate demanded that Restivo be arrested and brought before him. This was duly done and Restivo was ordered to repeat his account of what happened on the Sunday when he had had the clandestine rendezvous in church with Elisa.
As he listened incredulously, the magistrate, astute and forthright, asked searching questions, particularly relating to how Restivo had injured his hand. The magistrate said that he found serious inconsistencies in the story and harboured grave reservations about its veracity.
The way Restivo claimed to have damaged himself was at variance with the medical report. The magistrate openly accused Restivo of being a liar and gave him a chance to tender a plausible version; basically, to come clean and to own up.
But Restivo stood his ground and said he had no intention of recanting a word. He had told the truth and nothing but the truth. So there was a stand-off, but the magistrate in such a situation had the power to have the last word, which he did, resoundingly.
Restivo was charged with perjury and convicted in the Potenza Criminal Court of deliberately giving false information to the Prosecutor in relation to Elisa’s disappearance. He had lied, in a sworn statement, about how he had injured his hand; he had also lied about his movements on that Sunday and about how Elisa had left the church before him. The sentence was custodial and, no doubt, the hope was that life behind bars would be so intimidating he might relent or be tempted to say something incriminating in the presence of other prisoners.
No such luck. Restivo, if indeed he really was the perpetrator, was adept at maintaining his poker face. As one Italian officer said, ‘If he is a killer, then he’s the coldest-blooded bastard I’ve ever had the misfortune to encounter. He is truly scary, believe me. I’ve come across some Mafia assassins in my time, but none has been as Arctic as this one. He’s the original Ice Man.’
The months passed and Restivo sat them out in gaol, finally being released after a little more than eight months. After his release from prison, Restivo saw no future for himself in Potenza. A new millennium would soon be dawning and he made the decision to leave Italy and head for Bournemouth where he had a friend with whom he could stay.
However, the cost of living in Bournemouth is one of the highest in the UK outside London. Property prices and rental charges are in Europe’s super league. But if you were looking for a town or city in which to become ‘lost’ in the crowd, to remain anonymous even when English is not your native tongue, then Bournemouth has to be a perceptive choice. For many months of the year, the town is colonised by students, many of them mature, from all over the world. The Bournemouth/Poole conurbation has become a mecca for foreign students studying the English language, and private colleges have sprung up in huge numbers.
Bournemouth also held another attraction for Restivo – he had been building a relationship, via the Internet, with compatriot Fiamma Marsango.
Restivo moved seamlessly into his new lifestyle. He frequented the plethora of Italian restaurants and coffee bars; all the proprietors and most of the staff hailed from his homeland. Language was no barrier, even in the nightclubs, which had mushroomed all over the central sectors of the town, including Boscombe.
Danilo Restivo soon became a habitué of many of the clubs. There was certainly nothing reclusive about his lifestyle during this period, nor was there anything about his public persona to suggest that he was living a lie. The low profile that he had first adopted was quickly discarded. Swinging Bournemouth apparently had more to offer an Italian bachelor than even Naples, despite the fact that he was living with Fiamma as her domestic partner.
One girl, Carla Rosselli, who met Restivo at Elements nightclub, said, ‘We had a lot in common, or so I thought, because I come from Florence and had visited Naples many times when on holiday with my parents. I was learning advanced English and doing Business Studies at one of the colleges. We talked in Italian. I told him it would be helpful for him to speak as much as possible in English, but he seemed very lazy. I pointed out that it wasn’t a good idea to stick to a circle of friends of only Italians.
‘I explained that everyone mixed in Bournemouth and there were no racial barriers among the young, but he should make the effort to learn the language so that he would integrate socially more easily.
‘He never seemed short of money, even though he claimed to be a student, like the rest of us. When I asked what he was studying, he said something about dentistry, which seemed odd to me. I couldn’t see how he was taking such a course if he didn’t speak English. And why come to Bournemouth for that? It seemed to me that it would have been much better to have studied dentistry in Italy, but I wasn’t interested in him enough to pursue it.
‘But I guess you could describe him as something of a mystery man, which I think, on reflection, he might well have been trying to cultivate. He was very serious and intense; ill at ease in company and not the sort of guy you’d expect to find at a rave.
‘When we were standing together, having a drink, he kept on about how lovely my hair was. “It’s so smooth,” he said in Italian. “So silky.”’
Carla’s hair was naturally raven-black, accentuating her classical Mediterranean features. She was 22 at the time and sharing a rented flat with two other girls – one Spanish and the other French. Her father was a lawyer and her mother a teacher. She and her flatmates always chatted in English. It was a house rule.
‘The three of us were in England to become fluent in the language,’ she said. ‘Using it while socialising was an important way of improving usage. Getting to grips with colloquial English was the tricky bit and you couldn’t learn it from textbooks.
‘Although I was at first flattered by the comments of Danilo about my hair, I soon got bored because he had very little else to talk about. There was no real conversation. He had staring eyes and he began stroking my hair as if I was a dog or cat. I started thinking he was a bit creepy and I made an excuse to rejoin my friends. After that, he kept looking at me. However many times I moved, he always seemed to have repositioned himself so that I was in his sights. He’d asked for my address and mobile number, but I didn’t give either of them to him, yet a few days later I would have sworn he was following me along the Wimborne Road.’
Wimborne Road was not far from where Heather Barnett and Restivo lived.
‘He was alone, about 50 metres behind. I think he sort of smiled as I looked over my shoulder, but I didn’t acknowledge him. I quickly turned away and carried on walking towards the town centre. I wasn’t scared; nothing like that. Sort of more irritated. I was anxious not to give him any encouragement so that he wouldn’t pester me for a date.
‘I saw him once again, this time in a café bar and he was sitting at a table for two, opposite a girl, another student, I guess. They were talking in Italian. From her accent, I fathomed she came from the south. And would you believe, he was stroking her dark hair, like he was besotted or pampering a poodle. Just seeing him do that made me shudder. I was again with friends. He didn’t even look up as we passed his table, so he didn’t notice me.’
Carla extended her stay in Bournemouth after completing her college course, working in a large hotel overlooking the sea and then in a popular restaurant in the cosmopolitan Charminster Road area, within sight of the roads where Restivo and Heather Barnett were living. She has now returned to Italy to train as a lawyer. She had forgotten about the young Italian man with an obsession for women’s hair until she saw his photograph on the front page of a regional British newspaper.
Another Italian woman, Sophia Pinot, also recalled how she, too, had a brush with Restivo in Bournemouth.
‘It was between 3.30 – 4.00pm in the afternoon of a weekday. It could have been a Wednesday or a Thursday, I’m not sure, but it doesn’t matter much. It was summer and warm. I was sitting next to a girlfriend on a bus, one of the yellow double-deckers, on the short journey from town to the middle of Charminster Road. We were babbling excitedly, the way we young Italians do, when I became aware of someone fondling, or caressing, my hair. I turned round and there was this guy sitting behind me, on his own, sort of grinning stupidly. I said to him, “Did you just mess with my hair?” He shrugged and made some remark about not understanding.
‘I was angry. I have long hair and it hangs down my back. I could tell it wasn’t an accidental touch. If he’d been just a boy, I’d have treated it as a juvenile prank, a joke, but this was a grown man and I knew he’d been deliberately playing with my hair. Technically, it was an assault, but nothing I could prove.
‘I said, “Don’t you dare touch me again.” He shrugged, the same as before, then suddenly spoke in Italian. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said, which made me even more angry.
‘I replied in Italian, “Liar!” The bus was full or we’d have changed seats, but we didn’t have much further to go. The thing is, he got off at the same stop and started following.
‘We went into a café and he stood outside, peering in, like a peeping Tom, for several minutes. The café was full of young people, mostly students from other countries. We felt safe in there, but still he just stayed there staring, like he was in a trance, transfixed. He was weird, but there were lots of weirdos about, especially after dark, though this was in the middle of a sunny afternoon.
‘We must have stayed in the café for at least an hour and when we ventured out into the road, I had a good look around to make certain he wasn’t anywhere in sight, such as in a shop doorway. He must have pushed off. Even so, we were cautious and kept stopping and looking around to satisfy ourselves that we weren’t being followed. The main thing was to make sure he didn’t find out where we were living.
‘I never saw him again after that until his photo was published in a newspaper. I showed it to my friend. “I’m sure that’s the freak who played around with my hair on the bus,” I said. She held the newspaper close up to examine it carefully. She agreed. She said, “Yeah, I think you’re right. It is him. Fancy that!” I said something like, “I told you all along he was a weirdo.”
‘We debated whether we should go to the police, but decided against it. To be honest, I wasn’t keen on getting mixed up in anything like that. You never know what might happen to you. It attracts attention. Also, I wouldn’t have been much help. I mean, he didn’t cut off any of my hair; he didn’t harass or molest me after we got off the bus. I thought I might sound a bit stupid and paranoid, especially as we couldn’t prove anything. After all, neither of us actually saw him combing my hair with his fingers. And there’s no law against watching people eat and drink in a café. We knew his behaviour was dodgy, but it could be made to sound nothing at all. As my friend said, the police must have had a lot stronger evidence than we could give and we couldn’t really add anything new.’
Undoubtedly, the worst hair-cutting incident had been perpetrated in a cinema in Potenza. Restivo had been sitting directly behind a young woman and her fiancé. The woman kept feeling her hair being touched and tampered with, then cut. Whispering, she complained to her fiancé, who turned round to find Restivo with his genitals exposed and masturbating.
Naturally, the young man was furious and ordered Restivo to move away, preferably to leave the cinema immediately. There was no doubt about Restivo’s identity because he was known to the families of the engaged couple, a fact that prevented a complaint being made to the manager of the cinema and the police. But the woman did go to the police after watching the Italian version of Crimewatch, in which an appeal was made for anyone who had suffered at the hands of a phantom hair-cutter. This appeal was included in a segment highlighting the case of missing Elisa Claps and calling for help from anyone who could throw light on her disappearance.
Restivo is known to have accessed online dating agencies, describing himself as a single, intelligent, professional Italian, who enjoyed the arts, literature, fine wine, dining out and convivial, but serious, conversation. He projected himself as cultured, preferring to avoid flippant or casual affairs. Anyone reading his self-promotion would have assumed that he was searching for a permanent relationship, so he was betraying Fiamma. He was certainly confident and sure of himself, something he did not mention. Some police officers were later to refer to him as ‘cocky’ and ‘arrogant’, but this could well have been because he proved such a hard nut to crack. Certainly, he was well versed in his legal rights within European law and came across as something of an amateur lawyer. Despite his Latin blood, there were never any overt histrionics from him when under pressure. All his actions and responses appeared calculatingly measured.
In Bournemouth, the police had substantiated beyond all doubt that there had been a ‘window of opportunity’ for Restivo to have killed Heather Barnett. Restivo’s alibi was peppered with holes. However, the timing would have had to have been spot on, carried out with the precision and determination of a military operation.
But could a man calmly arrive for a lesson, after having committed such butchery on a fellow human being? Could anyone appear to be so composed after cutting off his victim’s breasts just a few minutes earlier, then changing clothes and cleaning himself up, then logging on to his computer and socialising as if it was just another ordinary, mundane day? Was it really humanly possible? Could it be sold to a jury, without it being dismissed as nothing more than far-fetched conjecture?
Answering these questions, one by one to themselves, the police knew, by the very horrific nature of the killing, that the perpetrator was capable of literally anything. He had to be merciless and inhuman, so the question of whether it was humanly possible was redundant.
Heather’s house would have had to have been known to the man who had decided to take her life. However, the killer still had to be something of a chancer, because he could easily have been seen entering or leaving the house. There might even have been a customer inside already. One of the children could have been off school, sick. This last risk might have been eliminated by his watching the house earlier in the morning from a safe distance, observing Heather drive off with both children.
No matter how convinced the police were of the sequence of events that morning, they were equally confident that they could not prove them to the satisfaction of the Crown Prosecution Service, let alone a jury. They needed more. They needed a break, something that would move their case beyond reasonable doubt. Above all, they needed a stroke of luck.
Increasingly, they looked to Potenza. If Elisa Claps had been murdered, and there was a link to the killing of Heather Barnett, it might provide vital evidence.