The OnlyFans Girl Next Door - Italy (2022)

On a cold March morning in 2022, in Lombardy, northern Italy, a man hiking along a wooded trail in the mountain village of Borno stops at a disturbing sight. Scattered down a steep embankment lie several black plastic garbage bags, torn open by the elements.

Inside them, he glimpses what at first looks like animal remains – but then he realizes they are unmistakably human. Shocked and trembling, he calls the police. When officers arrive, they confirm the horrific discovery: dismembered parts of a human body, partially burned and decomposed, strewn among the rocks and late-winter snow.

Someone had tried desperately to erase this woman's identity. But in the age of social media, her distinctive tattoos would instead reveal everything — her name, her life, and the killer who was still sending messages from her phone.

From Perfume Counter to OnlyFans

Her name was Carol Maltesi. She was 26 years old – a daughter, a mother, and, recently, an aspiring adult entertainer. Carol grew up in Italy, with family ties that extended across borders (her father lived in the Netherlands, and her mother back in Italy).

In her early twenties she became a mother herself, giving birth to a little boy. For a time, Carol lived near her child and worked an ordinary job as a sales clerk in a perfume shop. She was described by those who knew her as a caring mother and a vibrant young woman – someone who loved music, dance, and fashion.

But like so many people, Carol's life changed course during the COVID-19 pandemic. Facing economic uncertainty and intrigued by new opportunities online, she began creating content for the adult subscription site OnlyFans. Using the stage name "Charlotte Angie," Carol started to sell provocative photos and videos of herself.

What began as a side project during Italy's lockdowns soon became a passionate new career path.

The Photographer Next Door

By late 2020, Carol Maltesi had attracted a following online and decided to pursue work in the adult entertainment industry more seriously. It was around this time, in October 2020, that she crossed paths with a man named Davide Fontana. Davide was 43, a bank employee from Milan who dabbled in photography and food blogging as hobbies.

They first met virtually – over Instagram – after he admired some of her modeling photos. When travel restrictions eased that autumn, the two arranged to meet in person at a hotel in the city. Davide took glamorous pictures of Carol in lingerie, helping her build content for her online platforms.

Despite their age difference – he was nearly two decades her senior – sparks flew. Davide Fontana was married at the time, but he became infatuated with Carol. Before long, he separated from his wife and began an affair with this vivacious young model.

An Open Arrangement

Carol and Davide's relationship unfolded unconventionally. They described it to others as an "open" relationship – not strictly monogamous – in part because Carol's new line of work involved intimacy on camera. Davide appeared supportive of her burgeoning career as Charlotte Angie.

He assisted her behind the scenes, sometimes as a photographer or partner in her adult videos. The pair even traveled together for her work. In one instance, they took a trip to the city of Viterbo so Carol could film her first professional adult film.

Davide was by her side as she took this bold step into the pornographic film industry. It was an exciting time for Carol – she was broadening her horizons and gaining confidence as a performer. But friends later recalled that Carol's bright smile sometimes hid stress.

Juggling her new public persona with her private responsibilities, and navigating relationships old and new, weighed on her. A neighbour observed that while Carol was usually cheerful, in the months before her death she also seemed anxious and on edge, "as if something was eating away at her." Still, to most who knew her, Carol appeared to be embracing life – forging a path that could provide financial stability for her child's future and personal fulfillment for herself.

The Ex Next Door

By the end of 2021, Carol Maltesi's personal life was in transition. Her romance with Davide Fontana had cooled. After roughly a year together, their affair reportedly ended, though the two remained on cordial terms.

They were, after all, still neighbors – both lived in the same small apartment building in the town of Rescaldina on the outskirts of Milan. Rescaldina is a quiet, suburban community in Lombardy, not far from the hustle of the city but with a decidedly slower pace of life. Carol's apartment was modest, but she had turned it into both a home and a studio for her online work.

She even had a shiny stainless-steel dance pole installed in her bedroom – a prop for performances and personal fitness. To neighbors in Rescaldina, Carol was a friendly presence, though some didn't know about her internet fame. Davide, for his part, continued living just next door, now as an ex-boyfriend who still hung around.

He answered her door when deliveries arrived and was often seen coming or going from Carol's flat. The two behaved as friends, and Carol seemingly trusted him despite their breakup. If she had any reservations about Davide, she didn't voice them openly.

'Psychological Violence Destroys You'

Amidst these changes, Carol made a pivotal decision: she wanted to refocus her life around her young son. The boy was living with his father in the city of Verona, about a hundred miles to the east. In early 2022, Carol confided to friends – and to Davide – that she planned to move to Verona to be closer to her child.

It meant she would be leaving Rescaldina, leaving the apartment where she launched her stardom, and leaving behind any remnants of her relationship with Davide. Perhaps she was feeling pulled between two worlds – the adult-entertainment career that had taken off, and her role as a mother longing to reunite with her son.

She might even have considered stepping back from the spotlight. In fact, on November 25, 2021 – the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – Carol had posted a personal video reflecting on abuse and control in relationships. "There is a lot of talk about physical violence," she said in that video, "but psychological violence is important too, because that is what destroys you." Carol spoke in general terms, noting that she had experienced such abuse "in small personal reality." It's not known whom she was referring to, but her words were heartfelt.

She urged that controlling behavior and emotional manipulation should not be ignored. Those who saw the video found Carol earnest and brave, using her platform to support other women.

If Carol was looking forward to a fresh start in Verona, it would never come to pass. Sometime in January 2022, Carol Maltesi effectively vanished, though no one realized it immediately. By her family's accounts, she was last seen or heard from around the second week of January.

She had been planning to celebrate her 27th birthday on January 26, but as that date approached, Carol was strangely silent. Friends sent her birthday wishes and got only brief replies by text. Her mother, Giuseppina, grew concerned when Carol didn't call in their usual way.

But then a message would pop up from Carol's number assuring that everything was fine – she was busy, she was traveling, she'd explain later. In truth, by mid-January, Carol Maltesi was already dead. The bright and ambitious young woman with a life ahead of her had met a gruesome end behind closed doors, at the hands of someone she once trusted.

January 11, 2022

Investigators would later piece together the events of Carol's final day from the confession of the killer himself. On January 11, 2022 – a Tuesday – Carol agreed to film an especially kinky video scene in her home. The request, supposedly from a paying client on OnlyFans, was for a custom "bondage" video.

The concept was elaborate: Carol would be tied up to her dance pole, blindfolded or hooded, and gagged, while engaging in rough sexual play. It was the kind of content her fans would pay a premium for. According to prosecutors, Carol had no idea that this scenario was a trap.

The "client" who ordered the bondage video never really existed – it was a fictitious persona created to lure her into a helpless position. And the person behind it was none other than her neighbor and former lover, Davide Fontana.

Sometime that day, Davide came over to Carol's apartment under the pretense of helping her film the custom video. This wasn't unusual – he had helped Carol with filming before. Carol prepared for the shoot, perhaps setting up a camera on a tripod.

At some point, she allowed Davide to bind her wrists to the vertical pole in her bedroom and to wrap her head with a black hood or plastic bag, part of the bondage fantasy. She was naked, vulnerable, and entirely at his mercy. What happened next defies comprehension in its cruelty.

Suddenly, Davide attacked Carol during this fake "erotic game." He retrieved a hammer and began to strike Carol repeatedly. The first blows rained down on her legs and lower body. She may have thought it was still part of the act, until the impacts grew vicious.

As Carol instinctively moved her head in panic, Davide swung the hammer at her skull. He hit her again and again with shocking force. She couldn't see her assailant or defend herself – her hands were taped fast above her head.

The attack was frenzied. Later, Davide claimed he "didn't know what happened" in that moment, that he lost control. But by the time he stopped bludgeoning Carol, she was either dead or mortally wounded.

In the sudden silence that followed, Davide Fontana removed the hood from Carol's face. He told investigators that he saw she had horrific head injuries and was bleeding heavily. In his words, "I think she was already dead." Yet he took no chances.

Fetching a kitchen knife, he slashed Carol's throat deeply. He would later try to justify this final act as a twisted kind of mercy – an attempt to "end her suffering" – but Carol likely felt nothing by then. She died tied to the pole, on the floor of her own bedroom, betrayed and brutally killed by a man she once had loved.

Seventy-Two Hours

For a short while, Davide Fontana just stood there in the bloody room, looking at what he had done. He later admitted that he remained for perhaps half an hour, staring at Carol's lifeless body in shock. Then his cold practicality kicked in.

Davide did not call an ambulance or the police. Instead, he set about covering up the crime. He untied Carol's wrists and laid her body out.

Alone in the apartment, he began cleaning up any signs of the struggle. He had planned this scenario well enough to have prepared for the aftermath: only days earlier, Davide had purchased an array of tools and supplies that now proved to have a horrifying purpose. Among his recent online orders were a large chest freezer, an axe, a hacksaw, and a brazier (a metal container for burning material).

Some of these items had already been delivered to Carol's apartment in advance. It appears Davide had thought through the steps needed to make a body disappear.

Over the next three days, Davide methodically dismembered Carol Maltesi's corpse. With the hatchet and saw, he cut her remains into at least a dozen pieces. It was a ghastly task that he later described to police with a chilling detachment.

He then packed the body parts into several garbage bags. He had bought a new freezer – a large chest-style deep freezer – specifically for this grim storage, and he installed it in Carol's apartment. Into this freezer he placed the bags containing her remains.

By hiding the evidence in the one place no one else was likely to look – the victim's own home – Davide gained time to decide his next move. Outside, life in Rescaldina went on normally, with Carol's whereabouts a mystery to all but her killer.

Messages from a Dead Woman

In the days and weeks that followed, Davide Fontana executed an elaborate deception to pretend that Carol was still alive. He had taken Carol's phone and kept it with him. Whenever family or friends sent her messages, Davide would answer, posing as Carol.

Using her familiar tone and typing style, he crafted replies explaining that she was busy, that she was traveling for work, or that she needed some time to herself. To Carol's mother, he sent reassurances. To acquaintances in the adult film community, he spun a specific tale: he claimed that Carol had decided to "change her life and leave the world of porn." This lie was strategic – it explained her sudden absence from social media and cancelation of work commitments.

If fellow performers or employers tried to reach her, they were told she was stepping away from the industry and wouldn't be available. Davide even went as far as paying Carol's rent for her apartment in advance, so that no landlord would come looking. He used her car to drive around town, so it would not be found abandoned.

At a glance, it seemed to everyone that Carol Maltesi had simply gone off the radar by her own choice.

Fire in the Mountains

Meanwhile, in the frozen winter of early 2022, Davide Fontana was grappling with how to permanently dispose of Carol's remains. Simply keeping them in her apartment was not sustainable in the long run, and every passing day carried the risk of discovery. He had already conceived one plan: to incinerate the body parts so thoroughly that they could never be identified.

About a month after the murder, Davide set this plan in motion. He booked an isolated vacation cottage via Airbnb in a hamlet called Vararo, high in the hills overlooking Lake Maggiore. On that first visit, he scoped out the property's barbeque area and fire pit, calculating the "logistics" – as he later put it – of destroying a human body.

Satisfied with his reconnaissance, he returned to Carol's apartment and bided his time.

On a second trip to the same rented house some weeks later, Davide packed Carol's bagged remains into his car and took them with him. The house in Vararo was remote, with no neighbors in earshot – an ideal spot for what he intended. Under the cold open sky, by the cottage's stone barbecue pit, Davide attempted to burn Carol's body.

He doused the dismembered pieces in alcohol and gasoline and ignited them. But the task proved more difficult than he imagined. Human remains do not turn to ash easily outside of an industrial cremator, and certainly not in the inadequate heat of a makeshift fire.

After struggling for some time, Davide realized his grisly attempt at cremation was failing. He could not fully destroy the evidence this way. He extinguished the fire and gathered what remained of Carol's body, loading everything back into his vehicle.

The half-burnt state of some parts would later complicate the forensic analysis of the victim.

Davide drove the remains back to Carol's apartment once more and returned them to the freezer. By now it was late winter. Pressures were mounting.

People were asking more pointedly about Carol's whereabouts. Her mother was growing impatient for a phone call. Carol's 7-year-old son, living in Verona with his father, surely wondered why his mom hadn't visited for his birthday.

And a scheduled modeling or stripping engagement had been missed when Carol never showed up at a nightclub booking. The longer Davide's charade continued, the more at risk it became of collapsing. He must have known he couldn't keep pretending Carol was alive forever.

Black Bags in the Snow

Sometime in mid-March 2022, Davide made the decision to be rid of Carol's remains once and for all, even if he couldn't destroy them completely. He chose a spot he knew from past holidays: the Val Camonica in the Brescia province, a mountain valley about 75 miles from Carol's home. Davide had vacationed in that area before – it was far from Rescaldina, far from anyone who might connect him to the dumping site.

Under the cover of darkness, Davide Fontana set out on a drive into the mountains with the gruesome cargo in his trunk. He arrived near the village of Borno, along a winding road through pine forests and cliffs. There, at an isolated bend, he stopped and hurled the heavy plastic sacks containing Carol's dismembered body over an escarpment.

The bags tumbled down into the brush out of sight. With that, Davide might have felt a grim weight lifting. He had finally cast off the physical evidence of his crime.

It was more than two months since he had killed Carol, and he had gotten away with it so far. As he drove calmly back to his life in Milan, Davide likely hoped that the harsh mountain elements and scavenging animals would obliterate what he left behind. If the remains were ever found, perhaps by then they would be unrecognizable – just another Jane Doe, her name and connection to him lost to time.

But fate did not cooperate with Davide Fontana. On March 20, 2022, a 60-year-old resident of the area happened to walk along that very mountain road in Borno. Peering down the slope, he spotted one, then several black bags caught in the branches.

Curious or concerned, the man got closer and was confronted with a scene of nightmares – a human arm protruding from torn plastic. The horrified witness alerted local authorities at once. Soon the Carabinieri from Brescia arrived and began a careful recovery operation.

Despite the remote location, the body parts had not been scattered beyond retrieval. In total, investigators collected 15 pieces of a female human body. The murderer had attempted to obliterate the victim's identity by burning her face and parts of her flesh, but in this he failed.

Notably, police found that the victim bore multiple tattoos – intricate designs that were still visible on the remaining skin.

The Tattoos Tell All

As the remains were sent for autopsy, the Italian police faced a pressing question: who was this murdered woman? The nature of the find suggested the body could have been there for a few weeks at most – it had not fully decomposed due to the winter temperatures, and some body parts appeared only recently thawed. There were no immediate matches in missing person databases, since, in fact, no one had officially reported a woman matching this description missing in Lombardy.

With few leads, authorities took the unusual step of releasing photographs of some of the victim's tattoos to the public. They hoped someone might recognize the distinctive body art. It was a strategy of last resort, but in this case, it worked.

Within days, tips began to flow in from an unlikely source: fans of an adult performer who went by the name Charlotte Angie.

Charlotte Angie's online followers had seen those tattoos before – in her photos and videos, the young woman had showcased the ink adorning her body. Some concerned fans reached out to authorities, providing a crucial clue: the dismembered victim in the news might be Charlotte Angie, whose real name was Carol Maltesi. Online posts noted that Charlotte Angie had not been active for several weeks, which was unusual for her.

Now there was a chilling possibility that the vibrant 26-year-old adult entertainer had met a violent end.

'The Only Person Who Would Reply'

One of the people following these developments was a local journalist named Andrea Tortelli. He decided to investigate further once he heard that Carol Maltesi could be the unidentified victim. Tortelli managed to get in touch with Carol's family in late March.

From Carol's mother and others, he obtained Carol's personal mobile phone number – the very number Davide Fontana had been answering for weeks. To test the waters, the journalist sent a message to Carol's phone. To his surprise, he received a reply.

The text back, purportedly from Carol, said something along the lines of: "A lot of people have been asking me about that dead girl, but don't worry – I'm fine." The casual, evasive response immediately raised Tortelli's suspicions. Why would a missing woman respond so vaguely about a discovered body? It sounded as if someone was trying to deflect inquiry by impersonating Carol.

Tortelli pressed further. He asked if "Carol" could send him a voice message or speak to him briefly – anything to prove she was really alive and well. This time, there was no answer at all.

The silence was telling. Later, recounting his thoughts at that moment, the journalist said, "I thought the only person who would reply pretending to be a dead woman is the person who killed her." Convinced something was very wrong, Andrea Tortelli took his findings straight to the Carabinieri.

At last, the Italian authorities had a solid lead. They now knew the likely identity of the victim: Carol Maltesi, stage name Charlotte Angie, resident of Rescaldina near Milan. And thanks to Mr. Tortelli's daring text message ruse, they had a prime suspect – the individual who had been using her phone to impersonate her. All signs pointed to a single person: Carol's neighbor and ex-boyfriend, Davide Fontana.

3 A.M. Confession

Police in Milan moved quickly. It was now March 28, 2022. Detectives contacted Davide Fontana and asked him to come in to give a statement regarding Carol's disappearance.

At this point, Carol's family had still not officially filed a missing-person report – in fact, Fontana himself preemptively volunteered to lodge one. Perhaps in a last-ditch effort to appear innocent, he showed up at the Carabinieri station to report Carol "missing," feigning worry that he hadn't seen her lately. If this was a ploy to mislead investigators, it did not succeed.

The police had already sensed the walls closing in on Davide. They sat him down for questioning, treating him now not just as a helpful witness but as a potential perpetrator. Details of what transpired in that interrogation have been summarized by authorities: Davide tried to maintain a story that Carol had abruptly left town.

But confronted with the evidence – the discovered remains, the tattoo identifications, the suspicious text responses – his facade crumbled.

In the early hours of March 29, 2022, after hours of grilling, Davide Fontana broke down and confessed to everything. At around 3 A.M., he began to speak freely, telling investigators the whole ghastly tale in a mix of regret and cold detail. He admitted that he had killed Carol back in January during what he initially described as an "erotic game gone wrong." Piece by piece, the truth came out: how he had bound her and bludgeoned her with a hammer, how he slit her throat "to end her pain," and how he dismembered her body and stored it in a freezer.

He recounted the trips to burn the remains, his failure, and the eventual dumping of the body parts in the mountains. He laid out how he had posted deceptive messages from Carol's phone for weeks. "I am telling you all of this because I wanted to get this weight off my chest and tell the truth," Davide said, his voice shaking.

For the seasoned Carabinieri detectives listening, even with years of experience, the confession was staggering in its brutality and enormity. By the end of that night, Davide Fontana – banker, blogger, neighbor, and now self-confessed murderer – was formally arrested.

News of Fontana's arrest and the revelations of Carol Maltesi's murder spread quickly through Italian media and shocked the public. Carol's dismembered remains had been identified barely a day earlier; now, it turned out her killer had been right under everyone's noses, pretending to be the victim. The case had all the elements of a lurid crime thriller: a porn star victim, a double life, a meticulous cover-up, and a killer who seemingly lived a normal life while harboring a monstrous secret.

Yet beneath the sensational headlines was a very real tragedy of a young woman's life brutally cut short. For Carol's family, the confirmation was devastating. Her mother, Giuseppina, who had been holding out hope that the body in the news was not her daughter, was now faced with the grimmest truth.

Carol's father in the Netherlands and the father of her little boy in Verona were likewise stricken by the news. In one cruel instant, their private worry transformed into public grief.

A Monster in Plain Sight

Davide Fontana remained in custody as the investigation proceeded. He was charged with multiple offenses: first-degree murder (or "voluntary homicide" in Italian legal terms), destruction of a corpse, and concealment of a corpse. The case jurisdiction was sorted out – because the murder itself happened in Rescaldina (in the province of Milan) while the body was found in Brescia, prosecutors had to coordinate.

Ultimately, the case was tried in the Court of Assise of Busto Arsizio, the district where Rescaldina is located. Fontana's detailed confession greatly sped up proceedings, but there were still many questions to be answered: chiefly, what was his motive, and was this truly a premeditated act?

Forensic work corroborated parts of Fontana's story. When police searched Carol's apartment and Fontana's own home, they found telling evidence. In Carol's residence, investigators discovered the large chest freezer that Fontana had installed – now empty, but traces of human biological material were present.

They also found rolls of the same type of garbage bags that had been used to dump the remains. In Fontana's apartment, authorities recovered Carol's phone and other personal items. Digital forensics confirmed that Fontana had been using her devices and social media accounts in the weeks after her death.

Surveillance camera footage from around Rescaldina reportedly showed Fontana driving Carol's red Fiat 500 car during the period she was "missing." And financial records from online retailers showed Fontana's January purchases of the freezer, the axe, and the hacksaw, as well as lighter fluid and other implements – some delivered to Carol's address. All this evidence painted a damning picture: Davide Fontana had planned for the aftermath of murder, even if he claimed not to have planned the killing itself ahead of time.

As Fontana awaited trial, more information about his background came to light. It turned out he had presented himself to the world as a genteel professional with eclectic interests. By day he worked in a bank; in his free time he maintained a food and travel blog, writing about gourmet recipes and posting photographs from vacations.

Colleagues and acquaintances from Milan were stunned that this unassuming man – described as polite, calm, even a bit shy – could commit such a heinous act. But those who knew the intimate details of his relationship with Carol had perhaps less difficulty understanding his dark side. Fontana had fallen deeply in love with Carol and became, as one friend later put it, "obsessed" with her.

She had given him excitement and validation he seemingly lacked in his previous life. And when Carol decided to leave him and move on, something in Davide snapped. In his own statements, he admitted that as Carol grew more independent and distant, he felt a building resentment.

He told investigators that on the day of the murder, when Carol was bound and helpless, he was suddenly overcome by a violent impulse that he "could not control." It sounded like the classic explanation of a crime of passion – yet the calculated cover-up afterward told a different story of a cold, controlled mind.

A Life for a Life

The legal proceedings against Davide Fontana moved relatively swiftly. By the summer of 2022, he had been formally indicted for Carol's murder. Fontana chose to cooperate with the justice system, hoping perhaps for leniency.

He did not deny killing Carol – after all, the evidence and his confession were incontrovertible. However, the question of motive and intent remained a focal point in court. Fontana's defense team argued that the murder was not premeditated but rather a sudden act born of emotional turmoil – what Italian law might term a "delitto d'impeto," an impulsive crime.

They maintained that Davide did not originally plan to kill Carol when they started filming that day, noting that he and Carol had allegedly made plans for future video shoots. According to the defense, something must have triggered him in the heat of the moment – jealousy, a sense of rejection – causing him to snap. They pointed out that Fontana eventually confessed and cooperated, suggesting remorse.

They asked the court to consider his confession as a sign of repentance and to acknowledge it as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

On the other side, prosecutors and Carol's family (participating as civil parties to the case) painted a far more sinister narrative. They contended that Davide Fontana had methodically planned the murder in advance. The evidence of planning was indeed persuasive: the fake OnlyFans client profile that lured Carol into that bondage scenario, the purchase of the freezer and cutting tools around the time of the crime, and the detail that he had Carol hooded and unable to resist from the very start of the attack.

All of these pointed to premeditation. Prosecutors argued that Fontana's motive was clear – he was enraged that Carol was ending the relationship and leaving him behind, and in his possessiveness he decided that if he couldn't have her, no one else would. They described the murder as an act of extreme cruelty driven by a jealous, selfish rage.

Furthermore, they highlighted how carefully Fontana covered his tracks for months, which to them indicated not a momentary lapse of reason but a calculated effort to get away with murder. The prosecution sought the maximum penalty: life imprisonment, officially "ergastolo" in Italy, with additional years of solitary confinement due to the heinous nature of the crime.

The trial, held in the summer of 2023, was unbearably painful for Carol's loved ones. Evidence was presented in detail – the forensic findings, the transcripts of Fontana's confession, and even excerpts from the gruesome footage that digital forensics had managed to partially recover from Fontana's phone. (He had recorded the two "scenes" that day, presumably for the promised client; though he deleted the videos, experts found fragments confirming that the second video ended in what appeared to be a real assault.) The court also heard witness testimony.

Carol's friends from the adult film community recounted how they had received strange messages from her number about her quitting the business. Neighbors told of Fontana's comings and goings. A psychiatric evaluation of Fontana was submitted, declaring that he was mentally sound and fully responsible for his actions.

When Davide Fontana took the stand, he did so mostly to express regret. In a subdued voice, he said, "I am immensely sorry for what I have done. I don't know if I will ever be able to forgive myself.

I want to apologize to everyone – especially Carol's family and her son." He often hung his head during the proceedings, appearing drained of the confident front he had maintained for so long.

Thirty Years

In June 2023, the Court of Assise delivered its verdict. Davide Fontana was found guilty on all counts for the murder and mutilation of Carol Maltesi. The courtroom fell silent as the presiding judge read the sentence: 30 years in prison.

Thirty years – not life. Despite the prosecution's arguments, the panel of judges did not uphold the aggravating circumstances of premeditation or cruelty. They concluded that while Fontana intentionally killed Carol, there wasn't enough certainty that he had planned it well in advance; they saw it as a crime of passion with direct intent but not pre-planning.

They also did not legally categorize his motive as "abject or futile," a specific designation for motives considered utterly base; the judges reasoned that his motive, though reprehensible, arose from personal emotional turmoil and thus didn't meet that technical definition. Additionally, the court gave some weight to Fontana's confession, viewing his cooperation as a mitigating factor balancing out some of the brutality of his actions.

For Carol's family, the 30-year sentence landed with a thud of disappointment. As the verdict was announced, Carol's mother and other relatives in attendance exchanged looks of disbelief and anger. Outside the courthouse, her father – Fabio Maltesi – spoke bluntly to reporters, saying, "Only 30 years for a monster.

Is that justice?" Carol's mother was even more distraught. In an interview, she said through tears, "It feels like the trial was about my daughter's life choices, not about what was done to her. This sentence is shameful.

My Carol was a wonderful mother and daughter – a normal girl. She didn't deserve to be judged for her personal life. The monster here is the one who killed her." Indeed, the written reasoning of the court triggered public outcry when it became known.

In the judges' official motivation document, they described Carol as "a young and uninhibited woman who in some way had used him to pursue her own personal and professional interests, and who had set him aside." It was an extraordinary statement – one that seemed to suggest Carol bore some responsibility for the killer's emotional state. The judge later defended his wording, insisting he intended no misogyny or victim-blaming, and that had Carol been, as he put it, "a nun," he would have used the same language to describe the situation. But many in Italy were unconvinced.

Advocacy groups and media commentators lambasted the court for what they saw as prejudice against Carol because of her work in the adult industry. "If Carol had stayed a perfume salesgirl," one lawyer involved remarked bitterly, "I believe Fontana would have gotten life in prison. Her being a sex worker shouldn't have led to any lesser view of the crime."

In the courtroom that day, Carol's aunt made a brief, heartrending statement. "This is a disgrace," she said of the outcome. "My niece has been given a life sentence in the grave.

Her mother and her little boy have also been given a life sentence of grief. But the man who did this will one day walk free." The aunt's voice wavered with frustration and sorrow. "We expected at least life in prison for him.

Without an ergastolo, we feel there is no justice. What kind of message does this send? That he can butcher a young woman and not even spend the rest of his life in jail?" Outside the court, supporters hugged Carol's family as they wept.

A photograph of Carol – smiling, with bright eyes – was held by her friends as both a tribute and a silent rebuke toward the outcome.

Justice Reconsidered

Prosecutors immediately signaled their intent to appeal the sentence, aiming for a harsher punishment. The case went up to the Court of Appeal in Milan. There, in February 2024, three appellate judges re-examined the evidence and the earlier ruling.

They came to a markedly different conclusion. The appeals court found that the murder of Carol Maltesi had indeed been premeditated and carried out with particular cruelty. In their judgment, the scheme to immobilize Carol under false pretenses showed clear advance planning, and the ferocity of the hammer attack and throat-cutting went beyond what was necessary to cause death – thereby satisfying the legal definition of cruelty.

The appellate judges also rejected any notion that Carol's behavior mitigated the crime. In their view, even if Fontana felt rejected or "used," such feelings could never justify or reduce the severity of his actions.

Accordingly, in a ruling about a year after the first trial, Davide Fontana's sentence was increased to life in prison.

The courtroom reaction this time was one of relief from Carol's family. Justice, as they saw it, had finally been served in full.

Fontana's lawyers lodged a final appeal to Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation, as is his right. But in May 2025, that court affirmed the life sentence, definitively sealing Fontana's fate. He will spend the rest of his days behind bars, with virtually no chance of release for decades to come – if ever.

In Italy, a life sentence can sometimes allow parole after 20-30 years under certain conditions, but given the brutality and notoriety of this case, it is unlikely he will receive clemency.

Carol's Legacy

Carol's son, now growing up without his mother, will learn of her only through memories and photographs that relatives preserve. Carol's mother, fighting her own health battles, has said that her condition worsened from the stress and heartbreak of losing her only daughter in such a way. "They talked so much about Carol," her mother said, "about how she lived. But the real focus should be on who took her life."

Her mother has expressed a simple wish: to remember her daughter as she knew her—not as a headline, but as a person.

A mother who checked in on her son each night before bed. A daughter who made time for every hospital visit. A friend who laughed easily and gave more kindness than she received.

This is not just the story of a killing. It is the story of a life that should have continued—and of a truth that lingers long after the cameras moved on: the greatest threat to a woman's life is often the person who claims to love her most.