Two Americans convicted by Rome jury in slaying of Italian police officer

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Two California students have been convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison over the 2019 killing of an Italian police officer in a drug deal gone bad.  

A jury in Rome deliberated for just over 12 hours before delivering the verdicts against Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, on Wednesday and handing them Italy’s stiffest sentence for the murder of Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, 35.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth, who became friends while attending Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California, were found guilty on all charges: homicide, attempted extortion, assault, resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause.  

Prosecutors alleged that Elder stabbed Rega 11 times with a knife that he brought with him on his trip to Europe from California and that Natale-Hjorth helped him hide the knife in their hotel room.

The stabbing unfolded on July 26, 2019, after Natale-Hjorth and Elder tried to buy cocaine with 80 euros ($96) from a man outside the hotel where they were staying in Rome’s Trastevere nightlife district, but were sold a crushed-up bag of aspirin instead. 

The pair then allegedly stole a bag belonging to the suspected drug dealer and demanded 100 euros and a gram of cocaine for him to get it back.

The man agreed and told the pair he would meet them to exchange the bag, but instead called police to report the theft. Rega and his partner, wearing plainclothes, were dispatched to the agreed meeting spot where they confronted the two Americans and identified themselves in Italian as police before Elder stabbed Rega. 

Rega’s widow Rosa Maria Esilio, who held a photo of her dead husband while waiting for the verdict, sobbed and hugged his brother Paolo as it was read out in court. 

The defendants were led immediately out of the courtroom after hearing ‘guilty’ declared on all counts.  

As Elder was being walked out, his father Ethan Elder called out, ‘Finnegan, I love you.’

Both teens maintained their innocence and claimed they were jumped from behind by their adversaries, whom they believed to be thugs sent by a drug dealer who had swindled them when they earlier tried to buy cocaine.

They both told investigators they did not know Rega and his partner were police because they were not in uniform. 

The killing of the officer from the storied Carabinieri paramilitary police corps – who had recently returned from his honeymoon – shocked Italy and he was mourned as a national hero.  

Elder and Natale-Hjorth were allowed out of steel-barred defendant cages inside the courtroom to sit with their lawyers before the case went to the jury, which consisted of presiding judge Finiti, a second judge and six civilian jurors.

‘I’m stressed,’ Elder said to one of his lawyers. 

Just before the brief court appearance, Elder took a crucifix he wears on a chain around his neck and kissed it. 

He also turned to his co-defendant, Natale-Hjorth, and held out the crucifix toward him through a glass partition, motioning heavenward.

Elder was joined in the courtroom by his parents. He and his father crossed their fingers toward each other for good luck after the jury went to deliberate. 

Natale-Hjorth was greeted by his Italian uncle, who lives in Italy.

While it was Elder who drove the knife into Rega, Natale-Hjorth faced the same charges because under Italian law, an accomplice in an alleged murder can also be charged with murder even without materially doing the slaying. 

Prosecutor Maria Sabina Calabretta demanded life imprisonment for both defendants.

At the time of the slaying, Elder was 19 and traveling through Europe without his family, while Natale-Hjorth, then 18, was spending the summer vacation with his Italian grandparents, who live near Rome. 

Former schoolmates from the San Francisco Bay area, the two had met up in Rome for what was supposed to be couple of days of sightseeing and nights out.

During the trial, which began on February 26, 2020, the defendants told the court that several hours before the stabbing, they attempted to buy cocaine in the Trastevere nightlife district of Rome. 

With the intervention of a go-between, they paid a dealer, but instead of cocaine they received an aspirin-like tablet.

Before Natale-Hjorth could confront the dealer, a separate Carabinieri patrol in the neighborhood intervened, and all scattered. 

The Americans snatched the go-between’s knapsack in reprisal, and used a cellphone that was inside to set up a meeting with the goal of exchanging the bag and the phone for the cash they had lost in the bad drug deal. 

When they arrived at the set spot for the exchange with the dealer they were met instead by Rega, wearing a T-shirt and long shorts, and his partner Andrea Varriale, in a polo shirt and jeans. 

Prosecutors alleged that Elder thrust a seven-inch military-style attack knife repeatedly into Rega, who bled profusely, like a ‘fountain,’ Varriale had testified, and died shortly after in hospital.

Elder told the court that the heavy-set Rega, scuffling with him, was on top of him on the ground, and he feared that he was being strangled. 

Elder said he pulled out the knife and stabbed him to avoid being killed, and when the officer didn’t immediately let him go, he stabbed again.

After the stabbing, the Americans ran to their hotel room, where, according to Natale-Hjorth, Elder cleaned the knife and then asked him to hide it. 

Natale-Hjorth testified that he hid the knife behind a ceiling panel in their room, where it was discovered hours later by police.

The defendants told the court that they acted in self defense because they thought Rega and Varriale were thugs or mobsters out to assault them on a dark, deserted street.  

They said they didn’t know the men were police because they didn’t show their badges and spoke in Italian, which the defendants didn’t understand.  

From practically its start, the trial largely boiled down to the word of Varriale against that of the young American visitors. 

Varriale, who suffered a back injury in a scuffle with Natale-Hjorth while his partner was grappling with Elder, testified that the officers did identify themselves as Carabinieri. 

As the trial neared its end, one of Elder’s defense lawyers, Renato Borzone, argued in court that deep-set psychiatric problems, including a constant fear of being attacked, figured in the fatal stabbing. 

Borzone told the court his client saw a world filled with enemies due to psychiatric problems and that something ‘short-circuited’ when Elder was confronted by the officer.