It’s the night on Halloween. The married couple W. * and their nine-year-old son are sound asleep when a man suddenly breaks into the chalet around two in the morning. It is the believed dead brother of Peter W. * (39). 20 years ago the South Tyrolean (42) disappeared without a trace. Suddenly he reappears in the Val Gardena community of Selva. But Ernst W. * doesn’t want to see his brother again. He wants to kill him.
Without a word he rushes towards the still dazed Peter W. He is holding a knife in his hand. He rams it into his younger brother’s chest several times. The sister-in-law is also injured. Martina W. * rushes to her son and escapes with him to the neighboring house. Italian media reported on the incident. Martina W. made the following emergency call: “A man is with us and is just killing my husband.” Only later does the Italian find out who the intruder really is.
Family searched for missing persons on TV broadcast
It takes a few minutes, then the policemen from Ortisei and Waidbruck arrive. They manage to end the bloodbath and arrest the 42-year-old. Peter W. is seriously injured in the bedroom. The ski lift employee and volunteer firefighter is immediately brought to the Bolzano hospital and an emergency operation is performed that same night. A sting near the lung is life threatening. The doctors can save Peter W.
The Val Gardena is in shock. Many can well remember the drama 20 years ago. At that time Ernst W. disappeared from one moment to the next without a trace. The family reported him missing and even had him searched for on the program “Chi l`ha visto”, a kind of Italian version of “File number XY … unsolved”. Perhaps it was about an inheritance dispute at the time, according to the local rumor mill.
Before the judge for attempted murder
Ernst W. was missing. The family feared something might have happened to him. But the South Tyrolean lived. The man believed dead lived in northern Italy. First in Milan, where he worked for social services, then in Verona. There he worked on a tennis court. Eventually he lost this job too and got into financial difficulties.
Last Tuesday, Ernst W. was brought before the judge and charged with attempted murder. The man does not want to comment on the action. Meanwhile, his lawyers told Italian media that their client was insane. You are asking for a psychiatric report.