Details emerged in Italy on Friday of how a seemingly normal middle-aged couple in the northern town of Erba slaughtered four neighbors over a noise dispute.
Olindo Romano and his wife, Rosa Bazzi, seemed to share the shock of the nation when they were interviewed by TV cameras before Christmas about the murder of their upstairs neighbors.
Romano and Bazzi also echoed the suspicion of many Italians that their neighbor -- Raffaella Castagna, 30, her two-year-old son, her mother and a third woman -- had their throats cut on Dec. 11 by Castagna's drug-dealing Tunisian husband.
But now, in a twist that has gripped Italy and monopolized front pages, the couple themselves have confessed to the crime after blood traces were found in their car, telling magistrates that they were angry about the noise made by Castagna and husband, Azouz Marzouk.
"We just could not stand them any more," Bazzi, a petite housemaid obsessed with cleanliness, told investigators as she confessed to killing the two-year-old with a knife.
"He was always screaming, my head was exploding," she said, according to media reports.
In a well-prepared slaughter, apparently planned over months by Bazzi, the pair rang Castagna's doorbell at 8pm, wearing gloves and armed with knives.
Castagna was stabbed in the face by Romano, 43, as she opened the door. In all, she was stabbed 12 times.
Romano then stabbed Cas-tagna's mother, Paola Galli, while Bazzi moved to silence two-year-old Youssef. In her full and detailed confession she told investigators that she cut the boy's throat.
The couple's well-laid plans then went awry. As they set fire to the apartment to destroy the evidence, a neighbor, Valeria Cherubini, arrived in the hall outside the front door, where she was also stabbed to death.
Coming to her aid, Cherubini's husband, Mario Frigerio, was stabbed and left for dead, but survived and was able to describe some of the mayhem to police.
But the key evidence that trapped the couple was the trace of Frigerio's blood, left in Roma-no's car as he and his wife drove rapidly from the scene of the crime to a nearby McDonald's, to get a receipt they hoped would provide an alibi.
According to investigators who had bugged their home after the murders, Romano and Bazzi were heard to say to each other: "See how peaceful it is now? We can finally sleep well."
Prosecutors in the nearby town of Como said that they would seek to try the couple for pre-meditated murder, while the couple's lawyer said a psychiatric examination would be carried out.
Bazzi, 43, had been unable to have children, which Italian media have suggested as a possible cause of her anger with the sound of child's crying from the apartment above.
Earlier this week, before their arrest, Bazzi and Romano were seen on TV shooing reporters away when suspicions mounted against them, insisting they "had nothing to do with it."
Italian politicians and news-papers initially suspected Casta-gna's Tunisian husband after it was discovered that he had just been released from prison for drug dealing. The nature of the murders also led to theories of a drug-related vendetta.
A media uproar about lax immigration and crime subsided when Marzouk was found to be in Tunisia on Dec. 11. He demanded a public apology on Friday from politicians belonging to the rightwing Northern League and National Alliance parties.
"They called me a monster on the front pages, and now no one is prepared to apologize," he said, adding that he did not share the forgiveness expressed by Casta-gna's father, Carlo.
"He did not see the state of the bodies," he said.
Romano and Bazzi are now being held in isolation in Como jail after other prisoners threatened to kill them.
Castagna and Youssef were to be buried in Tunisia yesterday.
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