Danilo Restivo (born 3 April 1972) is an Italian convicted murderer and suspected serial killer. Restivo is serving a life sentence with a 40-year tariff for murdering his neighbour Heather Barnett in Bournemouth, England, in November 2002.
Investigators' suspicions that Restivo had murdered Barnett were raised because of his alleged involvement in the 1993 disappearance of Elisa Claps in Potenza, Italy; he was not charged due to insufficient evidence.A Church Cover Up?, The Sunday Times, 19 February 2012, Culture magazine, pp. 36–37 Subsequent to the 2010 discovery of Claps's body, Restivo was tried for the murder of Barnett, with evidence of similarities in ritualistic placing of hair on the bodies of Claps and Barnett being heard by the English court. He was found guilty of murdering Barnett,Danilo Restivo found guilty of murdering Heather Barnett , Crown Prosecution Service, Wessex, 08/06/2011 and later found guilty for murdering Claps by an Italian court. He is additionally suspected of committing at least six or seven further murders.
Background Danilo Restivo Restivo was born in the town of Erice, in the province of Trapani, in Sicily, Italy. He then moved with his family to Cagliari, Sardinia; by the time he was 10, Restivo and his family had moved to Potenza, Basilicata, situated approximately 100 km (62 miles) east of Naples and 362 km (225 miles) south of Rome, containing high-rise apartments and factories. The move to the mainland was due to his father Maurizio's occupation as the Director of the National Library. He was well connected in the community and was considered an influential figure in Potenza. Although they were not particularly rich, the Restivo family were part of the "Potenza Bene" (Potenza's most powerful and influent families). Restivo's dream was to be admitted to the faculty of dentistry, something that he said he had promised to his grandmother on her deathbed.
Restivo was considered a "loner" and "strange", and was socially awkward. Restivo stated that it was normal for him to spend time on his own, where it gave him time to think. People were aware that he had a fetish for cutting girls' hair, a habit that mostly took place during bus rides and had gained him the nickname "il parrucchiere" ("the hairdresser") around the city. Restivo stated that the sight of blood upset him, where he had previously fainted because of it; however, later email exchanges evidenced an almost-sexual excitement that Restivo got from seeing blood. Restivo was known to police, who believed him to be responsible for nine incidents in which women had had their hair clandestinely cut.Timeline: Danilo Restivo trial, The Guardian, 29 June 2011
Authorities in the United Kingdom later described Restivo as "a bit dippy, rather pathetic, slightly childish and very hypochondriac". He would attempt to arrange dates with girls by claiming to have a present for them. In 1986, Restivo tied up two children before cutting one with a knife. Restivo was not convicted of any offence for this incident, with Restivo's parents settling matters with the parents of the other children involved. In autumn 1992, Restivo was convicted of harassing four girls, who were living in a shared apartment opposite his family home in Potenza. Restivo could see them from his window and constantly harassed them by making threats, sending explicit letters and making regular phone calls to their house, playing the soundtrack of Deep Red (Profondo rosso), a giallo film about a serial killer who plays a melody before every murder, and Beethoven's Für Elise (commonly translated as Per Elisa in Italy), which was later considered as an early sign of his already ongoing and growing obsession with his first victim. It was reported that Restivo used this technique to harass those who rejected him.
Elisa Claps Elisa Claps, the 16-year-old daughter of a tobacconist and a clerk, was a student in the third year of the liceo classico (the oldest public secondary school type in Italy) in Potenza, with ambitions to become a physician and work with Médecins Sans Frontières. Elisa was described as a "happy-go-lucky" teenager and the "pride and joy" of her mother and family. She was the youngest of three children and was described as very close to her family. Claps was a devout Catholic. Friends reported Claps felt sorry for Restivo, who appeared lonely and depressed. Claps's eldest brother, Gildo, who also knew Restivo, was aware that Restivo's advances towards her had "frustrated" his sister. Claps wrote several pages in her journal, complaining about his odd behaviour, and was aware of rumours regarding Restivo having a fetish for cutting hair.
A month before Claps disappeared, Claps was on holiday in Montegiordano, a village on the Ionian coast. While walking along, Claps squeezed her brother Gildo's arm, noticing that Restivo was in the same village. She recounted to her brother about having to meet Restivo on holiday, as well as having seen him back home. Asking her if there were issues, Claps told her brother that Restivo had been insistent with her previously. Restivo approached the siblings, turning to Claps and asking if she wanted to go for a walk. Claps's response was to squeeze her brother's arm, appearing to indicate she did not want to go with Restivo. Gildo told Restivo this, telling him to "please go away", with Restivo attempting to insist but went away, perhaps because of Gildo's firmness. Not liking how insistent Restivo had been with his sister, including how he looked at her, Gildo attempted to gain more information about him. Claps told him that it did not matter, with Restivo being a person who was always alone and that Gildo should let things go.
Murder of Elisa Claps
Background On 11 September 1993, the evening before she disappeared, Restivo rang Claps at approximately 17:00. Elisa's brother Gildo inadvertently overheard her speaking on the phone, perceiving Claps's tone as "very annoyed". No one then asked her the specifics of that interaction, nor who the caller was, as the girl appeared rather quiet and not particularly bothered after ending the call. Restivo had phoned and asked for a date, pretending he had a gift for Claps. On discovering that he had bought her a present for passing her retakes, Claps felt sorry for Restivo, agreeing to meet him at the 15th-century Chiesa della Santissima Trinità in the centre of the city the following day.
Meeting Restivo
On 12 September, the day of her disappearance, Claps and her friend Eliana De Cillis left the Claps residence, with the plan for the pair to go to mass at the Chiesa della Trinità. Instead of going to mass, Claps met with Restivo. Claps felt bad for Restivo and despite being hesitant, Claps had "begged" her close friend De Cillis, to accompany her for support. They went to meet Restivo at the church, arriving at approximately 11:30 a.m., just as Mass had ended. When she did not return home, Claps' elder brother, Gildo, telephoned Restivo's family residence and was told that Restivo was out of town due to university tests and had no knowledge of Claps's whereabouts.
At lunch the day Claps disappeared at the Restivo family home, Giovanni Motta, the then-boyfriend of Restivo's sister, found that Restivo appeared "agitated", asking to be taken to the hospital. Motta noticed that Restivo was "very sweaty" and had a "hasty step", asking Motta to accompany him to hospital for a small cut between his first finger and thumb, measuring approximately a centimetre. Restivo told Motta that he had cut his hand falling over on an escalator. Giovanni stated that Restivo's jacket looked very dirty and soaked with blood. After returning from hospital, Motta noticed that Restivo had changed his clothes, that appeared soaked, despite it being a sunny day. Motta was unsure whether Restivo's clothes were wet from sweat or "another source". Meanwhile, when Gildo went to the church, he discovered the priest in charge, Domenico Sabia (known as Don Mimì), had suddenly left for some days, taking with him the only key giving access to the upper storey of the church building.A Church Cover Up?, Sunday Times, 19 Feb 2012, Culture magazine, pp. 36–37 Sabia later opposed police searching the church.Blood on the Altar: In Search of a Serial Killer by Tobias Jones: review The Daily Telegraph, 20 February 2012 After Claps had gone missing, Sabia closed the church and went on an extended retreat.
Gildo reported the disappearance of his sister to police but was initially told the matter had "no urgency". When a policeman questioned him, Restivo fell into a near-hysterical state, then admitted that he and Claps had spent some time together discussing the girl he had fallen in love with. Motta later told the police that Restivo had looked terrified about that little cut on his hand and had insisted on being accompanied to the emergency room. In a statement to the police on 13 September 1993, the day after Claps disappeared, Restivo stated that he had met her at the church during the morning of 12 September, talked with her for around "15 minutes", then saw her out, while he stayed for another 10 minutes to pray. Later that day, he said he had gone to Naples, where he was a freshman at the Faculty of Dentistry. Restivo claimed to have hurt his hand while taking a short-cut through a building site, falling down some steps. This resulted in a piece of sheet metal becoming stuck in his hand, causing it to bleed.
On 21 September, when providing a further statement to the office of the public prosecutor, Restivo claimed that Claps had left the church and prior to leaving, told him that she was supposed to be at her family's countryside home by 12 noon. In the 21 September interview, Restivo said "there's nothing I can say about Elisa's disappearance". Upon speaking to a television reporter, he stated that Claps had seemed frightened and had confided to him that she "had been harassed by a boy before entering the church". Restivo claimed that earlier that year Claps had rejected his romantic advances and he had later confided in her about "problems he was having with another girl". The Restivo family declined the policeman's request for clothes Restivo had worn on that Sunday morning.
Conspiracy-theorising and false leads Claps' disappearance was the subject of intense media interest and speculation; it was reported that the Claps case was the Italian journalist's version of British missing person cases, such as those of Madeline McCann and Suzy Lamplugh.How Danilo Restivo was caught, The Guardian, 29 June 2011 The assumption that Claps had subsequently left the church moved the focus of the investigation away from the church building and onto other lines of inquiry; the church was not thoroughly searched.