Veronica Fantini
Imagine for a second that you are the mother of a son. If you already have one, think of your own. Your lovely boy. You raise him with all the love and affection you could possibly give him. You teach him to distinguish between right and wrong. You love him, and he loves you. But he also loves another woman. But you don’t believe she is the right fit for him. Although your son is head over heels for this woman, she is unable to meet the standards of the perfect romantic partner you have envisioned for him. And this insensitive, careless, heartless bitch doesn’t love him back. How dare she? Your son is heartbroken. And justifiably so, his feelings have been true from the start, his love genuine. He is consumed by jealousy and now that they broke up, the thought of her being with another man, touching and kissing him, falling in love with him and moving on, drives your son crazy and fills him with uncontrollable rage. And your sweet child, this innocent creature, just at the beginning of his 20s, walks to you with his hands covered in blood. He killed her. In your house. The house you filled with love for him.
How would you feel? Betrayed, disappointed, scared? What would you do, mom? Imagine that you are shocked by the situation. Nothing makes sense when you realise that the room of your beloved son has just become a crime scene, that your son is a murderer. But these things don’t happen to people like you, they don’t happen in reality. You see them in the news, but no, it can’t be your boy.
And now imagine, dear mom, that your lovely boy tells you that he is scared, that he is worried. What did he do? He cries and cries. Don’t you want him to stop crying? Good moms always show their children how calm they are when their child is panicking. It is part of setting a good example, and it’s a way to show them that they can trust you. You keep calm when your child’s world crashes down, and you reassure them. But what would you do if he threatened to kill himself after he killed that girl? Why would he do that? “No worries, sweetheart, your mommy is here”, you say to him. “We will fix this, we can do it. You do not need to pay so much for a little mistake. We all make errors from time to time.”
Imagine, strong mom, the corpse needs to be hidden, the house needs to be cleaned, and the blood, all that blood… and you simply do it. You would like to give your little boy at least a time out, but you are also out of time. Now the only rule is to just do something. Fast, efficiently, unreflectively, unquestioningly. Just do it. Tell him what to do with the body. Wash the clothes. Clean the crime scene. There should be no blood, no proof.
How was it to imagine all of this, mom? Painful, frustrating, insane, shocking…? I know what you would like me to tell you now. That this is the narrative of a gripping crime book, the storytelling of a fascinating movie. The story of a great psychological thriller.
No, mommy, this is reality. There is a mom in Rome, Italy who found herself in a similar situation. That Italian moms are obsessed with their male children is part of an evergreen stereotype. But imagine seeing a girl killed at the hands of your son only because she ended their relationship, and helping him to clean up a crime scene. No mom should ever do this. Can a parent be forgiven for this?
It is still unclear what happened, or at least, the investigations still need to come to a concrete conclusion. What we know is that Mark Antony Samson killed his ex-girlfriend Ilaria Sula. We know it for sure because he confessed to it. He confessed that he killed her with a knife, attacking her neck when she turned her back. The reason? He was jealous. Despite their break-up, he could not accept that she was talking and meeting other men. When he saw a message from another man on her phone, he killed her, without thinking. Then, he wrapped her corpse in a plastic bag, closed it in a suitcase, put it in her car and drove far away, to an abandoned cliff away from the main city. There, he abandoned the suitcase and tried to hide the murder (Grbic, 2025). The investigators do not know the dynamics of the femicide in detail yet, however, they agree that Mark killed her in cold blood, ruthlessly (Redazione Adnronos, 2025).
All of the above does not do justice to these events. It is time to illustrate to you the most disturbing part of this story. Sadly, we are fully desensitized when we read one more of these stories in the media, because we hear about them far too often. That Mark was only 22 and Ilaria 23 is already potentially disturbing (Coviello, 2025). Even Mark’s confession that he killed her because he saw on her phone a message from another man is not that shocking in Italy, where, only in 2014, 27.9% of femicides stemmed from jealousy (Istat, 2014).
None of this justifies his actions, but I believe that, at least in this case, there is a factor that should shock us more. It is the involvement of his mom, Nors Man Lapaz, that should really scare us. A mom who sees a crime scene and helps his son fix the ‘little trouble’ he created. A mom who, by doing so, takes part in a crime committed by her son. A woman who covers up a femicide. Her role is still not fully clear, but her collaboration is certain (Fiano & Frignani, 2025). Mark already admitted that she helped him clean up the scene, and many confessed that the mother did not get along well with Ilaria, as she thought the girl was distracting her son from his studies (Tominic, 2025). The mother is the frightening part of this story, the one giving us nightmares.
It is not the first time that parents reassure their children after they committed heinous crimes against women. Here, I think of when the dad of Filippo Turetta, murderer of Giulia Cecchettin, said to his son in jail that he did not do anything wrong. In 2023, Turetta wanted to kill himself after the media reported Cecchettin’s killing in the news, and his dad reassured him. He said that there are more than a hundred femicides out there, that he only had a small weakness (Il Resto del Carlino, 2024). The news report that his dad said to him: “You are not the only one. It was not you, you do not have to blame yourself because you could not control yourself” (Visentin, 2024). When the media released this conversation between Turetta and his dad in 2024, most of the Italian population found it scandalous. As a way of explaining what he did, Turetta’s dad revealed that his son was suicidal and that he did not know what to do. In other words, he felt justified in temporarily ‘deceiving’ his son to prevent him from killing himself. An innocent lie for the safety of his son (Il Resto del Carlino, 2024).
What do we learn from this? How should the parents of children committing femicides behave towards their children? The point is that these parents represent complex cases. Did they raise killers? Or did their children become killers regardless of their upbringing? Did they witness the behaviour of their sons towards the women in their lives and, specifically, towards the victim? Did they ever say “no” to their children? It seems to me that they taught their sons to feel as if he had god-like power, at least over women. So at the first “no” they received, they found ways to physically eliminate the person who was setting a boundary to their limitless power.
And in my opinion, even after their children committed murder, these parents have been unable to tell their children that they did wrong. Discouraging them from killing themselves does not warrant justifying their actions, or even helping them to get away with murder. This turns the victim into a victim for a second time, as it again fosters an understanding of the killer as the one who needs to be shown compassion and supported (even in a material manner, by cleaning up a crime scene and hiding the body). It makes sense, because you cannot provide comfort to someone who is already dead. We do not hear the words of the victims, we do not have their version of their story, and nobody knows how it felt to die. They are simply “the victim”, where the murderer lives and has to survive with, at least, hopefully, the regret or the guilt of what he did.
Parents who justify their children’s violence by hiding their crimes or lessening their cruelty act as if their children could be considered victims of the events, forgetting that they are, on the contrary, the perpetrators of inhuman ferocity. We should always keep in mind that the real victims of the story are the women who suffered and died. Even though their murderer silenced them, their voices should speak to us, and we should respect and honour their memory. Honouring their memory implies understanding the role and responsibility of the killer. Forgiveness is possible, but it does not imply forgetfulness of what the killer did. The justice we need to seek for the victims should be independent of our relationship with or closeness to the murderer. It should stem from a deep emotional and rational understanding of the inhumanity of the crime and a strong will to make up for it. Parents whose children commit femicide should not be blind towards their children’s responsibilities, and need to comprehend the pain their children caused to the victim and their loved ones. This is the way we have to achieve justice for the real victim.
As I write this, I do not expect to be a moralist, I do not want to tell these parents how they should have raised their children. I do not know how it feels to be a parent; I have never faced these challenges. I acknowledge that in reality, it is generally hard to distinguish the heroes from the villains, and that everyone can become the victim of the story with the right narration. However, I would like all of you to reflect on how much parents’ roles matter in these cases and how much teaching to accept a “no” is crucial for children’s development. Learning to accept boundaries and refusals can save lives. Especially in cases of femicide, I have hope that if parents teach their male children what it means to accept other people’s freedom (especially when it comes to women or other marginalised groups), they would be more human themselves and feel less authorized to proceed with these violent, dehumanising actions. Unfortunately, even if someone were to write a parenting manual of this kind, I’m not sure if these parents would read it. I do not know if parents who cover up crimes perpetrated by their child would be able to raise their children without putting their lovely boys on a pedestal…
Bibliography
Coviello, M. (2025, April 2). Chi è Mark Samson, che ha confessato l’omicidio della ex fidanzata Ilaria Sula. Vanity Fair. https://www.vanityfair.it/article/chi-e-mark-samson-che-ha-confessato-omicidio-ex-fidanzata-ilaria-sula.
Fiano, F., & Frignani, R. (2025, April 8). Ilaria Sula, Le 4 ore di interrogatorio della mamma di Mark Samson: “Ho Sentito dei rumori e Sono Entrata in camera: L’ho aiutato a Pulire il sangue.” Corriere della Sera. https://roma.corriere.it/notizie/cronaca/25_aprile_08/omicidio-ilaria-sula-confessa-mamma-mark-samson-pulire-sangue-b9c8df6c-69fb-421e-8d14-a9c5ae8b3xlk.shtml.
Grbic, N. (2025, April 4). Femminicidio Ilaria Sula, la confessione del killer: “Ero geloso di lei e l’ho uccisa.” Fanpage.it. https://www.fanpage.it/roma/femminicidio-ilaria-sula-il-killer-la-amavo-lho-uccisa-per-gelosia.
Istat (2014). Violenza sulle donne. La dinamica della violenza. Istat. https://www.istat.it/statistiche-per-temi/focus/violenza-sulle-donne/il-fenomeno/violenza-dentro-e-fuori-la-famiglia/la-dinamica-della-violenza/.
Il Resto del Carlino (2024, July 28). Il padre di Filippo Turetta si scusa dopo le intercettazioni: “Avevo paura si suicidasse, frasi senza senso”. Il Resto del Carlino. https://www.ilrestodelcarlino.it/veneto/cronaca/padre-filippo-turetta-fapw97q7#%E2%80%9CAvevo%20paura%20si%20suicidasse%E2%80%9D.
Redazione Adnkronos (2025, April 7). Ilaria Sula, gip: “Samson freddo e insensibile”. Madre confessa di aver aiutato il figlio a pulire il sangue. Adnkronos. https://www.adnkronos.com/cronaca/ilaria-sula-mark-samson-madre-confessione_1nzPnnPhYv11ltzwKIJNeW?refresh_ce.
Tominic, B. (2025, April 8). “Ho sentito i rumori e sono entrata”: il ruolo della madre di Mark Samson nel femminicidio di Ilaria Sula. Fanpage.it. https://www.fanpage.it/roma/ilaria-sula-il-ruolo-della-madre-di-mark-samson-dopo-che-ha-scoperto-lomicidio-commesso-dal-figlio/.
Visentin, F. (2024, July 30). Filippo Turetta e il colloquio con il padre, le parole sono importanti. È giusto conoscere gli audio del papà in carcere. Corriere Della Sera. https://corrieredelveneto.corriere.it/notizie/padova/cronaca/24_luglio_30/filippo-turetta-e-il-colloquio-con-il-padre-le-parole-sono-importanti-e-giusto-conoscere-gli-audio-del-papa-in-carcere-be597849-5c8e-4e83-93ec-041985f5cxlk.shtml?refresh_ce.
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