When Carol Maltesi announced her plan to leave the small Italian town she was living in to be closer to her six-year-old son in Verona, she didn’t know her decision would trigger a deadly explosion of anger in her boyfriend.
The tragic fate of the 26-year-old Dutch-Italian model was already sealed when she first met the banker Davide Fontana in 2020, whose monstrous jealousy led to her murder in 2022.
Now, the Italian Court of Appeal has re-sentenced the killer to life behind bars. But three years on, the barbaric end to Maltesi’s life at the hands of her maniac lover, now 45, still haunts Italian memory.
When the first details emerged, even veteran police officers were left shocked and upset.
The scene belongs to a horror film. In a fit of rage, Fontana struck the model 13 times with a hammer and stabbed her in the throat while she was tied up on a stripper pole – naked, gagged with tape and hooded.
The deranged food blogger then spent three days mutilating her body into pieces, tried to burn her body on a barbecue, then stored the remains for two months in a freezer he purchased on Amazon.
He eventually stuffed what was left of the mother into black plastic bags and dumped them on the Italian mountains of Borno near Brescia.
The humiliation didn’t stop at her death. After the murder, Fontana didn’t want anyone to find out she was gone, so he sent messages from her mobile phone, and even continued paying her rent, pretending to be the woman he had just butchered.
As soon as Fontana came into Maltesi’s life, he smelt of trouble. The banker, who was also her neighbour, had a fake profile on OnlyFans, and lured her into making content to sell on the platform.
The tragic fate of the 26-year-old Dutch-Italian model was already sealed when she first met the the banker Davide Fontana in 2020, whose monstrous jealousy led to her murder
The deranged food blogger then spent three days mutilating her body into pieces, tried to burn her body on a barbecue
When Maltesi made the decision to start a new life, closer to her ex-husband and beloved son in Verona, Fontana couldn’t stomach his jealousy
The two made pornographic films together, and had a romantic relationship in Rescaldina, near Milan. Maltesi went by the stage name of Charlotte Angie when she performed, and described herself on social media as a ‘half Italian, half Dutch girl who has always dreamed big and is never satisfied’.
It was the pressure to support her child during Covid that led Maltesi, who used to work in a perfume shop, into the world of producing adult-entertainment. But when she made the decision to start a new life, closer to her ex-husband and beloved son in Verona, Fontana couldn’t stomach his jealousy.
She was so steadfast in her plan to begin her life afresh that she reportedly contacted a local real estate agency to arrange a viewing of an apartment.
But she never got to realise her dreams of being close to her son – Fontana made sure of that.
Their relationship turned sour when she told him the news of her relocation, with some reports from neighbours suggesting the pair broke up.
In the days following her death, her son tragically told his school friends that his biggest fear was not remembering her face.
The crime happened during filming of a pornographic video that spiralled into Fontana’s murderous rampage. He had Maltesi at his mercy – tied to a pole with a bag over her head. He then started beating her with a hammer, 13 times, and kept the camera rolling as he stole her life in the most brutal way.
Initially, he told police the pair had been playing an erotic game that went wrong as he lost control – but this didn’t convince the investigators.
In a leaked confession, the disgraced banker described how the pair were scheduled to make two films that January morning, with the second one being more ‘violent’.
‘We finished the first film and then we went to the bedroom where there is a lap dancing pole. I tied her wrists to the pole and put a plastic bag over her head.
‘She was completely naked and I also tied her feet up. I had a hammer and started hitting her on her body, not hard, starting from her legs.
‘Then as I worked my way up I started to hit harder until I got to her head.
‘I don’t know why I did it, I don’t really know what happened. She was still moving her head but I carried on hitting her.
‘Then I suddenly realised what I was doing. I took the bag off her head, I thought she was dead, there was a lot of blood and she was badly hurt.’
When he finally grabbed a kitchen knife and slit her throat, the food blogger described the murder as an ‘act of kindness’.
‘I could see she was suffering,’ the warped banker said.
He then allegedly bought an axe and a metal hacksaw to deal with the body, which he severed into pieces. When he was unable to burn her remains in a rental home, he kept them in four bin bags in a deep freezer, before he finally tossed the bags off a cliff in Paline di Borno – a northern Italian town about two hours northwest of Milan.
A passer-by at Borno found the remains while on a walk in March 2022, two months after the murder, discovering Maltesi’s severed hand inside a bag. She was identified by her distinctive tattoos.
Davide Fontana, 43, kept the camera on his phone rolling as he battered the victim with a hammer before slitting her throat
It was the pressure to support her child during Covid that led Maltesi into the world of producing adult-content
Relatives of Maltesi said the 2023 sentence, which didn’t take account of premeditation, left them ‘shocked and incredulous’
At first, the food blogger tried to keep police from discovering him, pretending to give them ‘information’ about her disappearance, but officers eventually grew suspicious and arrested him.
He then broke down and admitted to killing the young mother. It was soon revealed that he had spent the months after her death reassuring her relatives that she was alive, had only been travelling, and would return home soon.
Fontana’s first trial in 2023 courted controversy in Italian public opinion.
He was found guilty of voluntary homicide and suppression and concealment of a corpse, but was only sentenced to 30 years – escaping life behind bars because the court ruled it was not premeditated, nor did it involve excessive ‘cruelty’.
The public at the time accused the judges of ‘victim blaming’ after they described the young woman in court as ‘uninhibited’ and accused her of having ‘used’ her neighbour, who was just a man hopelessly in ‘love’.
Relatives of Maltesi said the sentence left them ‘shocked and incredulous’.
‘Can the character of a victim be an attenuating circumstance in a murder?’ the daily newspaper La Stampa asked in a page one story at the time.
Now, after a Court of Appeal reviewed the murder case, Fontana has been re-sentenced to life in prison after he was found guilty of premeditation in the murder plot – a development many will no doubt see as a restoration of justice.
‘I would like to apologise again to everyone, especially to Carol’s parents and to the son,’ the banker said in a re-trial in the Court of Assizes in Milan in 2024. ‘I don’t know if I will ever be forgiven for what I have done.’
He has reportedly paid around £47,000 in compensation to the young boy, but no money will bring back the young mother Fontana so cruelly stole from him.
