Police Urged To Order Hit On Teen Cop Killers, Dissolve Their Bodies In Acid By Colleagues

An Italian court has heard that the colleagues of a Carabinieri cop killed by two American teens in 2019 urged each other to murder the suspects in a jailhouse hit, which would involve beating them to death and ultimately dissolving their corpses in acid.

On Wednesday, a court was told that the cops wanted to get rid of Finnegan Elder, 22, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, following the July 2019 murder of Mario Cerciello Rega, 35, a newly-wed officer.

The suspects were 19 and 18 when Rega tried to recover a backpack the duo took from a botched drug deal interloper, a certain Italo Pompei, who gave them crushed aspirin instead of the cocaine they paid for $80. The men reportedly met Pompei through a go-between named Sergio Brugiatelli.

Rega was working undercover with his partner Andrea Varriale at the time, the Daily Beast reported. He died of 11 knife wounds inflicted by Elder using an 11-inch camping knife on a dark street in Rome.

In May, a judge slapped the Americans with life in prison sentences. Their automatic appeal began in Rome on Thursday, where their legal camp argued that the cops wrongfully claimed the foreigners attacked first.

They noted Rega’s knife wounds were on his back, which means he was on top of Elder, who was then forced to act in self-defense.

The separate trial on Wednesday against the pair’s arresting officers accuses them of police misconduct. One officer illegally blindfolded Natale-Hjorth shortly after his arrest. Accordingly, the other cop, later identified as Varriale, passed a photo of that incident around.

Ultimately, that trial revealed WhatsApp messages shared by at least six Carabinieri police officers, who were inciting violence by pitching ideas to kill the boys in a jailhouse hit.

Aside from suggestions to assault the suspects and desecrate their bodies following the supposed killing, a cop expressed his desire to “do them like Cucchi,” according to France24.

His remarks were in reference to the 2009 murder of Stefano Cucchi, a man who died while in custody for a drug deal, which brought the abuse of police power under scrutiny in Italy. Eventually, two cops were sentenced to 12 years in prison for Cucchi's manslaughter.

Meanwhile, the Italian justice minister announced that a full investigation into the four officials who exchanged the messages is afoot.