8 More Haunting Maltese Murder Stories That Will Send Chills Down Your Spine
Strange, cold-blooded murder stories are always fascinating to hear. Something in our nature makes us curious about the gruesome lengths people go to to obtain or hide something. We all like to watch the overly-dramatised American television shows about murderers, thinking something like that will never happen here. Or so we think, until we realise that here in Malta, we’ve have cases which are cold enough to make you grab a third pair of socks tonight.
Here’s a list of cold-blooded murder cases which happened in Malta that will definitely leave you feeling shifty and shocked.
1. The notorious Ġiġa legacy
This is one of those stories which will haunt you forever. We all have had hushed conversations about it — giving second-hand accounts of what our parents and grandparents told us about this gruesome murder.
Eight-year-old Twannie Aquilina was found partially beheaded at his home in Valletta in 1960. The popular version you’ll hear is that Twannie tried to repair his shoes with his stepfather’s tools, his mother got angry and beat him up with a leather strap. During the court hearing, his sister witnessed her mother and stepfather bending down next to the unconscious boy with a breadknife. Yes, a breadknife.
Although the parents were known to physically abuse their son on a daily basis, his mother kept insisting that she was innocent till the day she died.
As an alibi, Ġiġa took her daughters by the sea that day to eat prickly pears and play tombla, while his stepdad Leli was running run some errands. Leli was sentenced to 20 years hard labour and Ġiġa was sentenced to death. However, in true Maltese justice fashion, Ġiġa was later released, having served only 10 years of her sentence.
2. Rajt Ma Rajtx
This classic cautionary tale is literally telling you to shut up about what you see or hear. 300 years ago or so, a man was chilling out on the spot where the Rajt Ma Rajtx cross is found today. Suddenly this other guy goes by running, shortly followed by another man.
The second guy asked the chilling man if he saw anyone run by. The guy, not knowing the moral of the story he was obviously living through at the moment, pointed at the direction he saw guy number one running to. Guy number two ran up after him and stabbed him to death.
We’re willing to bet that innocent bystander was chilling in a very different way at the end of it all.
3. Sylvia King
Sylvia King was a 36-year-old bowling champion and social worker who went missing back in 1993. King was kidnapped and burned alive in her car by Joseph Harrington and Tony Baldacchino. Mr Harrington wanted to know where his estranged wife was, so he decided that the sanest and most rational way to find this out was to kidnap and burn an innocent woman alive in her car.
Sylvia was not Harrington’s wife’s best friend or anything; she was just a social worker working with his wife (who was fearful of her life because of her abusive husband and had reached out to Sylvia for help).
Essentially, these guys just tortured and murdered an innocent woman over one man’s marital problems.
4. Gaetano Romano
Back in 2009, Gaetano Romano was found lifeless and burnt in an industrial oven with nails shot into his head. The 20-year-old was found by his father in Buġibba the day after his birthday.
This was a devastating crime; it was heartbreaking enough for someone to lose a child, but to find them like that was even tougher to imagine.
5. Carmela Borg
Back in 1992, 74-year old Carmela Borg’s body was found in a well in Mġarr. At first, everyone thought that she was the victim of a robbery. The body was already decomposing, so getting it out of the well proved to be difficult and a bit too traumatic for the policemen on duty. The woman had been murdered prior to being thrown in the well with her handbag and all, as someone had suffocated her by tying a plastic bag around her head.
The woman was said to be very sharp and kept notes of whatever happened to her or any quarrels she had written down on notes in her bag. The robbery was half-heartedly ruled out since if someone wanted to rob her, they would’ve taken her bag too, and not thrown it in the well with her.
People speculated for a long time about who could have committed this heinous crime, but this murder was never solved and is still considered to be one to have shocked the island to its core.
6. Saviour Mangion
Saviour Mangion is considered to be the only Maltese serial killer. He was first charged with killing Maria Stella Magrin, 68, from Cospicua in 1986 whom he stabbed 13 times. He was also convicted of two other murders; the one of Rożina Żammit, 54 of Safi who was stabbed 37 times in 1984, and that of Francesco Saverio Cassar, 75 of Żejtun.
Mangion originally intended to kill Saverio Cassar’s sister, but when Cassar went to the rescue he was killed by Mangion, leaving the sister unharmed. The murder of Maria Stella remained unsolved for 20 years until Mangion started boasting about committing a murder he was never caught for.
The apparent motive behind these senseless killings was money, as Mangion reportedly broke into his victims’ homes to rob them.
7. Ben Ali Wahid Ben Hassine
Back in 1988, Maltese people were collectively terrified of leaving their homes as four taxi drivers were horrifically murdered within the space of a few days. The first victim was a British taxi driver who was robbed for a measly Lm47 (which is about €100) while the second one, who was French, was shot in the head for around €70. After this third victim was also shot, Ben Hassine and his accomplice Brahim Mosbah tried to decapitate him. After a couple of failed attempts, Ben Hassine decided to smash the victim’s face to an unrecognisable pulp with a rock… for €400. The fourth and last victim was killed by a gunshot to his head for another pittance.
The extreme terror that gripped the nation in those few days was enough to leave everyone scared of going out of their homes.
In 2014, one of the killers argued that he should be freed, stating that the Maltese laws were breaching his “human rights”, since he had already paid for his crimes by spending 25 years in prison.
8. Alfred Azzopardi
Alfred Azzopardi from Żejtun was jailed for life after murdering 22-year-old Vanessa Grech and her 17-month-old baby daughter in Birżebbuġa. Azzopardi brutally murdered the mother and daughter and threw their bodies in a well.
Mr Azzopardi had known the victim and her daughter, and in 2001, Azzopardi was taking advantage of the young woman’s dire situation by paying her for sex. When one day he refused to pay her, Grech got angry. She threatened to out him to his wife.
Azzopardi proceeded to stab Grech seven times, along with her young daughter. In true gentleman fashion, Azzopardi thought it was best if he left no traces behind, throwing them both in a well.