Alessandro Pontin Italian father murders two teen children while visiting him during Christmas holidays over child support payments with estranged mother.
An out of work Italian man is reported to have attacked his two children while visiting him during Christmas — slashing their throats as they tried to flee before taking his own life in an apparent murder suicide.
The murders took place at the home of Alessandro Pontin, 49, in the town of Trebaseleghe, in the province of Padua, last Sunday, December 20, where Francesca, 15, and Pietro, 13, were staying for the holiday, the Sun reported.
The former carpenter was separated from the kids’ mother and it had been his turn to care for them amid arguments with her about child support payments, according to local media.
Francesca and Pietro were asleep when their father attacked them. The siblings tried to escape from their father, only for the man to catch up to them and slit their throats.
Trails of blood at the home were trampled on several times by Pontin and his kids, suggesting they realized what was happening before they were slaughtered.
100 Euros a month from estranged father
Pontin then killed himself, leaving a suicide note in which he did not mention the children, whose uncle, Claudio Calzarotto, said the parents had been ‘constantly arguing’ about the child support payments.
‘My sister received 100 euros a month for the two children … She had asked for something more, but just this week everything was archived and she was very angry,‘ he said, according to the Sun.
The mother, Roberta Calzarotto, 47, had struggled to raise the children on a single salary as a hospital nurse and asked their father to increase payments.
After being informed of their deaths, the mother collapsed and was hospitalized for shock.
Pontin’s brother, who discovered the bodies, revealed that his sibling had found it difficult to find work as a carpenter, so he tried to reinvent himself as a foot masseuse and then a holistic and Zen motivational expert.
He created a site called, ‘The reflected world of Alessandro Pontin.’
‘Through a conscious touch, you will release the discomfort, you will understand the cause and you will find harmony,’ he wrote in one post.
‘How can we live without them?’
‘Life is yourself, if life is difficult to bear it is because it is very difficult to bear yourself,’ the father wrote on his Facebook profile.
Said the children’s grandfather Aldo Cazzarotto: ‘Not even a beast kills its own children like that. But what man was this?’
Adding, ‘I used to pick them up from school every day because my daughter works. They used to eat with me and my wife. How can we live without them?’
Family members said that their daughter often warned the police that her ex-partner was a dangerous man, while saying nothing was ever done until it was too late.