Jo Francesco Barlaam, nephew of Eleonora Maria Lancia, heiress to one of Italy's most important automobile dynasties, who was killed by her daughter with eight stab wounds in September 1996, is back in court accused of ill-treatment and bodily harm.
According to prosecutors, the man in his 40s attacked his ex-partner and dragged her during frequent arguments. I kicked and hit her. At one point, the prosecutor claims, he also threw a glass bottle at her. “He kept telling me that I was his. That I couldn't leave the house without him. “That I was a good-for-nothing,” the woman reported to the police. It still is. “One night they were sleeping together and he ran a knife through my hair. When I asked him what he was doing, he told me it was a joke. Insults, beatings, threats: “You are not leaving here.” If you leave, I will come to Romania and kill you.
The defense rejects “the accusation of mistreatment”. This is a fragile man who is trying to solve his problems with drug addiction – comments the lawyer who supports him, criminal lawyer Stefano Valentini_. My client currently lives in a shared apartment. The ongoing court case is a thing of the past that he is trying to come to terms with.”
In 2018, Barlaam was reported by another woman. The victim had reported insults, verbal attacks, spitting and writing on the windows of the store where he worked. The two had been together for five months. After a few weeks, she tried to push him away, but he had pursued her for years, according to the lawsuit.
New Year's Eve 2012. Drunk after an evening at a club, the man attacked his girlfriend because she had chosen a restaurant where she had argued with the waiter. From there the fighting began. And the humiliations. “He locked me in the house because he was afraid I would report him,” the victim said. Then a back and forth that lasted five years. Jo Francesco Barlaam had agreed to an 18-month suspended sentence for kidnapping and assault, aggravated by the use of weapons.