Italian mother killed and cut her son’s body into three with his wife’s help; reveals shocking motive in court

A chilling murder case surfaced in Italy, where a mother claimed that she killed her son, dismembered his body, and was trying to hide it. She further stated that his wife helped her and was involved in planning the murder.

Several media reports in Italy, including L'Unione Sarda and the news agency ANSA (Agenzie Nazionale Stampa Associata), suggested that 61-year-old Lorena Venier confessed to the crime after her daughter-in-law, Mailyn Castro Monsalvo, 30, called police on July 25, 2025. After authorities were alerted, they arrived at the house that Alessandro Venier, 30, had shared with his mother, wife, and infant daughter.

Alessandro's body was found dismembered in the basement of the home he shared with his wife, mother and infant daughter in the town of Gemona del Friuli, located in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, multiple media outlets reported, citing police.


"I took care of Alessandro's 'dismemberment' myself," his mother, Lorena Venier, told the judge in court following their arrests, according to ANSA. A nurse by profession, she cut her son’s body into three parts as she could not fit him in the bin she had brought.

Death of Alessandro

Lorena revealed that she and her daughter-in-law had originally intended to dispose of the body in the mountains, but Mansalvo couldn't go through with it, eventually calling the police and confessing to murder. According to ANSA, her mother-in-law insisted that Monsalvo's only involvement in the death of her husband was in moving his remains.

Venier said at the hearing that she and her daughter-in-law, Mailyn Castro Monsalvo, had decided to kill her son "by putting him to sleep," according to L'Unione Sarda. "We knocked him out with a sleeping pill around 5:30 PM, but he didn't die until around 11 PM because we couldn't finish it," she reportedly stated. “We decided to kill him by putting him to sleep: I emptied an entire blister pack of medicine into the lemonade, but it wasn't enough,” the mother said, as quoted by L'Union Sarda

At that point, I gave him two insulin injections since he wouldn't fall asleep completely. I'd had them at home for about five years. I'd gotten them from where I work, because at the time I'd decided to use them to kill myself,"

"Once the insulin had taken effect, we tried to suffocate him with a pillow. But Alessandro allegedly kept fighting back, "even though he was weak," she further stated. The Daily Mail reports that finally he died after he was allegedly strangled with his bootlaces.
Dismemberment body was not part of the initial plan

While detailing the crime in the court, Venier told the judge that the subsequent dismemberment of his body was not part of the initial plan. "I did it myself when we realized the body wouldn't fit in the bin where it was supposed to decompose, waiting to scatter the remains in the mountains," she told the judge, as quoted by L'Unione Sarda. "At that point, I used a hacksaw to cut him into three pieces, and Mailyn took him to the garage and covered him in lime," she continued.

Giving further detail about the crime, she said, "I used a hacksaw and a sheet to hold the blood and I dissected him into three pieces. There were no blood splatters, that's why the Carabinieri police found everything in order."

Motive behind the killing

Venier revealed to the judge in the court that she killed her son, Alessandro on the request of his wife. "Mailyn had been asking me to kill my son Alessandro for months, ever since the day their daughter was born in January," she said, as quoted by L’Unione Sarda. "Mailyn was violently beaten, insulted, and repeatedly threatened with death," she further stated. She said that her son "downplayed her postpartum depression," adding that she felt "Mailyn's life was in danger ... and when I decided to report it, he punched me in the back."

Venier claimed that her son allegedly told Monsalvo during one of their arguments, "I'll take you to Colombia and drown you in the river, because no one's looking for you there." She dubbed her son as unemployed with drug and alcohol problems, refusing to find work or help around the house, per The Daily Mail. She said that despite the increase in threats and alleged violence, she and Monsalvo did not reach out to police due to the fear of retaliation.

She further pointed out that Alessandro needed to leave the country "before a conviction for serious bodily harm in an extra-family context was enforced." Venier also confessed that the women had decided to take advantage of this to easily explain his sudden disappearance. The two women had to shorten their timeline of their plan as Alessandro had purportedly already told his friends that he would be moving his family permanently to Colombia.

‘Couldn’t have allowed them to go to Colombia,’ said Lorena Venier

Venier stated that she thought of Monsalvo as "the daughter I never had" and worried about the harm that might come if she and the baby moved to Colombia with her son. "I could not have allowed them to go to Colombia, Mailyn and the baby would have run very serious risks there," she told the court, per The Daily Mail. "The only way to stop him was to kill him."

Venier and Monsalvo were even looking ahead to a brighter future with Alessandro out of the picture, L'Unione Sarda reported.
"Once Alessandro was killed and things had calmed down, Maylin would return to Colombia, to her family, with the baby," she told the court, per the outlet. "I would fly to visit them as soon as I retired."

The plan also included what would be said to the baby when she got older, with Venier telling the judge, according to L'Unione Sarda, "We would have said only good things about her father. We would have portrayed him in a good light, keeping the truth of the violence we suffered hidden forever." Monsalvo is being held in a lower-security prison for mothers on the Venetian island of Giudecca. Venier has been charged with murder and concealing a body, per The Daily Mail, while Monsalvo is being investigated for instigation to murder.