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The Devil in Suburbia
Luciana Berardi was a single mother living in a suburban flat in a popular district in Torino, in the mid '60s, the years of the industrial "Boom" as it was called.
Her husband Sebastiano had left home soon after their only child Igor was born, and Luciana was managing how she could, working home as a darner and tailoress. Igor grew up spending alone most of the time, as kindergaten admission was too stiff for his mother to manage.
It came to no surprise, then, that at the age of about four or five, he started talking with an imaginary friend.
His mother was rather saddened by this fact, but not overly preoccupied.
This went on for a few months without any problem, except that maybe Luciana felt sad for the evident loneliness of her son.
Then, one day, Igor started asking questions about "Satan", as his invisible friend had told him that this Satan guy was a strong and powerful lord and was to be adored.
Luciana was of course taken aback.
Yet the boy kept to this version.
She severely skolded her son, and prohibited him to go on with this foolishness about an invisible friend.
But the boy kept talking to the invisible friend (fiend?) when he thought that she could not see.
The following Christmas the boy was given a toy train as a gift by his grandmother.
Upon returning home from shopping a few days later, Luciana was surprised in finding that a large cupboard had been moved so that the train track could follow a perfect circle in the main room of her small apartment.
When she asked for explanations, the boy told her that his invisible friend had moved the cupboard to help him place the tracks in the best positions.
The cupboard in question was over 100 kgs.
All windows were closed, the door was locked, there were no signs of effraction.
Nobody had been in the house while Luciana Berardi was out.
A few days later, she came home to find the apartment in utter chaos: broken plates, stuff pulled out of drawers.
The kid explained that had been his friend, enraged because Igor had refused to go out and play on the street with him. Once again, further interrogation and scolding gave no result: the boy was sticking to this story.
From that moment, Luciana began to sistematically lock Igor up in his room if she had to go out, fearing that he could harm himself pulling some other kind of weird and dangerous stunt.
A few days later, she began finding her son's door open when she returned home, and the kid playing in the living room.
His invisible friend, of course, usually set him free as soon as she was out.
Or so Igor claimed.
There were no signs on the door and lock, and she had the only key.
Things were taking a weird turn.
When a few weeks later the kid started sayng that either his father was Satan or his father was dead, because so his friend had told him, and going in histerics if told to stop that, Luciana finally whent to see a psichiatrist.
The doctor told her that it was all probably due to loneliness and the nefarious influence of television, and suggested that she saved money somehow and sent Igor to the kindergarten straight away, where he could make some real friends and stop living out this absurd and unpleasant fantasy.
So Igor was sent to the kindergarten.
He did not make friends, at the beginning at least, preferring to stay on his own.
The teachers tried to involve him into some kind of activity, and on seeing the results of a whole afternoon playing with coloured pencils, sent for his mother.
Igor had drawn a few pictures of some kind of multicoloured horned demon, armed with a wicked looking knife and stabbing kids to death. The image of course representedIgor's imaginary companion.
Luciana was told to talk this out with the boy, and to keep an eye on what kind of comic books and tv programs he was fond of.
It all led nowhere, of course.
Igor was dismissed from the kindergarten a week later, after he attacked withot reason one of his new friends, biting and scratching him untill he bled.
Luciana was told to consult a professional, as her son clearly had some real problem.
The boy defended himself saying that it had been his invisible friend that had attacked the other kid; he had even tried to protect the other boy, getting in the way, and that was the reason why the teachers accused him of the deed.
The specialist visited the boy, finding him in general good health but a bit too much introverted.
He prescribed some tranquilizers.
About one month later, while she was working in her home's main room, Luciana Berardi heard some kind of suffocated cry coming from her child's room, and upon entering found him soaked in blood.
He had been stabbed once in the chest.
Help arrived too late.
The following day, Luciana Berardi was arrested for the killing of her own five years old son.
Police investigation had uncovered a pair of scissors, covered in blood, at the bottom of a drawer in a cupboard.
The woman was totally shattered and she defended herself relating the whole story to the judges, pleading innocent.
She was finally locked up in a criminal sanitarium, having been found guilty of "murder while in a state of mental alienation".
She always denied the charge.
