Finnegan Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, a pair of high school classmates from the Bay Area, have had their life sentences significantly reduced for the murder of an Italian police officer in July 2019.
Elder, who is now 22, and Natale-Hjorth, now 21, have been in prison for more than three years. They were sentenced to life in May 2021, and their appeal has been working its way through the Italian courts since. It took the court three hours Thursday to uphold their murder conviction but reduce their sentences. Elder must now serve 24 years; Natale-Hjorth must serve 22.
Elder and Natale-Hjorth, who met at Tamalpais High in Mill Valley, were on vacation in Italy in 2019 when they scuffled in the street with two Carabinieri officers. Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, 35 years old and fresh off his honeymoon, was stabbed to death in the altercation.
Neither prosecutors nor the defendants disputed that the incident was kicked off by Elder and Natale-Hjorth trying to buy cocaine from a local dealer in Trastevere, a nightlife district in Rome.
“I thought that it would be something that would help us enjoy the night, and from past experience, I thought the effect of the drug would make us feel better and give us some energy to walk around to get to bars and pubs,” Elder said in court.
According to police, Elder and Natale-Hjorth got upset when the man who showed up for the drug deal didn’t give them the cocaine. In retaliation, they allegedly stole the man’s backpack and demanded 100 euros and a gram of cocaine to get it back. Unbeknownst to them, the man was a Carabinieri informant; he then told police he’d been robbed by the pair.
The informant arranged to meet back up with the Bay Area teens (Elder and Natale-Hjorth are identified as being from San Francisco in court documents). At that meeting, around 2:30 a.m., two plainclothes police officers — Cerciello Rega and his partner Andrea Varriale — arrived. Here is where the two sides’ stories vastly deviated.
Police and prosecutors said the officers identified themselves as law enforcement and showed their badges but were attacked “immediately” by the teens. Lawyers for the Americans said the officers did not identify themselves as such, and the fatal stabbing was an act of self defense by Elder. Elder told the court in March he brought a knife to the meeting because “it gave me a sense of protection.” Prosecutors say he stabbed Rega 11 times.
The pair were found guilty of murder — Italian law punishes accomplices in the same way it punishes the murderer — and given life sentences. During the appeal process, prosecutor Vincenzo Saveriano asked the court to keep Elder’s punishment at life but reduce Natale-Hjorth’s sentence to 24 years. “Elder doesn’t deserve forgiveness,” Saveriano said in court.
On Thursday, the Italian court affirmed its belief that Elder does deserve some measure of forgiveness, however. Both men will likely be in their 40s when they are released.
“At 22 years of age and with three years in prison, I had much time to reflect,” Elder said earlier this week, speaking in heavily accented, recently acquired Italian. He expressed “remorse for the pain I caused” and for the “endless mourning” suffered by Cerciello Rega’s family.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.