ROME (AP) — Italian police have detained a homeless man in the death of a 19-year-old American student whose body was found in the Tiber River in Rome two days after his credit card had been used in Milan.
Police on Tuesday identified the suspect as Massimo Galioto, a 40-year-old from Rome. In a statement, police said he was taken into custody because he was “seriously suspected of aggravated homicide.” No further details were immediately available.
Police on Monday pulled the body of Beau Solomon from the Tiber. The student from Spring Green, Wisconsin, had last been seen early Friday morning at a pub, shortly after arriving in Rome for an exchange program at John Cabot University, an English-language university in the Italian capital.
The Italian news agency ANSA said preliminary autopsy results indicated that Solomon had suffered injuries consistent with a fall and with days spent in the water. The exact cause of death remains to be determined.
John Cabot University had said it was alerted by Solomon’s roommate, who reported that he had lost contact with Beau around 1 a.m. Friday and was worried when Solomon didn’t show up for orientation later Friday morning.
Solomon had just completed his first year as a personal finance major at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. One brother, Jake Solomon, described Beau as an athlete who successfully battled cancer for years as a child.
Cole Solomon, Beau Solomon’s 23-year-old brother, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Monday that his brother’s body was found with a head wound and blood on his shirt. He added that thousands of dollars were charged to his brother’s credit card after his disappearance. He didn’t immediately respond to AP requests for comment.
Italian state TV said 1,500 euros (about $1,700) were run up on Solomon’s credit card at a Milan store on Saturday, hundreds of miles (kilometers) away from where he was reported last seen in Rome. The TV report said investigators will check security cameras near the store for possible images of who might have used the cards.
It wasn’t immediately clear if police believed the detained suspect himself used the credit card in Milan, made the purchases remotely or if someone else used the card in Milan.
Without citing sources, ANSA said two Italians claimed to have seen a man throw a person into the Tiber the night that Solomon disappeared.
Sky TG24 TV also said the witnesses reported seeing someone pushed into the Tiber near Garibaldi Bridge. That bridge is heavily trafficked, and an annual summer fair featuring artisans selling wares and booths offering food is drawing big crowds nightly.
On Tuesday, the U.S. ambassador to Italy, John Phillips, pledged assistance to Italian authorities investigating the death.
“My heart goes out to his family and friends,” Phillips said.
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Todd Richmond in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report.
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So, basically, all his American friends managed to get the hell out of the country before some prosecutor could concoct a Satanic death cult theory, forcing them to round up the usual suspects.
Ah, you are perhaps referring to Giuliano Mignini, the Italian prosecutor who, prior to making absurd interpretations of fairly clear evidence (and clear interpretations of absurd evidence) in the Amanda Knox case, did the same over a long period of time in the Monster of Florence case?
I listened to the audio version of the The Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi, not knowing anything about the case or about the role of prosecutors in Italy. Although the second half was a bit tedious in its detail, I didn’t mind, because I was constantly gobsmacked by some new absurdity of the investigation. You could say that the investigation was a second Monster of Florence.
This long piece by Preston, in The Atlantic, gives a good taste of what the book covered.
BS. Cops went out and the first homeless they found pissing against a post, arrested him and charged him with murder, and take my word… he will confess.