Restivo 30-year term upheld

(ANSA) - Rome, October 23 - Italy's high Court of Cassation on Thursday upheld a 30-year term for Danilo Restivo in the September 1993 murder of 16-year-old Elisa Claps in Potenza.
    Restivo is serving a life sentence with a 40-year tariff in Britain for the November 2002 murder of Heather Barnett in Bournemouth, England.
    The two crimes showed evidence of similarities in ritualistic placing of hair on the bodies.
    Restivo, who was unemployed and living with his parents when he killed Claps, was convicted of the murder in absentia in 2011 and the sentence was upheld on appeal in 2013.
    The Sicilian native and former Potenza resident then appealed to the Cassation Court, Italy's highest court of appeal. Claps' remains were found in a Potenza church roof nook in 2010.
    The daughter of a tobacconist and a clerk, Claps was an honor student and a devoted catholic, with ambitions to became a surgeon and work with Doctors Without Borders. She wrote in her diary that she felt sorry for the insistent Restivo and, despite misgivings, agreed to meet Restivo at the 15th-century Church of the Most Holy Trinity in the centre of the city. Restivo asked for a date pretending he had a love affair with a friend of hers.