Youth's murderers 'just wanted to kill'

(ANSA) - Rome, March 7 - Two university students suspected of murdering a younger man during a two-day party that police said was fueled by cocaine and alcohol could face charges of premeditated murder aggravated by cruelty after telling investigators their only motive was the desire to kill someone, prosecutors said Monday. Law student Manuel Foffo, 29, reportedly confessed that he and fellow university student Marco Prato tortured their 23-year-old victim Luca Varani so that he would have a slow death. "We just wanted to kill someone to see what effect it had on us," Foffo allegedly told prosecutors. "We went out in a car the previous night hoping to meet someone," he continued. "Then we thought of Varani, who my friend (Prato) knew". He added that the pair finished off Varani with knife and hammer blows after beating and torturing him.
    They also tried to clean up the crime scene, prosecutors said.
    Varani's body was found naked in the bedroom of a tenth-storey apartment in the Collatino area of eastern Rome on Saturday evening.
    However, he is believed to have died the previous morning. Carabinieri police arrived at the scene only after Foffo, a law student and the owner of the apartment, told his father what had happened. Meanwhile Prato was taken to hospital after trying to commit suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates and alcohol in a hotel in Rome's Piazza Bologna neighborhood. He underwent stomach pumping and is now being held together with Foffo in Rome's Regina Coeli prison.