Child killer Theresa Riggi found dead in secure hospital — (The Telegraph)

Monday, March 10th, 2014

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The Telegraph

By Auslan Cramb, Scottish Correspondent

8:50PM GMT 10 Mar 2014

A mother who killed her three children in Edinburgh during a bitter custody battle with her estranged husband has been found dead at a secure hospital in England.

Theresa Riggi, 49, who is thought to have taken her own life, was serving 16 years in prison after admitting the culpable homicide of her eight-year-old twins and five-year-old daughter.

After stabbing the children to death she jumped from a balcony at their second-floor flat in in August 2010 in a bid to take her own life.

The Californian, who feared she would lose the children to her husband Pasquale, an oil industry engineer in Aberdeen, admitted culpable homicide on the grounds of diminished responsibility.

She told him in a chilling phone call before stabbing the children that he should “say goodbye”.

Riggi used a different knife to kill each of the children before laying their bodies side by side and tried to cover up their deaths with a botched attempt to cause a major gas explosion in the flat.

She was moved to Rampton Secure Hospital near Retford, Notts, in recent weeks after she was allegedly disfigured by a fellow inmate at Cornton Vale women’s prison near Stirling.

Nottinghamshire Police said officers were called to the hospital, which has treated some of the country’s most notorious child killers, at about 2am on Monday. A spokesman said the death was “unexplained but non-suspicious” and a file is being prepared for the coroner.

Psychiatrists told Riggi’s trial in 2011 that the immaculately groomed mother was excessively controlling, had an abnormal and obsessive love for her children and suffered from narcissistic, paranoid and histrionic personality disorders.

Her husband said in a statement outside court after the case that the way in which his children died would leave an “indelible mark on the rest of my life”.

He added: “I will never forget Austin, Luke and Cecilia. They left everlasting impressions on me. I think about them at least 100 times each day. They are in my thoughts when I wake in the morning and before I go to sleep at night. As a father, my natural instincts were geared towards safeguarding my children from the dangers of this world.

“It pains me to the core that I was unable to protect them from the selfish, brutal and murderous act that ended their lives so unfairly.

“There is no justification for this heinous crime, repeated three times, nor is there any sentence that can provide justice for the overwhelming loss of three lives and the subsequent painful grief and devastation caused to surviving family and friends.”

Riggi stabbed twins Austin and Gianluca, and their sister Cecilia, eight times and tried to cover up their deaths with a gas explosion at the flat, before leaping from the balcony.

The attack happened several months after she left Aberdeenshire with the children following a bitter break-up.

 

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Riggi banned her kids from playing with other children— (The Sun)

From NICK SHARPE, Chief Reporter, in Denver, Colorado

8th March 2011, 5:42 am   Updated: 4th April 2016, 8:57 pm

DISTURBED mum Theresa Riggi was so possessive of the three children she went on to kill she banned them from playing with other kids.

And she even made tragic twins Austin and Luke, eight, and their five-year-old sister Cecilia wear “locator tags” when they visited their dad Pasquale, 46, after the couple split.

Bizarre behaviour like this had already convinced the youngsters’ gran Sylvia Riggi to fly 4,400 miles to the UK twice a year to check on them — fearing they were being stifled by her daughter-in-law.

But she was left helpless as her three grandchildren were later stabbed to death in an Edinburgh flat by their mother.

Connie Sturgeleski, 68 — a neighbour of the Riggi family in Denver, Colorado, for 37 years — told of the family’s concerns as she revealed shocking details of Theresa Riggi’s troubled mental state.

Mrs Sturgeleski, a qualified psychologist, said: “Theresa had been to see a psychiatrist here in Denver. I think she had been diagnosed with manic depression.

“She was over-protective of her children. She home-schooled them and wouldn’t let them out to play with others.  “She was in the house with them all the time. That wasn’t healthy.

“What she did makes me think she must have been really ill.

“Sylvia had been worried about her for a number of years. She’d travel to Scotland twice a year to make sure things were okay.”

Mrs Sturgeleski added: “I remember her telling me she’d been across there for Halloween, which is a really big deal in the States.  “The children had wanted to go out trick or treating but Theresa wouldn’t let them.

“So Sylvia made up a game for them, where they had to go and knock on different doors INSIDE the house. Someone — either their dad, or her, or Theresa — would be waiting and they’d act out trick or treating like that.”

The High Court in Edinburgh also heard how Riggi, 47, made her children wear tags to meet their dad and gave them a mobile phone programmed with her number.

Pasquale had taken his wife to court to get unfettered access to the kids following their split.

And Riggi told the children to use the mobile if Pasquale “said or did anything they did not like”.

But last night Mrs Sturgeleski — who has regularly comforted grieving Sylvia since the killings — also told how Theresa’s own mum was aware of her psychiatric problems.

She continued: “Sometimes people with mental illness don’t see that they are sick, but Theresa did know — and so did her mum.

“It was Theresa’s mum who persuaded her to go see a psychiatrist. I know that a diagnosis was made and that she was given medication to take.”

Pasquale’s parents own a garage and petrol station on an industrial estate on the edge of Denver. Their $250,000 (£154,000) home is on a quiet cul-de-sac in the affluent Lakewood area.

He attended local schools, before being sent to prestigious Regis Jesuit High across the city.

Later Pasquale and Theresa — who he’d brought to the city from drab Bakersfield, California — bought a large detached house on a new estate five miles away.

Pasquale’s only sister, Lillian Mancinelli, 47, lives in a similar home close by.

Mrs Sturgeleski told how she met him when he returned to Denver for a memorial service for the children.

She said: “Pasquale is just a great guy. He loved his family.  “I saw him at the memorial service and he looked like someone who was putting on a brave face.”

His godmother Patricia Riggi — from Brighton, 30 miles north of Denver — told of her horror at the killings.

The 70-year-old said: “It’s such an awful thing to have happened. Pasquale did not deserve this.”

Mary Chester — who lives next door to Pasquale Riggi’s parents in leafy Lakewood — added: “The Riggis are real nice people. People are so shocked. Pasquale and Theresa were home last summer.”

Mum-of-six Mrs Chester, 75, said friends of the Riggis hoped Pasquale would return home.

She added: “There are no good memories left for him over there.”