Life imprisonment. The Court of Assizes of Appeal reformulates for the worse the twenty-year sentence imposed in the first instance on Berisa Kadrus, the 62-year-old of Kosovar origin accused of the murder of Viktorjia Vovkotrub and of burying his body inside the soccer field bowls at the disused bowling alley in the May Day district, on November 6 three years ago.
The judges of the second instance accepted the reconstruction of the deputy attorney general: the murder of the 42-year-old carer of Ukrainian origins, a former partner of the accused, is in their opinion aggravated by stalking, considered by the judges of the first instance to be a crime in its own right, and from futile reasons. However, the aggravation of the charges resulted in the man being unable to access the abbreviated procedure – a faculty not admitted in the case of crimes punished with life imprisonment – and therefore also to benefit from the one-third discount provided for by the procedure.
According to defenders of Kadrus the man acted to defend himself from the provocation of his victim and did so in a state of semi-insanity. The 62-year-old’s defenders, lawyers Denise Pedrali and Luciano Garatti, argued that Viktorjia, in addition to having accepted the invitation to dinner – a sign in their opinion of the absence of persecutory acts against her – attacked him that evening with a knife ; but also that the 62-year-old’s habitual alcoholism had fed his “warrior gene” and had dragged him into the inability to manage her aggression. A reconstruction that the appeal judges did not accept.
The chances that Berisa will be able to avoid her life imprisonment are now slimmer.
