Man admits in TV interview that he killed his mother

Lorenzo Carbone, 50, confessed to killing his mother Loretta Liverini during a TV interview. The case took place in the Italian city of Spezzano di Fiorano on Monday (23/9).

The man had lived with his mother, who suffered from dementia, for 15 years and allegedly killed her because he “couldn’t take it anymore”. “I strangled her, I don’t know why I did it. Every now and then she would make me angry because she kept repeating herself,” he said in an interview with the Pomeriggio5 talk show on Mediaset.

Lorenzo’s sister found the woman’s body last Sunday (22/9), the same day Lorenzo disappeared. He was wanted by the police. According to the man himself, he fled to the nearby town of Pavlo, where he was wandering the streets. But on Monday he decided to return to the house he shared with his mother.

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The journalist approached him at home, and he appeared “visibly distressed,” the reporter said. After the statement, the TV crew called the police. The excerpt was shown moments after the recording, marked “exclusive.” The program also showed Carbone’s arrest moments later.

Rival broadcasters criticised Mediaset’s choice to show the excerpt, noting that the interviewee was in a “state of confusion”. “What happened today at Pomereggio 5 is very serious. This is not our mission. By tearing up the code of ethics, we have reached rock bottom,” wrote Gaia Tortora, deputy director of TG La7 TV, on Channel X.

Ermes Antonucci, a journalist for Il Foglio, questioned the need to broadcast an interview “with a man in a clear state of confusion”. “Wasn’t it enough to call the police, as fortunately happened, and then explain what happened, without showing the video? The media landscape has really reached a low point.”

Mirta Merlino, who presents Pomeriggio5, told Corriere della Sera that she did not regret choosing to show the excerpt. “I received a call from the reporter a few minutes before the broadcast. I had little time to make a decision. I only cared about one thing: that it did not harm the investigation. The man was wanted. The police were called and allowed me to transmit the footage of the interview.”