FLASH
Shkruar nga Pamfleti
A year after the murder of 22-year-old Ilaria Sula, her parents continue to return almost every weekend to the spot where their daughter's body was found, in a ravine along a mountain road in Capranica Prenestina, near Rome. Locals have already christened the stretch "Ilaria's road."
The Albanian student from Terni was murdered on March 25th of last year by her ex-boyfriend, Mark Samson. Her body was found on April 2nd by law enforcement, stuffed in a suitcase and hidden among bushes near the road.
Her parents, Flamur and Gezime Sula, continue to care for the memorial erected at the site where their daughter was found. The mother cleans the memorial plaque and photographs, while the father arranges the flowers and maintains the surrounding area.
A touching message is engraved on the black marble slab: "I will send you a kiss with the wind and I know you will feel it."
For Ilaria's mother, a year without her daughter is just a void.
"Our lives stopped on April 2. When they take a girl, they take away the reason for life. We are no longer the people we were. That day they killed us too," she tells Il Messaggero.
According to the father, the daughter dreamed of a bright future. "She was studying Statistics and was going to graduate in October. She wanted to work in the financial field. She had many plans for her life," says Flamur Sula.
The family drama began on March 25, when Ilaria stopped answering her phone. She was living in Rome for university studies, but was in constant contact with her parents.
Asked what she remembers from the day she heard the news about her daughter, Gëzime Sula said: Confused memories. When they told us they had found her, I didn't want to accept that it was true. I told Flamur: 'Maybe they're wrong. It wasn't.'
"The last time we spoke was on March 25. We were planning our weekend in Terni together. The train schedule, the appointment at the hairdresser's and then the afternoon shopping, like mother and daughter. I had bought her a sweater a few days before, we had chosen it together on the phone .
"It's still in her drawer. I didn't want to give it away. Everything remained the way it was in her room: the closets, the bed, the photos, the stuffed toys. Everything was the way she left it on March 15, the last day she slept there. That was the last time we saw her alive. The last time I was able to hug her ," she confessed through tears.
The family reported her missing on March 29th after the girl did not return home as planned.
"A father feels it when his daughter doesn't text him," says Flamur, adding that during the search they had also contacted her ex-boyfriend.
"She had not responded since March 25. But in the following days she had sent several messages. A father feels it when it is not his daughter who is writing. We waited until March 29, the day she was supposed to come to Terni. Then we went to report the incident. Ilaria would never have left us. We had a wonderful relationship ," said her father, Flamur Sula.
According to the family, Mark Samson sent them a letter from prison apologizing. But the parents' response is blunt.
"We don't forgive anyone. When a girl says no, it's no. No one has the right to take her life because they can't accept a relationship that's ending. We haven't had any contact and we don't want to anymore. He can say whatever he wants, but we don't believe him," says the father, while asked if he ever suspected Marku, he said that during the days they were looking for Ilarian, they also spoke to him.
"He was talking to our son, Leon. It wasn't a real suspicion, but we never really believed it," he said.
Gezime Sula also reacted harshly to the mother of the suspected perpetrator, who admitted in court that she helped her son clean the blood from the room.
"She is not a mother. You can't call someone like that a mother. There is no forgiveness, ever. Not for her or for her son. They walked on my daughter's blood, the blood of my blood. They cleaned her up and threw her away, just like they threw her in the bushes. As if she were an object. I don't wish for anyone to see a girl being degraded in those conditions," she said.
The trial for the murder of the 22-year-old is continuing and the parents have not been absent from any hearing.
"We will continue to be there. I do not seek revenge, but justice. I want Ilaria not to be remembered as the 'suitcase girl', but for what she was: cheerful, intelligent and full of life," her father tells Il Messaggero.
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