Cops Sought Death For Marin Murder Suspects In Italy: AP

ROME — Italian authorities sought the death or beating of two Marin teens who were arrested in connection with the 2019 killing of a law enforcement officer while the two were vacationing in Italy, according to an Associated Press report citing Italian media reports.

Phone chats led to a Carabinieri officer being charged with using unjustified measures in handling a suspect for allegedly blindfolding one of the teens illegally as he awed questioning at a police station.

Former Tamalpias High School classmates Finnegan Lee Elder and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth were convicted of murder last year.

The Marin men were vacationing in Italy at the time when a drug deal that went awry precipitated the stabbing of an unarmed 35-year-old plainclothes police officer.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth testified that they were acting in self-defense against two men they thought were thugs.

The two men were plainclothes officers investigating an alleged extortion attempt by the Marin teens tied to a botched cocaine deal.

Elder was convicted for the fatal stabbing Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega, and Natale-Hjorth for helping conceal a knife Elder brought with him on their European vacation.

Accomplices in murder cases can face murder charges without material involvement in the killing under Italian law.

A photo of Natale-Hjorth blindfolded with a scarf sitting at a police station – a violation of Italian law – has surfaced in Italian media.

Phone messaging chats involving several Carabinieri hours after the July 2019 arrests of the men were introduced as evidence at the officer’s trial on Wednesday.

Some of the messages demanded that the Marin men get the death penalty, which Italy doesn’t have, or put into a closed room and called. One message called for them to be “dissolved in acid.”

Carabinieri officials on Wednesday called the chat messages “offensive and abominable” and pledged to immediately discipline the officers involved, Italian news agency Lapresse said.

The incident wasn't Elder's first brush with the law.

He arrived at the Mill Valley high school as a transfer from Sacred Heart Cathedral of San Francisco with a troubled past according to published reports.

In 2016 Elder was accused of sucker-punching a former high school football teammate during a party at Stern Grove, an altercation that left his 16-year-old victim in a coma for a week according to an ABC 7 report that cites police records.

Elder was arrested in connection with the Stern Grove incident but his assault charge was dismissed after a year because he was a juvenile at the time according to the report.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Read more in The Associated Press