Cop Killers With Marin Ties Get Reduced Sentences: AP

ROME — Two former Tamalpais High School students convicted last year for the 2019 murder of an Italian police officer had their sentences reduced Thursday by an appeals court, The Associated Press reports.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, were vacationing in Italy when a drug deal that went awry precipitated the fatal stabbing of an unarmed plainclothes Carabinieri police officer.

An Italian appeals court upheld their convictions but trimmed Elder’s sentence to 24 years and Natale-Hjorth’s to 22 after both were handed life sentences after their trial.

Elder stabbed Cerciello Rega 11 times in the killing of the 35-year-old cop who had recently returned from his honeymoon according to the report.

Officer Andrea Varriale suffered minor injuries during an altercation with Natale-Hjorth, who was convicted as an accomplice. Under Italian law, accomplices in murder cases can face murder charges without material involvement in a killing.

Rega was given a hero’s funeral in the Naples area’ church where he had been married just a few weeks earlier. The officer was stabbed 11 times, including in vital organs.

His widow, Rosa Maria Esilio, told reporters after Thursday’s verdicts that Cerciello Rega’s blood as a servant of the state will symbolically “remain eternally on the street.”

Flanked by her lawyer, she praised the “honor and courage” of a man “who died in the happiest moment of his life.”

In May 2021, the lower court had convicted Elder, now 22, and Natale-Hjorth, now 21, of the slaying as well as of attempted extortion in connection with a botched attempt to buy cocaine in a Rome nightlife district.

The two were also convicted of resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause.

Elder during his trial testimony told the court he believed the officer was a go-between in a drug deal that went bad.

He said he'd paid for cocaine he never received hours earlier and sought to retrieve the money according to the report.

Elder said he was confronted by two men he didn't recognize who he believed were thugs that turned out to be undercover cops.

He said one of the men tackled him to the ground.

"I could feel his hands first on my chest and then on my neck, with pressure, as if he was trying to strangle or choke me," Elder said according to the report.

Elder testified that the officers failed to identify themselves as Carabinieri – a claim that was disputed by Cerciello Rega's partner, Andrea Varriale, the report said.

The two officers had been summoned to respond to an extortion attempt according to the report.

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.

Read more in The Associated Press