Marin Men’s Cop Murder Convictions Backed By Italian Court: AP

ROME — An Italian court has backed the convictions of two former Tamalpais High School classmates for the 2019 killing of a police officer, The Associated Press reports.

Finnegan Lee Elder, 21, and Gabriel Natale-Hjorth, 20, were vacationing in Italy at the time when a drug deal gone wrong precipitated the stabbing of an unarmed 35-year-old plainclothes police officer according to the report.

The Marin men were convicted May 5 of homicide, attempted extortion, resisting a public official and carrying an attack-style knife without just cause, the report said.

The presiding judge signed a 346-page document rejecting the defendants' self-defense claim.

Elder and Natale-Hjorth claimed they were unaware that they were being approached by police officers in the early morning hours of July 26, 2019, and that Carabinieri Vice Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega and his partner failed to identify themselves as police officers, the report said.

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.

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

The court’s account of the convictions, which it is required to issue within 90 days of a verdict, said defense arguments were without merit.

“How can the court not ask itself why Vice Brigadier Cerciello, in service for more than 20 years, about whom all spoke of his professionalism, his dedication to work, his experience on the streets, his humanity, ought to have strangled Elder as the defendant contended?” the court wrote.

“And if the intention of the two officers was to kill, why would Varriale not have done the same thing with Natale, leaving alive an inconvenient witness?”

Elder in testimony earlier this year 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 did not receive 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 according to the report.

"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.