Italian Man Beaten to Death with Iron Pipe in Dominican Republic

An Italian man living in the Dominican Republic for a long time was beaten to death by a Dominican man with an iron pipe. The crime happened in the municipality of Gaspar Hernández on the north coast of the country. Bloodied body of 67 year old Francesco Ceron, resident of Sosua was found inside a Suzuki SUV parked on Avenida Duarte in front of the municipal office.

Shortly after the discovery of the body, police got a phone call that a man wearing a bloodied t-shirt stopped in a nearby shop to buy a new t-shirt. They got their murder suspect rather quickly and arrested him immediately. But not before he bought himself a green shirt. He was identified as 30 year old Juan Velásquez, a resident of Sabana de la Mar. The guy had reportedly ran out of gas before reaching intended destination where he wanted to dump the body.

The investigation is ongoing, but apparently the victim had married a woman shortly before his death without telling anyone from his family or friends about it. 36 year old Carmen Christina Sanchez secured herself with an alibi by being in Santo Domingo at the time of his death, but locally everyone appears to know that she had her hands in it. The victim may have been blackmailed and likely knew he got himself in some deep shit that would cost him his life. The last entry in his diary talked about impeding death and said: “I fell into a trap“.

Aside from having been beaten with the iron pipe, Francesco Ceron was also tortured, cut with a knife and strangled with an electric wire. You can see the wire still tightly around his neck in the photos. His widow reportedly told Francesco’s children that she would give them the corpse for proper burial in Italy if they paid her 49,000 Pesos (about EUR 900).

So much for a popular travel destination…