The boy who killed a girl… and other women's murders

Kim Dalli takes another look at a new book about the murder of Maltese women and highlights more of these heinous crimes from history: a teenager shot dead by a child, a prostitute who had her throat slit and a rape victim strangled and thrown down a well. It was 1867 and Mosta dome had just been built. Sixteen-year-old Vittorja Vella was playing beads with another girl her age in the streets of the town when an argument erupted over the game. The incident was witnessed by Ġużeppi Sammut, 13, the brother of Vittorja’s playmate. On seeing his sister being beaten up, Ġużeppi ran as fast as he could to his father’s farm, grabbed a shotgun and returned to shoot Vittorja. The girl is the youngest victim in crime historian Eddie Attard’s newly published book, Il-Femiċidju: Qtil ta’ Nisa f’Malta (from BDL), which documents all the femicides of the last two centuries. Despite the boy himself being even younger, he underwent a trial by jury, was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison with hard labour. Thirty-five years earlier, Malta witnessed the first killing of a prostitute that century: Grazzja Grech, known as Zol-in-Zol, was found dead in her Senglea home in April...