Francis Kaufmann sentenced to life in Rome over Villa Pamphili killings

The verdict

The first Assize Court of Rome sentenced Francis Kaufmann, a 47-year-old American, to life imprisonment with three years of daytime isolation on 5 November 2026. The judges found him guilty of suffocating his 29-year-old Russian partner and, hours later according to one report, strangling their 11-month-old daughter. Both bodies were found in Villa Pamphili, the Rome park, a few metres apart, on 7 June 2025. The ruling accepts the requests the prosecution made at its closing hearing. The defence had asked for acquittal on both counts, arguing that Kaufmann did not commit the acts. Because this is a first-instance judgment, the sentence is not yet final.

Charges and the prosecutor's case

Prosecutors charged Kaufmann, who also goes by the alias Rexal Ford, with double aggravated murder and concealment of the bodies. The aggravating circumstances cited are futile and abject motives, the defenceless state of the victims, the emotional relationship with his partner and the descent relation with the daughter. Prosecutor Antonio Verdi, who worked on the inquiry under deputy prosecutor Giuseppe Cascini, described the defendant at the closing hearing.

“Kaufmann is cold, lucid, manipulative, a pathological narcissist, but he is not incapable of understanding and willing.”

Verdi also called Kaufmann an impostor who had managed to deceive the officers who stopped him while he was drunk on a street with his daughter. The prosecutor said that had those officers done their job properly, the girl might still be alive.

Defence and the expert assessment

Defence lawyer Paolo Foti asked the court for acquittal at the hearing. The trial was suspended in May 2026 after the court ordered a pharmacological treatment path for the defendant. It resumed a little over a month later, when the judges found his psychophysical state compatible with detention. In October 2026 the judges rejected the defence's last request for a new expert assessment of his capacity to understand and will. According to Fanpage, the court found no objective elements showing he was unable to take part in the trial, and noted he is constantly monitored in prison by doctors from the mental health department.

The killings and the flight

Both victims were found dead in the park on 7 June 2025. After the killings Kaufmann left Italy for Greece, where he was tracked down and arrested. Adnkronos reports that police had stopped him drunk on a street with the girl. The accounts differ on the gap between the two deaths. One report says the girl was strangled several hours after the woman. Fanpage, citing the prosecution's reconstruction, says the girl was killed at a later point, some days apart. Fanpage also gives the woman's age as 30 and the girl's as one and a half, against 29 and 11 months in other reports. The sequence of key dates is shown below.