Bournemouth, England was found to be one of the happiest places in the UK with 82% of those polled expressing happiness with where they lived. However, in 2002, the town was stricken with fear when they learned that a woman had been brutally murdered in her home at 211 Capstone Road & her mutilated body was discovered by her children as they returned home from school. Investigators eventually realized that this horrific case was tied to an unsolved murder that happened 9 years earlier & nearly 1,500 miles/2,400 kilometers away in Potenza, Italy.
Heather Barnett was described as a hardworking, independent mother of two who did anything she could to help others. She had been in a relationship with David Marsh & during that time, the couple had two children; their son Terry was born in 1987 & their daughter Caitlin, was born in 1991. The couple went on to separate in the early 1990s.
At about 4 pm on Tuesday, November 12, 2002, Heather’s children, 14-year-old Terry & his 11-year-old sister Caitlin Marsh came home from school & entered their ground floor apartment in Bournemouth, Dorset, England. Their mother, 48-year-old Heather Barnett worked from home as a seamstress & they expected to find her there as they always did, however, that day, when they entered their home, it was unusually quiet & their mother was nowhere in sight. The apartment situated above Heather’s housed her former mother-in-law & grandmother.
Terry headed toward his bedroom to change his clothes while Caitlin called out to her mother, but got no reply. When she noticed that the bathroom door was closed, she knocked & began to open the door when there was no reply. This was when Terry heard his sister screaming. He ran over to see what was going on & found his mom laying on her back on the bathroom floor.
It was immediately evident that Heather was dead. Blood was everywhere & Heather had been stabbed & mutilated. In a state of extreme panic & distress, the siblings called the police & ran from the house. Their neighbor, an Italian man named Danilo “Danny” Restivo, who lived in the house opposite with his girlfriend, immediately came to their comfort upon hearing their screams. He pulled up outside the home as the sobbing & screaming children ran out & took them to his home so they could wait for the police to arrive. Another neighbor recalled hearing the children scream, Mummy’s dead, she has been cut up!
When investigators which included forensic experts arrived at the home, it was obvious that this had been an extremely violent & bizarre murder. There were no signs of forced entry & Heather was always known to be diligent about locking the doors of her home. This initially suggested the possibility that she willingly allowed her killer into her home & may have known them.
Based on the blood spatter located on the patio doors of Heather’s sewing room, it was determined that this is where she was attacked. Long stains of blood led through the apartment to the bathroom where her body was ultimately located, indicating that she had been dragged by her murderer while she was either unconscious or deceased.
The medical examiner, Dr Allen Anscombe arrived at Heather’s apartment at 8:45 pm & found her lying on her back on the bathroom floor with her legs outstretched. Her bra was cut between the cups & both of her breasts had been severed from her body & left on the bathroom floor on either side of her head. Her throat had been slashed from ear to ear & strands of light brown hair were found clutched in Heather’s right hand which rested on her abdomen. It was later discovered that these strands of hair did not belong to her. About 30 strands of her own hair were found in her left hand. Her head had been battered with a hammer-like object ten times & some of the injuries to her body occurred after she died due to a lack of bleeding from the wounds. None of the injuries were random & appeared to have been carried out with a degree of care & control.
The clothing she wore on her upper body had been pulled up to the level of her breasts & her pants had been opened & slightly pulled down. Contact stains were found on her underwear with what investigators believed was a blood-saturated glove, though Heather had not been sexually assaulted.
Investigators utilized luminol & found bloodied footprints that led away from the bathroom toward the sewing room & with each step, the prints grew fainter until they suddenly stopped. In the hallway toward the front door there were no signs of blood which led investigators to believe that the murder changed their shoes before leaving her apartment. They also likely wore gloves to avoid forensic contamination. The shoes were determined to be Nike Terra trainers in a size 9.5-10.5.
Police learned that the last known sighting of Heather alive is when she dropped the children off at school. CCTV footage captured her white Fiat Punto turning onto Capstone Road at 8:37 am. Based on the evidence at the scene as well as phone calls that went unanswered, she was likely murdered soon after she arrived home.
Based on the fact that neighbors hadn’t noticed any strangers wandering around at the time of the murder as well as the fact that Heather was murdered shortly after returning home, led investigators to believe that the killer had a connection to her & were likely familiar with her routine.
Investigators spoke with Terry who indicated that his mom’s keys had gone missing one week earlier. He said that his mom had hung the key over the door handle as a reminder for him & his sister to take it with them to school. The key suddenly disappeared after their Italian neighbor, Danny, came over on November 6 to ask Heather to make curtains for him since he planned to give them to his girlfriend as a Christmas present. Heather was so concerned about the keys that she wrote a letter to his girlfriend, asking if she’d come across them:
Fiamma, Dan popped over to see me this morning regarding a surprise for you. Don’t ask questions & spoil it. I had a spare door key for Terry out on a table & I think Dan must have picked it up inadvertently as I’ve turned the place upside down & I can’t find it anywhere..
When police were canvassing the neighborhood to speak with neighbors five days after Heather’s murder, they went to Danny Restivo’s home & asked him to show them the shoes he was wearing on November 12. It was at that point they found his Nike trainers soaking in the bathtub as the smell of bleach hung in the air. He explained that he was cleaning them since they’d gotten dirty, but later changed this story & said that he decided to clean the shoes because his girlfriend complained that they smelled. He indicated that he had no idea he was using bleach to clean them & assumed it was soap for cleaning the floor. The shoes were promptly confiscated & traces of blood invisible to the naked eye were later found inside the shoes as if a bloodied sock had been slipped inside them. However, it had not been possible to extract a DNA sample.
As police began to look into Danny’s background, they learned that he was born in Sicily on April 3, 1972, but moved to Potenza in southern Italy when his father was hired to set up a library in the area. In May 2002, he moved to Bournemouth to the house across the street from Heather’s to live with a woman he met online. Only six months after his arrival, Heather was dead.
Police indicated that from day one, Danny was a suspect since as they arrived at the scene, he was comforting both children who were taken into his home as investigators scoured the crime scene. He told investigators that when the kids came running out, he hugged & comforted them while they were in distress, but Caitlin indicated that he never touched them. Investigators wondered if he made this claim in case he had to explain away potential DNA evidence found on his body.
Investigators believed that the person who killed Heather was a “crazed lunatic” since she had been killed in such a violent way & the more they spoke with Danny, they perceived him as a “local bumbling idiot.” Heather’s killer would have been calculated & prepared; they arrived at her home with a hammer, someone else’s hair, a change of clothes & shoes & potentially a scalpel to mutilate her body.
When officers searched the internet in 2003, they discovered that Danny was linked to the 1993 disappearance of an Italian 16-year-old girl named Elisa Claps in Potenza, Italy.
When they spoke with him about Elisa, he admitted that he had met with her on the day that she was last seen alive at a church, the Most Holy Trinity, in Potenza. At the time of her disappearance, Danny was 21-years-old & the two had, at one point, gone to the same school. Elisa was in her third year of high school & hoped to one day become a doctor. She was the youngest of three children & was extremely close with her family. Those that knew her described her as “happy-go-lucky.”
Some of Elisa’s friends later told investigators that she felt sorry for Danny since he seemed lonely & depressed. On Saturday, September 11, 1993, Danny called Elisa & she reluctantly agreed to meet him at a church the following day so he could give her a gift. He wanted to thank her for helping him get together with one of her friends. The following day, Sunday, September 12, 1993, Elisa arrived at the church at 11:30 am just as mass was ending. When she didn’t come home as expected, her brother called Danny’s family who informed him that Danny was out of town & they had no idea where Elisa was.
Danny ended up giving a statement to police that day & indicated that he’d met up with Elisa at the church for about fifteen minutes until he saw her out at 11:50 am. According to Danny, when she left the church, she was alive & well. He said he stayed at the church for another ten minutes in order to pray.
Later on the day that Elisa went missing, Danny’s sister’s boyfriend, Giovanni, was at the Restivo home & indicated that between 1-1:10 pm, he saw Danny walking back toward the house & described his demeanor as agitated. Danny asked Giovanni if he could take him to the hospital to have a small cut on the skin between his thumb & index finger treated. As Giovanni looked more closely, he noticed that the cut was bleeding, but not enough to warrant a trip to the hospital. Danny told him he’d injured his hand on an escalator & Giovanni noticed that Danny’s clothing was soaking wet despite the fact that it wasn’t raining.
In 1995, two years after Elisa went missing, Danny was convicted in Italy for giving false information about what happened to his hand on the day that she vanished. Police as well as the Italian media were convinced that he was responsible for whatever happened to Elisa, but there was no body or proof of his guilt.
In Heather’s case, Danny had an alibi & indicated that he was at a computer class at the time of the murder. He said he left home between 8:10-8:20 am & bought a bus ticket at 8:44 am in Charminster. However, it was theorized that he had only purchased the ticket to establish an alibi & he could have easily not gotten on the bus at all or gotten off at the very next stop. Either way, the walk to Heather’s would have only taken minutes. Police believed that he was back at Heather’s by 8:55 am where he murdered & mutilated her, changed his clothing & was back on Charminster Road by 9:24 am. CCTV footage captured a man crossing Charminster Road at this time & a shop worker identified this man as Danny.
According to Danny, he arrived for the training course at 9 am & immediately logged on to the computer. However, a particular computer at Nacro where he claimed to be that day had not been used between 9:09 & 10:10 am.
However, at this point, evidence was lacking & police weren’t able to make an arrest despite the fact they felt certain that he was Heather’s murderer. With the information about his link to Elisa Claps, he was placed under surveillance in May 2004 & they quickly saw that he had a habit of going to secluded local parks to observe women. Police filmed Danny watching single women, sometimes even ducking into the tall grass to hide his presence. Despite the fact that it was spring, he wore gloves & waterproof clothing on a dry, warm day. He also changed his shoes & the shirt he wore to an identical one that he stored in the trunk of his car.
On one occasion, while he was being monitored, which incidentally happened to be the 12th of the month, the same day of the month that Heather had been murdered & Elisa disappeared, police were concerned enough to call in back-up & both Danny & his car were searched. They found a fileting knife, two pairs of scissors, a balaclava & gloves. None of these items were illegal, but they were very incriminating & police believed that he could be on the verge of committing another horrible murder & he was sometimes monitored 24 hours a day.
The woman Danny had relocated to England for, an Italian woman, Fiamma Marsango, had two sons from a previous marriage. Covert police recordings from their home revealed that the relationship was strangely parent/child in nature & they could hear Fiamma scolding Danny for lying & she coaxed him to learn English. He also spoke to his parents in Italy as if he were still a small child.
On September 12, 2006, nearly four years after her murder, Heather’s case appeared on the BBC show, Crimewatch. With this, police learned that Danny had a strange fascination or fetish with hair. After the show aired, women called in & investigators discovered that police reports were made by 15 women in the UK & 9 women in Italy came forward regarding incidents that involved their hair being cut. While the women traveled by bus or sat in the movie theater, they realized that a man sitting behind them cut a piece of their hair. During one incident, a woman described finding something white & sticky in her hair after it had been cut. As this was happening, a man said he witnessed Danny sitting behind the woman on a bus with her hair in his hands which were disguised under a jacket. The assumption was made that he had been pleasuring himself.
During a secret recording of his home, Danny could be heard speaking of his love of hair: When I touch the hair, hold them in the hand, then everything is visible, everything. Police found this very intriguing since Heather’s body was found in her bathroom, clutching strands of hair from an unknown person.
It was also discovered that Danny had a long track record for sadism. At only 14-years-old he tied up two boys in the courtyard outside the city library where his father worked as a director & tortured them, cutting their bodies with a small knife. The boys’ families dropped the charges against him in return for 1m lira which is equivalent to $29,498 US dollars. He was also a voyeur who would watch the young students that lived across from him & call them to describe how their clothing & movements excited him.
Police hoped to figure out who the hair belonged to that they found clutched in Heather’s right hand. Extensive examination of the hair revealed that whoever the hair belonged to had been to Florida & Spain or southern France shortly before their hair was taken. It also indicated that they had changed diets. Despite making appeals on Crimewatch & taking multiple trips to Italy to obtain DNA samples from other women, the source of the hair was never discovered.
When Danny’s apartment was searched in November 2006, investigators discovered a lock of hair that was tied with green cotton in a Tesco bag hidden under a dresser which Danny claimed had been planted. More damning, investigators found a green towel in Heather’s home that was draped over the back of a chair & revealed a DNA profile that was compatible with Danny’s. The chances that the DNA came from someone other than Danny were 57,000 to one. When initially confronted with this fact, he said that he had never seen the towel before. However, by the following day, he seemingly came up with another explanation overnight & spoke of something he failed to previously mention, that he had been inside Heather’s home in order to discuss curtains that he hoped she could make for him. He said he utilized the towel as a color match for the curtains he was ordering for his girlfriend.
When Danny first admitted he’d been in her apartment, he said he only went in as far as the hallway, but he later changed his story & said that he went into the lounge so Heather could show him a catalog of curtains.
As investigators looked more closely into Elisa Claps case, they learned that on Sunday, September 12, 1993, the young girl walked into the church & she never walked out. Nearly two decades passed before her family finally learned of what happened to her.
It seemed as if Elisa had just vanished & though investigators had a strong suspicion Danny had something to do with her disappearance, it wasn’t until March 17, 2017, 17 years later that her body was finally discovered in the attic of the very church she was last seen. Those that were well aware of Elisa’s disappearance were stunned when they realized she had been there all along. Workers were repairing a leak in the roof of the church when they came across a mummified & skeletonized body that had been covered by a few tiles, her folded glasses sat nearby.
Locals felt that Elisa’s body hadn’t been found sooner due to corruption or incompetence as the church had not been properly searched. Her clothing & skeleton were examined & cuts to her bones suggested that she had been stabbed at least nine times from behind, mainly to her ribs & three times from the front. One wound would have gone through the front of her neck to her spinal cord & could have been inflicted with a pair of scissors. Her hands, which were rehydrated & examined showed cuts that were likely inflicted as she attempted to defend herself from her attacker.
Elisa’s pants, bra & underwear had been cut with scissors & her pants were found unzipped & lowered. There were desiccated remains of a single strand of hair in each hand. Traces of hemorrhages were found to her inner thighs & breasts which suggests a sexual element to the attack. A red button had been discovered under her body that measured 13mm & was the exact dimensions & color as those that were on the garments worn by members of the church clergy. Soon, a photo of the church’s priest, Don Mimi Sabia emerged & in it, he was missing a button from his garment. The then priest was a close friend of Danny’s & it was theorized that he somehow got ahold of the priest’s key in order to gain access to the loft. The late Don Sabia had apparently stopped a thorough search of the church after Elisa disappeared, possibly to protect Danny.
Most damning, DNA matching the DNA of Danny Restivo was found on Elisa’s clothing, but it was uncertain if it came from his blood or saliva, but given the circumstances, they suspect it was blood since his hand was seen injured & bleeding later that afternoon.
There was evidence to believe that Elisa’s body had actually been found two months before the official discovery in March 2010. According to one of the interim priests in the church, two cleaners discovered the body in January 2010, but were persuaded by the Catholic church to keep quiet until they could figure out how to handle the situation. The leaking roof was said to be an alleged ruse to send the workmen up in March. Workmen were said to be in the attic in the mid-1990s & had only seen a large pile of tiles & rubble. Whereas in 2010, Elisa’s remains were exposed, her glasses folded neatly near her feet & suggested that the crime scene had been tampered with & staged, rubble & tiles removed so the workmen would be sure to find her. Some people felt that the town’s Most Holy Trinity church cared more about its image than doing the right thing.
Despite the fact that the red button that was found under her body was not a match to the others from Don Mimi Sabia’s robe, many question the role of the late priest who claimed that he did not know Danny. Photos emerged that depicted the man attending Danny’s 18th birthday party & Danny had regularly attended services at that church. Many wondered why he would lie if he had nothing to do with what happened to Elisa.
Elisa’s mother, Filomena, was a woman of God who felt let down by the church so when her daughter’s funeral was held in July 2011, she made the decision to hold the funeral in one of the city’s squares, rather than in a church.
It was in 2008 when the DNA on the green towel found in Heather’s home was a match to Danny, but even though it was a break in the case, investigators wanted more solid evidence to ensure a conviction. Finding Elisa’s body was the last piece of the puzzle that investigators needed in order to make the arrest on May 20, 2010 when Danny was arrested in Bournemouth & charged with the murder of Heather Barnett 7.5 years after her death.
Both women, who lived on different sides of the continent, had interactions with Danny, both were found with their clothing cut & hair had been found in their hands.
Because the evidence in both cases were so similar, the judge in Winchester allowed the introduction of the evidence in Elisa’s case to be used in the trial in which Danny was being referred to as the “Barber of Potenza.”
Due to the horrific nature of the murders & the fact that Danny was only 21-years-old when Elisa was murdered, many believe that he likely committed more murders between 1993 & 2002. Detectives also reflected on Danny’s concerning behavior while he was being monitored as they watched him hiding in the tall grass to watch women, incriminating items found in his trunk. Over the years, he has been linked to other deaths, including a series of brutal murders in southern France & Spain.
In September 1997, a young French-Algerian woman, Moktharia Chaib, was stabbed & her breasts as well as other body parts had been removed from her body. In 1998 Marie Helene Gonzalez was mutilated after she went missing in France & in 1999 a British woman named Yvonne O’Brien was stabbed 40 times & one of her breasts was removed while she was in Majorca. In 2003, a 27-year-old South Korean woman named Erika Ansermin, who was adopted by an Italian family, disappeared & her remains have never been found. However, a photo of Erika was found on Danny’s computer that had been downloaded from an Italian news channel. There’s no certainty that he committed any of these murders, only speculation.
On July 12, 2002, 4 months before Heather was murdered, a woman from the same suburb of Bournemouth, 26-year-old Jong-Ok Shin, who went by Oki, was walking home late at night after being out with friends when she was stabbed three times in the back & left for dead. Before she passed away, she was able to describe a man in a “mask”. The woman was from South Korea & given her limited English & injuries, investigators could only assume that she meant a balaclava. A fresh clump of human hair was also found at the exact spot where Oki was stabbed. She had also been stabbed with the exact type of knife that investigators found in Danny’s bag when he was spying on women in the park in 2004. The murder happened only three blocks from Heather’s home & also took place on the 12th of the month, just as Elisa & Heather’s murders had. However, after three trials, a man named Omar Benguit, who was a heroin addict & petty crook, was eventually convicted for Oki’s murder but many feel this was a tragic miscarriage of justice.
Danny pleaded not guilty to Heather’s murder on November 8, 2010 & the trial date was set for May 4, 2011. The prosecution indicated that he killed Heather in a premeditated manner, knowing fully that it would be her children to find her mutilated body. He had deliberately tried to remove forensic evidence that could link him to the crime & referenced his shoes that were soaking in bleach. When the green towel found in Heather’s home was referenced, the prosecution speculated that he used it to wipe Heather’s blood from his body & simply overlooked it when he fled the scene.
During the trial, the jury also heard about Elisa Claps’ murder & the uncanny similarities between the two murders. Both of their bras had been cut in the same fashion & both victims’ hair had been cut. However, the jury was tasked with returning a verdict for Heather’s case alone.
On June 29, 2011, after five hours of deliberation, the jury came back with a guilty verdict & Danilo Restivo was sentenced to life in prison with no minimum term due to the brutal nature of the murder.
Heather’s daughter Caitlin gave a victim impact statement & spoke of finding her mother’s body:
It was at that moment that I felt as if my heart had been ripped out. I was in a state of complete & utter shock & it took months before I accepted the truth. I understood the words used but I felt that things like this don’t happen to people like my mum.
She went on to speak about the fear she lives with as a result of that day. She’s fearful about entering bathrooms, sure that someone is waiting for her. Her mom is no longer there to celebrate her successes or help her through her disappointments. She will never be able to tell her how much she loves her & how much she misses her.
Elisa’s family felt that Heather’s death could have been avoided had Danny been arrested in Italy in relation to their daughter’s disappearance & murder. They believed that the church had not been searched thoroughly enough, that Danny’s house was never searched despite knowing that he was the last person to see her alive.
Some people in Italy believe that Danny was protected since his father was the director of the national library in Italy. There were also rumors & speculation about a church cover-up.
On November 11, 2011, in his absence, while in prison in the UK, an Italian court found Danny guilty & he was sentenced to 30 years in prison in relation to Elisa’s murder.
On November 21, 2012, the Court of Appeal altered his minimum sentence to 40 years after his lawyers argued that the judge was wrong to take Elisa’s murder into consideration during the sentencing for Heather’s case as he had yet to be convicted for Elisa’s murder at that point. The court indicated that it was highly improbable that he would ever be released.
References:
- Drama Quarterly: Remembering Elisa
- Daily Echo: Restivo ‘used pretense of curtains’ to plot Heather murder – QC claims
- Daily Echo: Restivo told “lie upon lie”, Heather Barnett jury is told
- Daily Echo: Restivo jury hears DNA evidence
- Daily Echo: Heather Barnett jury hears more live evidence from Italy
- The Guardian: How Danilo Restivo was caught
- Daily Echo: Heather accused “took in children”
- BBC News: Omar Benguit appeal fails as murder conviction upheld
- The Guardian: Danilo Restivo’s murder conviction is just the tip of the iceberg
- BBC News: Heather Barnett murder: Danilo Restivo ‘would kill again’ fears
- DorsetECHO: ‘Mummy’s dead’
- Wikipedia: Danilo Restivo
- Chilling Crimes: Heather Barnett
- The Guardian: Timeline: Danilo Restivo trial
- R v Omar Benguit
- Express: Did priest help to hide body of killer’s victim?
