Ester, fourth victim of feminicide in 2024: her partner killed her, she leaves behind three children

Today's date is January 12th and just 12 days into 2024 four women were victims of femicide. These numbers confirm a statistic that has not changed for years: on average one woman is killed every three days. In most cases, it is her partner, an ex or a family member who kills her. Ester's story has these terrible characteristics and an additional drama, that of three children left orphaned by her mother, killed by her father who then committed suicide.

Ester Palmieri was killed on the morning of Thursday 11 January while his children, all under ten, were at school. She was 38 years old and her 46-year-old partner Igor Moser killed her. The woman was killed in her home in Montalbiano, a hamlet of Valfloriana, in Val di Cembra, in Trentino. She would have been hit with a single stab wound and bled to death. The neighbors saw the companion go in and out. The man's body was found in the afternoon by the police in Castello Molina di Fiemme, in the house where he lived following the separation. The children are entrusted to their uncle who went to pick them up from school. It was her mother who discovered the woman's body when she entered the house at 2.30 pm.

Ester had attended the Armida Barelli beauty school in Levico Terme and had recently opened a holistic center after having worked for years as a social-health worker. Igor Moser, on the other hand, worked as lumberjack.

«These are those stories that none of us would ever want to read. Once again a new murder. The victim is a woman, a mother, who leaves her children alone. I don't want to go into the merits of the matter for which investigations will already have started, but when I read what happened my heart sank, my throat tightened. Thinking of that mother, thinking of those children now alone» wrote the vice-president of the Province of Trento Francesca Gerosa on social media.

The mayor of Trento writes instead Frank Ianeselli: «Yet another feminicide in our Trentino. Another tragedy that seems to have followed the identical, atrocious script. Our thoughts now turn to the victims, a woman barbarously killed, her three young children left orphaned, her family members torn apart by grief. It is an emergency and it concerns us all, especially us men who are often incapable of accepting the freedom and autonomy of women. Let's help ourselves get out of this spiral of violence, let's put aside the claims of possession and control, let's learn a new emotional alphabet. Let's all take the field, institutions, associations, citizens, with concrete initiatives of education, prevention and support. Let's move on, as soon as possible.”

Before Esther they were killed the 71 year old Rosa D'Ascenzowhose husband faked a fall down the stairs when he was actually the one who hit her, 56-year-old Maria Russ and 58-year-old Delia Zarniscuwere found dead in two houses not far from each other in the Agrigento area and a 24-year-old who was allegedly subjected to torture was arrested for the crime.