Villa Pamphili, the deceptions of Francis Kaufmann – Rexal Ford. The manufacturer: “He asked me for help for a film, he arrived with the woman and the girl”

Francis Kaufmann traveled the world with a name that did not belong to him (that of Rexal Ford), intertwining contacts with people unaware of his past and pretending to be a professional filmmaker.

Behind his fictitious identity there is a 46 -year -old American citizen, with various incriminations behind violence: the Courier he writes that He was arrested five times for domestic violence and attacks and served 120 days in prison “By aggression with lethal weapon that caused serious physical injuries (probably a stabbing)”. Now it is under arrest on charges of suffocating an eight -month -old girl, probably her daughter, and of having hidden a woman’s bodymother of the little girl, who claimed to be his wife. The two corpses were found among the oleanders of Villa Pamphili, in Rome. But it is a horror that starts from afar.

«I knew him as Rexal. He asked me for help for the film “

Ian Franses, British producer of the Peacock Film Finance, says he met the man in March 2021. «No, I didn’t know Rexal Ford wasn’t his real name», He declared to Courier by email. “He asked me to help him raise funds for his film entitled Food Fight». A project, Franses wrote in its recommendation, with a three million euro budget.

It is thanks to that report that Francis Kaufmann, still under Ford’s alias, manages to obtain a meeting with a well -known Roman company of cinematographic consultancy. “We received it because recommended by this accredited manufacturer,” says the owner of the company, who prefers to remain anonymous. “He arrived by taxi, well dressed. With him there were a woman and a girl who played in our garden. We are shocked to rethink. “

The meeting takes place on May 7th. Just over a month later, the bodies of the woman and the little girl are found in the park. According to the investigators, the girl was suffocated. The mother, also stripped, may have been killed or left to die. The autopsy is still in progress, but The prosecutor’s hypothesis is that man has acted with lucidity, “showing a high criminal capacity And a dangerous will to complete his criminal intent », writes the investigating judge Flavia Costantini.

The director who passed off as an international cinema professional left a great bitterness in those who had believed him. “It looked like a filmmaker like many others. Our colleagues are very tested: they had seen that beautiful girl who played in the courtyard. Then the photos in the newspapers appeared and the world collapsed on us ».

“He staggered with a bottle in his hand and the girl in tears”

On June 5, two days before the probable double murder, a witness sees him in Largo Benedetto Cairoli. The description is chilling: “Drunk, staggering, with a bottle of wine in one hand and the girl in tears on the other arm». At one point, the deposite on the seat of a parked scooter. The pink flower dress worn by the little girl is then found in a waste basket, not far from the place where the body will be discovered.

That same evening, Ford/Kaufmann films the agents who intervened after reporting with the mobile phone. A gesture that will prove to be crucial: thanks to that phone, in the name of him, the police will discover that he had already bought an aerial ticket to Greece.

Already on June 3, Kaufmann had been noted bleeding near Campo de ‘Fiori. A trader tells of A woman, the same rediscovered dead, who buffered the wound with the girl in his arms. “He was sad and he said to him in English:” You are stupid “”. To the police, the woman declares to be called Stella Ford. But it’s a lie.

As procedural cards show, The violent behavior of man had already been reported on May 20 in via Giulia. On that occasion he had tugged the woman while he was visibly drunk. When asked if he had been attacked, she had answered no. He had covered him.

The escape to Greece and the arrest

After the murder, Kaufmann disappears. The last report is on June 10: it is seen with a trolley, but without the girl. No disappearance complaints, neither for her nor for the woman. The next day, he embarks on an Ryanair flight for the Greek island of Skiathos. Two days later, he is arrested in Volos. In the meantime, the film that said she wants to shoot is recorded in the British database on May 8, a month after the girl’s death.

According to the investigating judge, Man is “not able to control his impulses towards defenseless subjects, as in particular a child of even a year”.