Ashley Ann Olsen was an American woman living in Florence, Italy, who was murdered in her apartment in January 2016 by an illegal immigrant from Senegal.
The case drew attention as one of a number of murders committed by migrants during the European migrant crisis. [1] [2] [3] According to the New York Times , the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany "resonated in Italy", and the police chief of Florence addressed safety worries, "assuring the public that Florence remained safe" in the wake of the Olsen murder." [4]
Olsen's murder was discussed as an example of the sexual harassment that women, especially young, foreign women, face in Italian cities, and of the victim blaming of young, attractive female murder victims for their own deaths. [5] [6]
Olsen was killed at a time of rising public concern about miscommunication regarding consent to sexual activity between migrant men and European women, and international attention was focused on the New Year's Eve sexual assaults in Germany that took place in a number of cities just days before Olsen was killed. [4] In January, Denmark debated a proposal to ban anyone who could not speak Danish, German or English from entering a bar or nightclub, and news discussion of the proposal included the Ashley Ann Olsen case. [7]
Olsen was the daughter of Walter and Paula Olsen, of Summer Haven, Florida. [8] [4] [9] [10] She was a 1999 graduate of St. Joseph Academy. She moved to Florence in 2014 after the breakup of her marriage to South African diver Grant Jankielsohn, [11] and with the intention of studying art and in order to live near her father, who teaches at an American school in Florence. [12] [13] [14] She was living in an apartment in the Oltrarno neighborhood of Florence when she was murdered. [15]
Olsen, 35, was found dead in her apartment in the Santo Spirito neighborhood of Florence by her boyfriend, Florentine artist Federico Fiorentini, on 9 January 2016. [12] [13] Marks on her neck indicated that she had been strangled to death. [16] [17]
Cheik Tidiane Diaw, a 27-year-old Senegalese national who had recently entered Italy as an illegal immigrant, was arrested for the crime. [4] Witnesses saw the two leave a nightclub in Florence together on 7 January. Security cameras in the street recorded them walking to Olsen's apartment in the early hours of 8 January. [4] After identifying Diaw using security camera footage, police called him in for questioning, arresting him based on DNA evidence. [1] Diaw's attorney, Antonio Voce, said that Diaw and Olsen had consumed cocaine and alcohol. [18]
The lead investigator on the case, Giacinto Profazio, was involved in the Meredith Kercher murder case, a case with which Olsen's murder is frequently compared. [12] [1] [2]
On 9 February, reexamination of security tapes by authorities showed that suspect Diaw had returned to the apartment on the night of the murder and spent a period of time inside after his first departure from it. [19]
Prosecutors asked for a life sentence, the highest penalty available in Italy. [20] [21]
The murderer, Cheik Diaw, is an immigrant who crossed the border illegally from Senegal and who arrived in Italy in 2015. [22] [8] [23] [2] According to the prosecutor, DNA analysis of a cigarette butt and a condom found by police investigators in Olsen's bathroom led to Diaw's arrest. [22]
Diaw was convicted of murder and sentenced to 30 years in prison. [24]
Attorneys acting for the perpetrator appealed the verdict, but the original 30-year prison sentence was upheld in January 2018. [25]
Crime rates in New York City have been recorded since at least the 1800s. They have spiked ever since the post-war period. The highest crime totals were recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s as the crack epidemic surged, and then declined continuously since the mid-1990s and throughout the 2000s.
Amanda Marie Knox is an American author, activist, and journalist. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy following her wrongful conviction for the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation.
In 2021, Istat estimated that 5,171,894 foreign citizens lived in Italy, representing about 8.7% of the total population. These figures do not include naturalized foreign-born residents as well as illegal immigrants, the so-called clandestini, whose numbers, difficult to determine, are thought to be at least 670,000.
The Álvarez incest case was uncovered late March 2009 when 59-year-old Arcedio Álvarez was arrested in Mariquita, Colombia, accused of imprisoning and sexually abusing his daughter Alba Nidia Álvarez over a period of 25 years, beginning from when she was nine years old. The daughter also gave birth to 14 children, six of whom died due to lack of medical care.
Giuseppa Vitale, better known as Giusy, is the sister of Mafia bosses Leonardo, Michele and Vito Vitale from Partinico, Sicily. Giusy took over the command over the clan when her brothers were in prison or fugitives, despite the formal Mafia rule that excludes the participation of women in the criminal organisation. As such she was considered one of a new breed of 'bosses in skirts'. Later she became a pentita, a state witness breaking the "omertà," or code of silence, testifying against her own family.
Assunta "Pupetta" Maresca was an Italian criminal who was a well-known figure in the Camorra. She made international newspaper headlines in the mid-1950s when she killed the murderer of her husband in revenge.
Rosetta Cutolo was an Italian criminal and the sister of the Camorra boss Raffaele Cutolo, head of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), an organisation he built to renew the Camorra. As her brother spent most of his time behind bars from where he sent out his instructions, the everyday running of the enterprise was entrusted to his older sister, Rosetta. Her nickname was Uocchie 'e gghiaccio, meaning "ice eyes".
Erminia Giuliano is a former member of the Giuliano clan of the Camorra, based in the district of Forcella, Naples. Her nickname was Celeste ("Sky-blue") on account of her bright, blue eyes.
Rodney James Alcala was an American serial killer and sex offender who was sentenced to death in California for five murders committed between 1977 and 1979, receiving an additional sentence of 25 years to life after pleading guilty to two further homicides committed in New York State in 1971 and 1977. While he has been conclusively linked to eight murders, Alcala's true number of victims remains unknown and could be much higher – authorities believe the actual number is as high as 130.
Maria Serraino was an Italian female criminal and a member of the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria. She is one of the rare examples of a woman leading a 'Ndrangheta clan.
Giuliano Mignini is an Italian magistrate. He retired as a public prosecutor in Perugia, Umbria, in 2020.
The murder of Jennifer Cave occurred in the West Campus area of Austin, Texas. On August 18, 2005, Cave's body was discovered. In 2009, Chuck Lindell of the Austin American-Statesman called it the "most infamous West Campus crime".
Events in the year 2014 in Italy.
Stone throwing or rock throwing, when it is directed at another person, is often considered a form of criminal battery. In certain political contexts, stone-throwing is considered a form of civil resistance.
The Mafia Capitale is the name given to an organized crime organization, and subsequent investigation, involving the government of the city of Rome, in which members stole money destined for city services and carried out other criminal activities such as racketeering, conspiracy, loan-sharking, extortion, fraud, money laundering, illegal works, and bribery in the public administration. It operated in the city of Rome. However in 2020 the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation ruled out the mafia character of the criminal acts.
On 30 August 2015, married couple Vincenzo Solano and Mercedes Ibáñez were found killed at their house in Palagonia, Sicily. An 18-year-old Ivorian illegal immigrant was arrested on suspicion of their murder; the authorities stated that they suspected that accomplices, likely to be Italian nationals, remained at large. The identity of the perpetrator as an asylum seeker added to the debate on immigration to Italy. The perpetrator, then-18-year old Mamadou Kamara was sentenced to life in prison.
The shooting of Anthony Hill, a U.S. Air Force veteran, occurred on March 9, 2015, in Chamblee, Georgia, near Atlanta. Hill, fatally shot by police officer Robert Olsen, suffered from mental illness and was naked and unarmed at the time of the incident. The incident was covered in local and national press and sparked the involvement of Black Lives Matter and other advocacy groups who demonstrated their anger at the shooting. In January 2016, a grand jury indicted officer Olsen on two counts of felony murder and one count of aggravated assault. Nearing the fourth anniversary of the homicide, it was decided that Olsen's trial would be rescheduled for September 23, 2019, with delays including three successive judges having recused themselves in the case.
The abduction of Chloe Ayling occurred in July 2017 while Ayling, a British page 3 model, had travelled to Milan, Italy for a fake photo-shoot. There, she was abducted by two individuals claiming to be members of a criminal organisation called The Black Death Group. In June 2018, Łukasz Herba, a Polish national from the United Kingdom, was convicted in a Milan court of the kidnapping and sentenced to 16 years and nine months in prison.
Pamela Mastropietro was an 18-year-old Italian woman who was last seen on 29 January 2018. She was murdered soon after in Macerata, Marche. Her murderer, a Nigerian migrant drug dealer named Innocent Oseghale, was convicted and sentenced to life in prison with 18 months of isolation in May 2019. The sentence was confirmed on appeal in October 2020. The murder caused public outrage, anger, as well as anti-immigrant sentiment in Macerata.
Desirée Mariottini was a 16-year-old Italian murder victim killed by African migrants, last seen on 18 October 2018 in Rome, Italy.