Serial killer unanimously convicted of third murder, prosecution calls for life sentence

State Prosecutor Nadine Sant has called on Judge Lawrence Quintano to jail Salvatore 'Kalanc' Mangion for life, as the court heard final submissions on sentencing, soon after jurors returned a unanimous guilty verdict for the murder in 1986 of Maria Stella Magrin, 68 in Cospicua.

Jurors returned their unanimous verdict on three of the four counts related to the murder at 10:35pm, as an emotionless Mangion stood in the dock.

This was Mangion's third conviction for murder, and is already serving a life sentence and a 21 year term for the previous two cases.

An emotionless Mangion starred at the Judge as the First Juror read out the verdict.

Assisted by a nurse who at times administered medicine to the 47 year-old certified schizophrenic patient at Mount Carmel Hospital, Mangion appeared stone cold throughout the entire proceedings.

Not a sigh or word, not even the slightest movement from the man who left jurors no doubt that he handled the knife which brutally stabbed an elderly woman to death in 1986.

Dressed in a pair of paint-stained track suit trousers, brown leather booty shoes without socks, a white shirt and undone tie, and a dark blue jacket three times his size, Mangion was visibly oblivious to the proceedings.

Legal aid lawyer Simon Micallef Stafrace who appeared for Mangion appealed for clemency from the court, and to take into account the accused' state of mind.

He stressed that Mangion was only 21 when the murder was committed.

State Prosecutor Nadine Sant urged the court to jail Mangion for life.

"He has tarnished our nation's great reputation of a friendly people," she said, adding that a unanimous verdict as handed tonight was a rarity in Maltese judicial history, and reflects society's call for the maximum jail term possible.

She said that Mangion's three murders puts Malta to shame when one compares the population ration with bigger countries who have witnessed serial killers.

The murders, she said, were committed without any particular motive.

"They were cold blooded, just to steal small amounts of money, from defenceless citizens," Sant said.

Evidence

During the trial forensic pathologist Ali Salfraz and consultant histopathologist James De Gaetano, who together with  Prof. Marie Therese Camilleri Podesta' had carried out the autopsy on the 68 year-old Maria Stella Magrin, said that told jurors that the victim had died a "very brutal death."

"Besides haemorrhaging, the victim's lungs were stuck to the chest wall," the experts said, adding that Magrin had received a total of 11 stab wounds, all of which were inflicted with alot of strength.

"One of the stab wounds was so violent that the penetrating knife broke a rib and punctured a lung," the said.

Mangion was 21 when the murder was committed, and used to be in the company of two other suspects, Leli Spiteri and his nephew Oswald Spiteri, who are both dead. All three knew the victim.

The accused and Oswald Spiteri had both admitted their involvement in the murder when arrested some 20 years after.

Leli Spiteri died in 2004 while Oswald Spiteri committed suicide in the police lock-up during the investigations on the case.

Life sentence

Mangion is already serving a life sentence for the murder of Rosina Zammit, 54, in Safi in 1984, and was also jailed for 21 years for the murder of Francis Caruana in 1998. Both were killed by stabbing.

Two years ago, Judge Joseph Galea Debono had described Mangion as "Malta's serial killer.'