'Serial killer' Silvio Mangion gets life for 1984 murder

Judge Joseph Galea Debono yesterday presided over his last jury trial by sentencing Silvio Mangion, known as Kalang, to life imprisonment for the murder of Rozina Zammit back in 1984.

Mangion was already serving a 21-year prison sentence for the murder of his neighbour and has yet to be put on trial for a third murder. The 45-year-old, from Zejtun, found to be suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, was dubbed a ‘serial killer’ by Galea Debono and “a threat to society that could not be trusted.”

He was found guilty by a jury of eight votes in favour and one against, for killing Zammit at 2pm on 8 February, 1984 with 37 stab wounds. He had stolen a mere Lm200 (466) from Zammit.

Mangion later confessed to police to the murder of two other victims – murders that had been a mystery until when Mangion started talking about them to inmates at Corradino Correctional Facility.

Mangion murdered Francesco Cassar, 75, his neighbour in 1998, for which he was sentenced to 14 years in prison. He is now awaiting trial for the murder of Maria Stella Magrin, 68, who was killed with 13 stab wounds in her house in Bormla. In this case, Mangion was accompanied by two other Zejtun men who are today dead: one of them committee suicide after being arrested in 2005, although he had confessed to his and his uncle’s involvement in the murder.