When investigators found 15 thawing body parts of a young woman in black garbage bags in a steep ditch in northern Italy last Sunday, they were unclear exactly where to start the identification process. It was clear she had been dead for months, but no immediate missing-persons search turned up any likely identities.
Though her body parts had been frozen—and reasonably well preserved—her face had been burned, making it impossible to identify her easily, police say. But seven of her 11 distinct tattoos were intact, so the police started trying to match the tattoos to any known photos, posting some on a missing persons alert.
Within a few hours, she was identified as Italian-Dutch national Carol Maltesi, an adult actress who worked under the name Charlotte Angie. She started her career on OnlyFans during the pandemic and was picked up by several international pornography production houses, and had done several shoots abroad.
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Among the tattoos still visible were the words “step by step” on her right ankle, “wanderlust” on her right collarbone, and “elegance is the…” down her back. She also had an inverted “V” on one inner thigh and two inverted “V’s” on the other, which were recognizable in many of her porn films. It was soon clear that she had not posted on any of her social media since January, though no one had reported her missing. Her friends say they assumed she was off at some exotic location on a shoot.
Last week, police released her name to find out if anyone had information about her grisly demise.
Early Tuesday, police swooped in on the home of a 43-year-old banker named Davide Fontana in the northern Italian town of Brescia, charging him with first aggravated degree homicide, dismemberment, and concealing a corpse. Prosecutor Lorena Ghibaudo told reporters that the man came forward when her name was announced to say that he knew her but denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
Police said they soon found inconsistencies with his story and started tracking his movements over the last several months. A search of his home found an ample freezer, the same style garbage bags, and DNA evidence linking him to the murder, police say.
Archival video surveillance allegedly showed the two of them in her car in January. The vehicle had not been seen after that until March when it was clocked going through a toll booth in Borno in northern Italy, near where the bags with her body were found. “This man, friend, and neighbor of the victim presented himself to the Carabinieri to provide information about the missing woman, offering circumstances that immediately proved to be contradicted by the investigators,” Ghibaudo said.
When confronted with the evidence, prosecutors claim he confessed to killing her. Among the creepy details of his alleged confession were how he used her phone for the last three months to tell her mother that she had “left porn” and to send kinky messages to her boyfriend, who lives in Holland. After police published photos of her tattoos, several friends and fans wrote her to see if she was ok. “Yes, they look like mine,” Fontana allegedly wrote, pretending to be Maltesi. “But luckily I’m ok.” Fontana’s impersonation allegedly aroused no suspicion, and he told police that no one called the phone number since January.
The man allegedly told police that he had “accidentally” killed her during a consensual tryst, and then, not knowing what to do, cut her up and put her in garbage bags in first her freezer and then later his. Many parts of the body are burned, including her face, and other body parts are missing, leading police to investigate whether he discarded, ate, or destroyed them in a ritual.
