Italy in shock after the mysterious disappearance of Gioele, a 4-year-old boy: human remains have been discovered…

Steph Deschamps / August 19, 2020

They would “very probably” belong to the 4-year-old child who disappeared on August 3 with his mother who was found dead on August 8.

This is the case that rocked Italy in August. On August 3, Viviani Parisi, a 43-year-old DJ, and her son Gioele disappeared in the north of Sicily. They had been seen one last time on the side of the Palermo-Messina motorway, after a minor collision in a tunnel.

Their disappearance quickly worries and takes a macabre turn when the forty-something is found dead on August 8 in a nearby forest, near the town of Caronia. His body lay at the foot of a high voltage pylon.

However, there was no sign of the child. "All hypotheses are open, from the accident to the extreme gesture," said prosecutor Angelo Cavallo, in charge of the investigation, as searches to find the toddler continued in the region. "Homicide, kidnapping, accident: all the scenarios considered", headlined the daily Corriere Della Sera, displaying the photo of the woman with long blond locks, all smiles behind the decks, hanging on the neck of her husband, also a DJ, or her little boy in the arms.

Except this Wednesday, the feared news broke. Human remains probably belonging to Gioele were discovered by a volunteer participating in the research, according to Italian media. “There is a virtual certainty that this is the body of Gioele Mondello,” said sources familiar with the investigation quoted Wednesday by the daily Il Corriere della Sera. According to these sources, it is "the trunk and a piece of femur compatible with that of a 4 year old child ».

Viviana Parisi's body lay at the foot of a high-voltage pylon in a nearby forest in a mountainous area, near the town of Caronia. It was not far away that the human remains were found shortly after noon on Wednesday.

The prosecutor in charge of the case Angelo Cavallo attended the scene, accompanied by investigators and a forensic doctor. According to the newspaper La Repubblica, "animals could have butchered" the body of the little boy.

Viviana and Gioele disappeared after she told her husband to go buy shoes in a nearby town. She was not seen anywhere that morning, but her gray Opel Corsa was pictured on the highway, with the child aboard in her baby seat, apparently alive.

Shortly after her accident, the woman stopped her vehicle on the side, crossed the guardrail into the bush of Caronia. Two witnesses say they saw her then with her child in their arms.

On Wednesday, all Italian news channels immediately echoed this latest twist live, in a news item that filled the pages of all the press on the peninsula.