American Teens Took an Italian Cop’s Life. Now They’re Fighting for Theirs.
ROME—Exactly seven months to the day after Americans Finnegan Elder and Gabriel Natale got caught up in a drug deal that went horribly wrong, they were brought into a packed Roman courtroom a few feet away from the widow of the man they are accused of killing.
It’s a saga that started on a warm night last July when Elder and Natale, whose father is Italian, bought aspirin instead of cocaine and demanded their money back from an interloper who set up the deal. Angry, they stole the interloper’s backpack and made a deal to get their money—and real cocaine—in return. But Deputy Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega of the Italy’s paramilitary Carabinieri force and his partner Andrea Varriale met them in plain clothes instead.
What happened next is a matter of life and death, and perception, it seems. Nobody disagrees that a fight between the cops and the young Americans ensued and Rega bled to death from 11 wounds from Elder’s 7-inch military-style knife. But the events leading up to the incident and the circumstances surrounding it are quite another matter.