ROME — A 54-year-old bricklayer killed his wife and two sons, 16 and five, “to free them from demons,” Carabinieri said he told them on Sunday.
The man, Giovanni Barreca, said he murdered the victims in their home outside Palermo at the urging of a Sabrina Fina, 42, and Massimo Carandente, 50, whom he met through evangelical prayer services. In a text to a friend two weeks before his murder, Barreca's elder son referred to Fina and Carandente as "the Brothers of God," raising fears of a formalized, violent sect in the Palermo countryside.