Mother told on live TV uncle strangled her girl

AN ITALIAN mother whose anguish over her missing daughter gripped the nation for weeks was told on live TV that the teenager had been slain, allegedly by the girl's uncle.

A shocked Concetta Serrano murmured "my brother-in-law is innocent," and "I can't believe it" as she sat in the dining room of the uncle's house, where the show was being shot.

The TV anchor of a popular show about missing person cases on RAI state TV told her late on Wednesday night the breaking news that "one of the persons" being interrogated by police in Taranto, southern Italy, had allegedly confessed to killing Sarah Scazzi, 15, and that the body had been found. While much of the nation watched, calls were made to the mobile phone of the uncle, Michele Misseri, who, along with his wife, Serrano's sister, had been interrogated for hours and was still being questioned.

Misseri didn't answer. At one point someone telephoned the mother, who went pale. She then asked the TV show's reporter at the uncle's house if the news was true, the La Repubblica daily quoted the anchor, Federica Sciarelli, as saying. "At that point we told her, 'Ma'am, perhaps it is better if you go home,"' Ms Sciarelli recounted.

"OK, let's go," the mother said, her face drawn as she left the room.

Sarah disappeared on August 26 while she walked the short distance through the town of Avetrana to her uncle's house, where she was supposed to meet a cousin to go to the beach along the Mediterranean in Puglia.

Taranto Prosecutor Franco Sebastio said police had pulled out the waterlogged body of a blonde girl resembling Sarah from a cistern yesterday after Misseri had led them to a spot covered by stones and leaves.

DNA testing will be done to positively identify the body.

Mr Sebastio and police officials said Misseri had confessed shortly after Sarah disappeared. News reports said he strangled her after she spurned his sexual advances.