By Marco Roberti
ROME, Nov 5 (Reuters) – An Italian court on Thursday found American Francis Kaufmann guilty of murdering his Russian partner and their infant daughter, whose bodies were discovered in a Rome park last year, in a case that shocked Italy.
The Rome court convicted Kaufmann, who came from California, of killing Anastasia Trofimova, 28, and their 11-month-old daughter Andromeda, and sentenced him to life in prison.
Kaufmann had denied the charges.
Prosecutors said Trofimova was killed first in early June 2025, and that CCTV footage subsequently showed Kaufmann carrying the child towards the Villa Pamphili park and returning around an hour later without her.
Kaufmann left Italy soon afterwards and was later arrested on the Greek island of Skiathos.
His defence argued that there was no hard evidence proving he had carried out the killings. “This is a trial based on circumstantial evidence, and circumstantial evidence is not proof,” defence lawyer Paolo Foti told the court on Thursday.
However, the court, comprising two professional judges and six lay judges, found him guilty and handed down a life term, including three years of daytime solitary confinement.
TV PROGRAMME HELPED RESOLVE CASE
Anastasia Trofimova came from Siberia and met Kaufmann in Malta during a vacation in 2023. Their daughter, Andromeda, was born in June 2024 and the family later moved to Rome.
Kaufmann, who also went by the name Rexal Ford, presented himself as a film director or producer.
Police initially struggled to identify the mother and child after their naked bodies were discovered within hours of each other on June 7, 2025. A breakthrough came after the story was showcased by a popular TV programme that appeals for help in finding missing people or resolving unidentified cases.
One viewer told the programme that she had seen police dealing with a bleeding man accompanied by a young woman and a child in Rome less than three weeks before the killings.
Investigators found information about the incident in police logs and then saw that police had stopped Kaufmann again on June 5 when he was visibly drunk and alone with Andromeda.
Prosecutors said Trofimova was already dead by then, but suggested the child might have been saved had police intervened more forcefully.
(Reporting by Marco Roberti; writing by Crispian BalmerEditing by Keith Weir)
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