Femicide of Daniela Zinnanti: the electronic bracelet for Bonfiglio was supposed to arrive tomorrow

The electronic bracelet imposed, along with house arrest, for Santino Bonfiglio, 67 years old, a confessed offender of the femicide of his ex Daniela Zinnanti, 50 years old, was expected to arrive tomorrow.

The control device could have prevented the crime: the investigating judge in Messina had prescribed it in the precautionary custody order issued after the report of injuries filed by the victim on February 5 of this year, but it was not available at the time of the execution of the measure. Bonfiglio escaped from his home on Monday evening and stabbed his ex-partner to death.

The crime took place in a central neighborhood of Messina, on via Lombardia, in the province, where the woman lived alone. Her 23-year-old daughter, Roberta, found her after being alarmed that Daniela was no longer answering her phone. Upon entering her mother's house, she came face to face with her lifeless body, immersed in blood. The girl, seven months pregnant, suffered a malaise and was rushed to the hospital. The woman also had another child, aged 28. Both were born from a marriage that ended in 2018.

The long ordeal

On February 5, the police in Messina, called by Daniela Zinnanti, found the woman at Santo Bonfiglio's home "in critical condition, swollen and covered in blood with injuries to her eyebrow and ear". The man, now in prison for killing his ex-partner, told the police that his cohabitant had fallen to the ground because she had consumed alcoholic beverages.
For having subjected her to physical and emotional abuse to the point of reducing her to a state of subjugation and causing her injuries such as rib fractures, Bonfiglio had been placed under house arrest with the use of an electronic bracelet. This precautionary measure was more severe than the restraining order he had previously been subjected to for similar offenses against his partner.
In the order for the precautionary measure, the investigating judge writes that the man had been warned in June 2025 by the police chief of Messina for the mistreatment he subjected his partner to. On May 30, 2025, he hit her in the head with a punch, causing her to fall to the ground and then hitting her with punches and kicks until the woman passed out.
Bonfiglio, the judge writes, had already been convicted of crimes against the person and for carrying weapons or objects capable of causing harm. After the beating in February, the woman was taken to the hospital, where doctors found rib fractures, a cranial trauma, lacerations, and she was deemed recoverable in 30 days after having been given a reserved prognosis. When questioned, Zinnanti recounted a nightmare of fights and beatings that sometimes culminated in attempts to suffocate her and said that after May 31, 2025, she had to seek medical care two more times due to Bonfiglio's assaults.
In February, the woman described having reacted to the beating, and then her partner went to the kitchen, returning with a long-bladed knife and pointing it at her side, he allegedly said: "I'll kill you, drunken whore and crazy woman". He then would have beaten her, throwing her out of the house and causing her to fall down the stairs. "The monthly cadence of the assaults described by the woman - writes the investigating judge - outlines an unsustainable and humiliating living regime, typical of the incriminating offense, not diminished by the various attempts at reconciliation which, rather, confirm the psychological subjugation of the victim.
The investigating judge had ordered an immediate trial for the defendant set for next May.