Despite being 65 years old, Colombian trans woman Marta Castaño Torres did not give up her risky job. She had to raise money to support a daughter and the means to achieve it was her body.
She offered sexual services on a prostitution web portal, under the nickname “Yessenia”, and rented a small apartment in Rome, Italy, together with a Venezuelan colleague. She received the clients there, without suspecting that one of them would bring her death.
Marta was one of the three victims of an alleged serial killer, who in less than 24 hours killed three foreign whores with a knife. (Read: Colombian sex worker, 65, one of those murdered in Rome).
According to information obtained by local newspapers, such as Il Reformista, Italy Press 24 and Il Corriere della Sera, the events occurred in a middle-class neighborhood called Prati. On the busy Via Durazzo, Marta and the transgender Venezuelan Francesca Neri rented a small apartment in a basement.
On the night of last Wednesday, November 16, according to the account that Francesca gave to the authorities, the Colombian received a client in the apartment and spent the night with him, alone.
The next morning he arrived at the apartment and found her lifeless, with a deep stab wound to the chest.
Stunned, the Venezuelan phoned the police. To add to the horror, the uniformed officers were a few blocks away, attending another crime scene.
THE SECOND ATTACK
In a building in the same Prati neighborhood, located on Via Augusto Riboty, a 42-year-old Chinese pimp managed an apartment for sexual encounters.
On Thursday morning, a man entered with a 25-year-old prostitute, also a Chinese national.
Soon after, the young woman began to scream, asking for help. The pimp burst into the room and jumped on the client, trying to wrest the knife from him.
The girl took the opportunity to escape, while the matron fought with the assailant, but he managed to subdue her and stab her to death.
Then he caught up with the young woman on the ladders and attacked her mercilessly.
At that time the other residents of the building were in a meeting of co-owners. When they finished, they found the two bodies, on the stairs of the common area and the room, and no trace of the murderer.
The Asian victims did not carry documentation, so their full identities have not been confirmed by the Police.
According to the Italian press, investigators presume that the three women were murdered by the same person, based on a series of coincidences:
1). The proximity of the crime scenes, in the same neighborhood.
two). The time in which the events occurred, apparently in the span of 11 hours.
3). The murderer’s method: attack with a knife during the sexual act.
4). The profile of the victims, foreign prostitutes. The death of the pimp was apparently circumstantial, when she intervened to defend her compatriot, although years ago she also practiced her profession.
The hypothesis of a serial murderer hanging around brothels has alarmed those who practice prostitution and pimping in Rome. In addition, he again put the magnifying glass on this activity, overwhelmed in the surroundings of the Vatican, where striptease sites, swinger bars, erotic massage parlors and brothels abound.
The phenomenon of migration has also impacted these businesses, turning residential apartments into sites for clandestine sexual encounters.
Little is known about Marta’s family so far. Her roommate told the police that she had an 18-year-old daughter, and that in order to provide her with an income and a better future, she decided to become a prostitute.