City nanny held on cot death bid.
By Bob Dow.
A young Aberdeen nanny is being held in an Italian jail accused of attempting to murder a three-year-old girl. And the mother of 20-year-old Carol Compton said at her city home today: “My daughter is innocent. There’s just no way my girl would do such a thing,” said Pamela Compton (39), of 26 Glenbervie Road, Torry.
Meanwhile, the three-year-old’s grandmother has been taken in for questioning. She is said to have a grudge against Carol. Carol is accused of intending to kill the girl by setting fire to her cot at her home in Elba. The toddler was unhurt.
She has been held in jail since last month, first at Elba and now at Livorno. The first her heart-broken mother heard about it was in a telegram which said: “In jail Livorno Italy. Supposed to set fire to the child’s cot intending to kill her. Telephone to Marco very quickly.”
“I just couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do,” said Mrs Compton. “I want to go out and help Carol but I haven’t any money,” she added. The British Consulate in florence and Aberdeen MP Iain Sproat are now trying to get Carol released and her mother flown to Italy. A spokesman for the Foreign Office in London said consulate officials in Florence had visited Carol twice in jail and were going back to see her son. “Legal assistance has been arranged for her and she’s in reasonably good health,” added the spokesman.
Mrs Compton was told last night the grandmother of the family Carol worked for was being questioned. “I know that she is very bitter towards Carol. She resents having a British nanny to look after her granddaughter,” said Mrs Compton.
Carol flew out to Italy in May to work as a nanny in Rome and be near to her Italian fiance Marco Vitulano, a 20-year-old soldier. Since being jailed Carol has had no visits from Marco, despite him being based near-by. “The way he is talking about the matter, she is going to be jailed for 10 years,” said Mrs Compton. “He hasn’t even offered to put me up when I come across. I think he’s turned his back on her,” she added.
Carol was involved in another fire incident with the first family she was nanny for in Rome. “But the police proved without a doubt it had been an electrical fault,” said her mother. Ayr-born Carol worked for two years at a day care centre in the west coast town. She also worked with her mother in a fish processing factory in Sinclair Road, Torry, where she nearly lost a leg in an accident when a conveyor belt snapped. “Carol is very good with children. She loves them,” said her mother. “The day before I got that telegram I got a lovely birthday card from her for her brother Sean’s second birthday,” she added. “I’m now in the dark about what’s going to happen next. I’ve no friends or relatives in Aberdeen so all I can do is wait by the telephone for any news.”
Aberdeen Evening Express, 19th August 1982.
Nanny’s Italian ordeal may end. Lawyer hopeful of early release. By Susan Dean.
The month-long ordeal of Aberdeen nanny Carol Compton, imprisoned in Italy under suspicion of attempted murder, could be over within days. Edinburgh advocate Mr Lawrence Nisbet, who has undertaken Carol’s case while he is on holiday in Italy, said last night that the evidence was pointing increasingly to Carol’s innocence and that the quicker such information could be gathered the sooner her release could be obtained.
Carol has been held in Livorno Prison since August 2, after she was arrested on the island of Elba in connection with an alleged incident when the cot of her three-year-old charge was set on fire. Speaking from his holiday villa 40 kilometers north of Livorno, Mr Nisbet said that he had seen both Carol’s lawyer in Italy, Sergio Minervini, and the examining magistrate who had been “very sympathetic.”
“From what I can gather he is not very impressed with the evidence and is intending to put pressure on to find out if there is any substantiated evidence. All there is at the moment is a hysterical accusation by the mother of the child. What I have gleaned from the authorities and Carol is that there are no witnesses to her doing anything at all.” Bail, he said, was not ‘appropriate’ at this stage but once the examining magistrate has looked at the evidence he might withdraw the warrant holding Carol on the grounds of insufficient evidence.
“In that case she could be discharged within a few days or weeks – she has not yet been formally charged with anything.” Mr Nisbet said he was pressurising the authorities to speed up the process and that they understood the need for urgency. “There is a strong possibility that an innocent person is being held in prison. The authorities have agreed to do their best to alleviate the situation and I intend to keep up the pressure, while I am here.” There is no date, he added, by which the evidence – incriminating or otherwise – would have to be led, but he wanted to see some sort of action before he leaves to return to Scotland in 10 days.
If Carol did find she had to answer a case, he said, she might have to wait until November for a hearing. Lengthy waits in Italy were not uncommon, he said, and some people had to wait for two years for their trial to be heard. “But from the evidence I have found it is increasingly unlikely that she will have to face a hearing. I believe the family in question had four different girls employed and dismissed within the period of two weeks before they took on Carol. We know that Carol only lasted a little more than one day – apparently the day before the incident the grandfather’s bed was found alight although she was not blamed for that at all and was bathing the baby in the bathroom at the time. Apparently the grandmother had been complaining that she did not like English girls being employed by her daughter – the baby’s mother – and had told Carol that she had a devil within her and tried to strangle her. She seems an absolute nutter.”
It would be necessary, he said, for Signor Minervini to travel to Elba to examine the scene of the alleged incident, and to trace the four girls who had been employed by the family before Carol’s arrival. Mr Nisbet said he may join the trip to Elba to satisfy himself as to how the fire started. “I certainly feel much more optimistic about Carol’s case than when I first arrived on Saturday. I think my being here has helped because I made it clear that a lot of people in Scotland are very concerned about the case. We have accomplished far more in one day than I had hoped for.”
He has obtained a full permit which removes any difficulty in visiting Carol, and saw her for the first time yesterday afternoon. “She’s healthy and being treated quite well but she’s pretty upset. But she was delighted to see me and she’s very pleased that people in her own country are taking an interest as she felt a bit isolated and did not know what was going on.” He would be maintaining regular contact with Signor Minervini and planned to see Carol at the end of this week or the beginning of next week. Carol’s jubilant mother, Mrs Pamela Compton (39), of 26 Glenbervie Road, Torry, said: “When I left my daughter last week I thought I would never get her home this side of Christmas – now Mr Nisbet has built up my hopes. I’m amazed at him – he’s only been there since Saturday and he’s already gone this far. I feel just great.”
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 7th September 1982.
New ghost claims in nanny case.
New claims of poltergeist activity surrounding the case of Aberdeen nanny Carol Compton emerged today. And some of them came from the first family Carol stayed with in Italy. They have said when Carol came into their living-room, the electric meter started whizzing round. They also said on other occasions pictures fell off walls while Carol was present and the baby she was looking after refused to take her hand.
Edinburgh advocate Lawrence Nisbet, pursuing Carol’s case while on holiday, is going to see Carol today. He siad her Italian lawyer, Sergio Minervini, had seen her yesterday and she was very upset. “He said Carol was still upset by the other women she has to share a cell with during the day. One of our first priorities must be to get her moved away from them.”
Mr Nisbet and Carol admits there were unexplained happenings in the house on the day the child’s cot caught fire in their Elba home. She said on the morning of the cot fire, a bowl jumped off a table and a glass was smashed on the ground. She has no idea why or how these things happened. There is some evidence that something strange is going on,” said Mr Nisbet.
Carol is to be given a psychiatric examination a week today and Mr Nisbet still believes a British psychiatrists’ presence is vital. He said media coverage had led to one or two people taking an interest, but nothing definite has come about yet. And he said he may have discovered something which could have started suggestions that Carol is a pyrokinetic.
Currently high on Italian best seller lists is a book called “Fire Starter” by Stephen King: the subject of the book is a young girl pyrokinetic.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 10th September 1982.
Mystery of the fire power.
Italian claims in Aberdeen nanny case rouse interest.
News Extra by Joan Elrick and Colin Davidson.
The bizarre suggestion that an Aberdeen nanny being held in an Italian jail has psychic powers has prompted great interest in the phenomenon of pyrokinesis. Pyrokinesis is defined as the ability to start fires by thought, and the suggestion that 20-year-old Carol Compton may possess these powers has led to Italian authorities calling for a psychiatric examination.
Professor Archie Roy, professor of astronomy at Glasgow University, has investigated cases of psychic phenomenon over the past 30 years. “Cases like these are usually poltergeist cases. That’s where furniture moves around, pictures fall off the walls and there are mysterious noises and bangs. Very occasionally in such cases, little fires break out, and you find one of the human beings in the house seems to be the focus of all this in the sense that when fires start, they are always around,” he said.
Carol has been held in jail in Livorno, on the Tuscany coast, since August 2, accused of setting fire to the cot of a three-year-old girl in her charge, but this week it was suggested that she may be connected with a fire in the house the day before the cot fire – at a time when she was in another part of the building.
Mr Alistair McIntosh and his wife, Dorothy, jointly started the Aberdeen University Parapsychological Society about six years ago. He said his knowledge of pyrokinesis led him to believe it usually involved a teenager or a child – more often a child. “When I heard these claims on the radio, the first thing I wondered was – how old is the child she was looking after? There has usually been some evidence of related psychokinetic activity, including objects which may have spontaneously burst into flames,” he said. “And it only seems to occur when the teenage person or child is disturbed in some way.”
He said it was absolutely vital both Carol and the young girl be properly examined by a psychiatrist if any claims of pyrokinesis are involved.
Professor Roy agreed, saying: “One theory is these happenings are the manifestations of a person’s unhappy state, and it usually happens that the focus is someone young.” He said the focus was usually aged between 12 and 18, but felt he could make no specific comment on the Carol Compton case because he was not familiar with it. “The big problem is that when a young person becomes a focus, no one knows how they manage to do these things. They are not playing tricks on people, it’s just that these things happen when they are around,” said Professor Roy. He added that modern investigators of psychic phenomena talk about SPKP (Spontaneous Psycho-Kinetic Phenomena) when referring to pyrokinesis.
Maurice Grosse is an inventor / industrial designer in London, but his main interest in life is investigating cases of parapsychology. He detailed two cases he was investigating in 1977. They both took place in London, in Enfield and Hornsey, 15 miles apart. “A fire occurred in the house in Hornsey. A drawer had gone alight. Inside the drawer, I found a box of matches. The edge of the box had been burned, but the matches inside were intact. The next day a fire broke out in the Enfield house. Again it was a drawer, and again inside I found a box of matches in the same condition. The only common denominator in the two cases was me. The chief investigating officer of the London Fire Brigade said he had never seen anything like it before,” he said. He said cases like these usually involved people in a stress situation. Mr Grosse later helped research a book about the house in Enfield, “This house is haunted,” by Guy Lyon Playfair. He would not be drawn on who was responsible for the fires in the house on the island of Elba.
But all three men agreed on the need for psychiatric examination. However, they said a psychiatrist was likely to be sceptical as this type of investigation had only recently been accepted on the fringe of orthodox psychiatry.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 10th September 1982.
Decision expected today on Aberdeen nanny.
An Italian magistrate will today decide whether Aberdeen nanny Carol Compton will be released from jail. Carol’s case receives a formal hearing at 10 a.m. and her lawyer, Edinburgh advocate Mr Lawrence Nisbet, is sure the magistrate will grant her provisional liberty. If she is released she will have to remain in Livorno where she has been held for two months in prison under suspicion of trying to murder her former employee’s three-year-old daughter by setting fire to her cot. And she will have to wait until next May for her trial unless the charges are dropped.
Mr Nisbet spoke briefly to the magistrate yesterday and was told the case would be heard today. He also visited the hostel where Carol (20) will be taken if she is released and met the nun who is warden there. He described the nun as very kind and nice in a phone call to his wife in Edinburgh yesterday. Carols’ mother Mrs Pamela Compton, 26 Glenbervie Road, Torry Aberdeen, said last night: “Thank God there is definitely to be a hearing tomorrow. I’m becomoing a nervous wreck waiting here.” She plans to fly out to Italy with her son Sean (2) to be with Carol if she is released from jail.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 5th October 1982.
Nanny’s mother flies out today.
By Henry Milne.
One of the biggest – and most pleasant – surprises in the 11-week imprisonment in Italy of 20-year-old nanny Carol Compton should reach her tomorrow morning. That surprise will come with the welcome visit of her mother, Mrs Pamela Compton, 26 Glenbervie Road, Aberdeen, who flies out today for a 15-day visit to Livorno, where Carol is being held. Mrs Compton said last night: “I thought a visit would upset us both too much but every letter I get from Carol begs me to come and I just could not stand that. She does not know I am coming so I am hoping the surprise will be a tonic.”
During her visit, for which she has had to save hard, Mrs Compton hopes Carol may have another court appearance and may, at last, be released from prison. She flies from Aberdeen to Heathrow early today and then flies to Pisa. From there she travels by train to Livorno. With her she will carry a few luxuries for Carol and a bundle of letters from friends and well-wishers.
Carol was arrested on August 2 following a fire in the bedroom of a two-year-old child, whom she was looking after on the island of Elba. Her imprisonment was followed by rumours of witchcraft and claims that she could start fires by psychic means. Earlier this month she appeared in court at Livorno and her Edinburgh lawyer, Mr Lawrence Nisbet, asked for bail. The request was refused by the Italian magistrate, who said he needed time to examine psychiatric and forensic reports. Carol has still not been officially charged. Meanwhile Scottish Secretary Mr George Younger has asked Foreign Secretary Mr Francis Pym to intervene.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 22nd October 1982.
Nanny speaks of ordeal.
A Scots girl spoke today of her desperation to get away from the Italian family in the Carol Compton case. And 21-year-old Teresa Hunter says she offered the family her gold chain and watch to let her return home. Teresa, from Lanarkshire, claims the Cecchini family worked her from dawn till dusk and treated her “like an animal.” After only a few days in their employment on the holiday island of Elba, Teresa begged her parents to send her money and a plane ticket home as she could stand no more with the family. And Teresa, who now works in a hotel in England, could be a vital witness in helping to prove Aberdeen nanny Carol’s innocence. She has already talked to Carol’s solicitor Lawrence Nisbet, who will meet her next week, and is willing to act as a witness if any trial should take place.
Although Teresa has said that there were no outbreaks of fire in the Cecchini home while she was there, she says that both grandparents smoked constantly. The grandfather in particular was very absentminded and frequently laid down lit cigarettes and forgot about them, she says. She also says that three-year-old Agnese Cecchini, whom Carol was employed to look after, was “obsessed” with her grandparents. “They could well have been jealous of any affection she showed towards her young nanny,” said Teresa.
Mr Nisbet said: “Until recently Teresa didn’t realise that Carol was involved with the same family as herself, but now she wants to do everything in her power to help.”
Aberdeen Evening Express, 28th October 1982.
Jailed nanny faces new line of questioning.
Jailed Aberdeen nanny Carol Compton has been questioned by Italian magistrates about fires in another home where she worked. But her Scottish advocate, Mr Lawrence Nisbet, said last night he was convinced she had not caused them. However, Carol (20) will have to remain in her prison cell at Livorno for at least another four weeks while police investigate further. Mr Nisbet said the fires had taken place in the home of another Italian family where Carol worked before becoming nanny for the Cecchini family.
It was the first family who claimed that Carol had witch-like powers and could start using psychic forces. She has been held for three months under suspicion of trying to murder the Cecchinis’ three-year-old daughter by setting fire to her cot. Mr Nisbet said: “Carol admits these previous fires took place and has perfectly good explanations which I accept. She could not have started them and was not connected with them at all. They happened in circumstances where witnesses can confirm she did not start them by using psychic powers.”
Mr Nisbet learned of the re-examination in a letter he received yesterday from the British Consul in Florence. He plans to fly out to Italy next week. Meanwhile, Carol’s mother, Mrs Pamela Compton, 26 Gelnbervie Road, Torry, Aberdeen, is expected home soon from Livorno.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 13th November 1982.
Embassy confirm Carol has moved jail.
Imprisoned Aberdeen nanny Carol Compton has been transferred from Livorno to a jail at Trento in the Italian Alps, the British Embassy in Rome confirmed yesterday. Carol was arrested after her employers, an Italian family on the island of Elba, accused her of setting fire to their three-year-old daughter’s cot. Carol has denied the accusation. The baby, rescued from the cot by her mother, suffered minor burns.
Italian officials said Miss Compton will be questioned by police in Bolzano, where she once worked as a nanny, about fires there.
Mr Philip Nelson, spokesman for the British Embassy in Rome, said Miss Compton was taken to Trento because there was no women’s jail in Bolzano.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 10th December 1982.
Scottish nanny refused bail.
Scottish nanny Carol Compton, in jail since August on charges of attempted murder and fire-raising, was again refused bail yesterday. A trial judge ruled that Miss Compton (21) of Aberdeen, must stay in jail pending a trial. No date has been set. She is alleged to have set fire to the cot of a baby she was looking after on Elba. Police are also investigating another alleged arson at an Italian villa.
Belfast Telegraph, 8th January 1983.
Aberdeen nanny Carole Compton was today formally charged with three murder attempts and arson. She has been held since August on suspicion of having set fire to the cot of a three-year-old girl while she was working as a nanny on the island of Elba. In his indictment, Franco Paparella, the prosecutor of Bolzano, claimed Carole had made two similar attempts at homes of her two previous employers in Italy. He alleged that the first two attempts occurred in July, 1982, in the town of Ortisel in nearby Gardena Valley in northern Italy.
In the first case, she was charged with setting fire in an apartment rented by Mario and Marcella Ricci, of Rome, “risking” the life of Mario Ricci. Paparella said she made her second attempt in another apartment rented by the Riccis, this time trying to kill their son Enrico. After being sacked by the Riccis, she moved on to Elba hired by another Italian family. There she was accused of setting fire to a cot of three-year-old Agnese Cecchini. The mother rescued the child which suffered minor burns.
Carole was transferred from Livorno to nearby Trento in December, has denied the allegations. Non trial date was given. Carole’s mother flew out to Italy earlier this week from her home in Glenbervie Road, Torry.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 20th January 1983.
Carole’s nightmare.
Aberdeen nanny Carole Compton has been branded a witch by the Italian Press. She has been in jail in Italy for 14 months and is accused of attempted murder and five counts of arson. Parapsychologists believe these fires may have been genuine outbreaks of the paranormal. In December, Carole’s trial will be held in open court. “Twenty Twenty Vision” tonight (Channel 4, 8.30) has secured a unique interview with her as she sits in the Italian prison and the programme producers took prominent British barrister Geoffrey Robertson to Italy to investigate the facts and give his view on what her defence should be. Should it incorporate the evidence of the parapsychologists? Or should it play it safe and stick to a standard defence?
Aberdeen Evening Express, 19th October 1983.
Nanny: Fires Riddle.
No link with Carole – expert.
By a special correspondent.
A fire expert yesterday told the Carole Compton trial at Livorno, Italy, that there was nothing to connect her with mysterious fires he had investigated. Prof. Pitolo Nicolo, of Pisa University, said he had never seen fires like two on successive days in August last year in a house on Elba. He said it was five weeks after a fire in the mattress of three-year-old Agnes Cecchini on August 2 last year before he was asked to examine her cot. He had studied materials at the Cecchini family home where the fires occurred.
“It was very strange that the mattresses burned only on the surface at the same spot, although they were made of different types of material. The burn marks could have been caused by a hot iron but not by a cigarette lighter, a match or any naked flame,” he said. “In my 45 years’ experience of this kind of investigation I have never seen fires like them. They were created by an intense source of heat, but not by a flame. Both fires had the same characteristics – great heat but no flames. I have never seen anything like it before.”
The professor could not explain how the fires occurred and agreed with Carole’s advocate, Mr Sergio Minervini, that there was nothing to link her with the blazes and that his evidence was negative.
A phenomenal aspect of the two fires on Elba – like the three fires in a holiday home the previous month at Ortisel near Bolzano in the north of Italy – was that for some inexplicable reason the fire had moved downwards rather than up. He was giving evidence on the second day of the trail of the 21-year-old Aberdeen nanny who has denied five fire-raising charges and one of attempted murder. She is accused of starting three fires in July, 1982, when she worked as a nanny for a rich roman family, the Riccis, at their holiday home in the north of Italy. The first fire caused £5000 worth of damage to the house, and within four days there were two more fires in the home of a friend nearby, after the family had moved there.
She is also accused of starting a fire in the bedroom of grandfather Mario Cecchini in the house at elba the day after she arrived there on July 31 as a nanny to the baby Agnes, and a fire the next day in the baby’s cot. The baby was sleeping on a single bed in the same room when the fire broke out. The final and most serious charge is that she attempted to murder the child by starting the fire.
The prosecution allege her motive was to be sent back to the mainland to rejoin her Italian soldier boyfriend, Marco Bitulano.
The first witness yesterday was Mrs Emanuella Ricci (32) who hired Carole to look after her son Emanuelle (2). She said the boy cried every time Carole was near him. A year earlier , he was badly burned and every time he touched Carole he said “She is burning, she is burning.” But that meant he did not like her because he used the expression to describe any pain or something he did not like, she said. It did not necessarily mean that Carole was burning her son. She always tried to make Carole feel at ease and at home in her house. On one occasion while she was in Paris she spoke to Carole on the phone and Carole told her she was not happy and had no friends. While she was in Paris she was told by telephone of the £5000 fire at her holiday home in Ortisel on July 11 last year. She could not believe Carole had anything to do with it.
She agreed that Carole did not like being away from her boyfriend in Rome and wept every night. Mrs Ricci said”Carole used to write letters in which she spoke ill of the family, and in one of the letters she said she had been disgusted when she saw a young couple making love behind a beach hut. Every time she phoned her boyfriend she told him she didn’t like the family and that the little boy did not like her. She used to cry when making these telephone calls. Carole once told me that she was unlucky and that something strange had happened. She used to tell me she didn’t know what this strange thing was. It had even happened in Scotland. She said it had been a strange occurrence which she didn’t understand. I couldn’t always understnad her because of her strong Scots accent.”
Mrs Ricci then told of information given to her by her maid, Rosa. “She told me of one occasion when a large picture of the Holy Mary fell off a walland then a vase fell down. Rose said Carole did it and she always told me to give Carole the sack. The picture was on a wall in a dark corridor. It may have been knocked down accidentally by somone. I did not regard it as a paranormal occurrence. But strange episodes after the pictures fell were blamed on Carole. When I returned from Paris, Rosa told me the water boiler was making funny noises and that the electric meter had been spinning when Carole was standing near.”
Mrs Ricci laughed as she added, “But of course, Rosa is a Sicilian and very superstitious. You can speak to her if you wish.” But the president of the court, Mr Guido Galligani, decided it was not necessary to call Rosa.
The next witness was another family maid, Nicole Annaswaby, who spoke of the first fire at Ortisei. “I was coming home from the village at 8 p.m. on July 11 and saw smoke coming out of a window. Carole was standing outside with the child. She was in tears and was shouting “Fire fire”. She hadn’t told anyone about the fire, and although the grandfather was in the house she hadn’t told him either.
After the family moved to the nearby house of a friend to continue their holiday, Nicole said there was a second fire. The grandmother smelt something burning and went to the kitchen. She found rubbish burning in a plastic bin. two days later there was a third fire.
There followed a dramatic confrontation when Carole was brought to the microphone opposite the witness, directly in front of the court president. At times there were heated arguments between the two girls as to their versions of the timetable of events on the day of the first fire. Nicole’s version flatly contradicted Carole’s account of events the day before. The maid said they were in the village with the baby and that she remained behind after Carole took the little boy back to the house. She said Carole wanted to watch the Italy v Germany World Cup game on TV. But Carole told her as she leant towards the microphone that she was lying and that the three of them came home from the village together. Carole and Nicole even disagreed about the colour of Carole’s skirt that day.
Yesterday, Italy’s national newspapers carried headlines such as “The Witch,” “Fire-raiser” and “Simply a babysitter in love. Who knows the real Carole Compton?” “La Nazione” went on to claim that the British Press were there in strength in Italy to show that Carole was a victim of “medieval Italian justice.” The newspaper said it was difficult to understand or explain the mysterious events without going into the difficult world of parapsychology. But her two lawyers had meantime ruled out the possibility of calling in an expert on the paranormal.
When Carole Compton was led into court yesterday she was given two large bouquets of carnations by her mother, Mrs Pamela Compton, and by Miss Theresa Hunter, the Scots girl who was also a nanny to the Cecchini family. But the police would not allow Carole to keep the flowers.
Only five prosecution witnesses remain to be heard and two defence witnesses – Carole’s mother and Miss Hunter. The evidence might conclude today and the trial is expected to end tomorrow.
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 14th December 1983.
‘Witchcraft for fun’ claim in nanny trial.
British nanny Carole Compton could have deliberately built up an atmosphere of witchcraft in two Italian homes for her own amusement, it was claimed in Livorno today. A psychiatrist said the 21-year-old had an abnormal and “naughty” personality. It was possible she created the impression of a spirit world out of devilment. These claims, by the two psychiatrists who examined her, followed Judge Guido Galligani’s first mention of witchcraft on the fourth day of Carole’s trial in the north Italian courtroom. She denies five charges of arson and one of attempted murder.
After being told that Carole’s personality was abnormal, Judge Galligani asked: “Could she have deliberately built this atmosphere of witchcraft for some purpose, or perhaps for her own amusement?” Dr Mirella Bertocchini at first said she felt embarrassed that she could not give a definite answer. But later, after consultation with her colleague, Professor Ludivico Inghirami, she agreed that this type of behaviour could be consistent with the girl’s personality. “Carole has a naughty personality,” she told the court.
The professor had said earlier that fire-raising could be part of an abnormal personality such as Carole’s. But she was responsible for her actions and could not be described as psychotic. He said this type of character could have “short circuits” at times of crisis. Judge Galligani asked: “Could these short circuits happen five times in such a short space of time?” He was referring to the five fires the Ayrshire girl is said to have started while working as a nanny for Italian families. Both experts said this was unlikely. These “short circuits” usually only happened once in a lifetime.
Evidence and final speeches are expected to end today and lawyers predict a decision in the case some time tomorrow.
Belfast Telegraph, 15th December 1983.
Fate hangs in the balance.
The judges and jury in the Carole Compton trial went out this afternoon to consider their verdict after hearing the last words of the public prosecutor, who has called for a seven-year sentence. He told them: “Free this girl today if you feel you would trust her with your own children.” The 21-year-old Aberdeen nanny was then asked if she had anything to add to her defence. She said, “Everything I have said is the truth, and I have nothing more to say.” A decision is expected later today from the two judges and the jury of six, made up of four men and two women.
Earlier, Carole listened as her defence lawyer warned the jury that they could not ignore the “strange things” which had happened in her case. At the end of the two-and-a-half hour speech, Sergio Minnervini asked in Livorno Assize Court: “The normal and the paranormal – what do these things mean? I don’t believe in the paranormal as it is accepted today, but you have got to be modest when considering this subject and accept that you don’t know everything. The human field is immense and not completely explored.”
He said there was no motive to back up the charges. “There is nothing to show that Carole Compton wanted to kill. If she did want to kill she had other ways and means and other times to choose which would have made the task easier.” Three of the fires happened at Ortisel in the north of Italy, and two on the island of Elba. Carole sat listening intently to his speech. Her mother, Mrs Pamela Compton, sat a few yards away in the packed courtroom.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 16th December 1983.
Italian judges anger mother. “They must be kidding. Any excuse will do for these people.” – Mrs Compton.
Lovesick verdict shock for Carol.
Lovesick nanny Carole Compton started cot fires deliberately in a bid to be reunited with her boyfriend. She suffered “pathological nostalgia,” says the written judgement on her attempted murder and arson case. And the judges said she was of “below average intelligence” although they ruled she had no paranormal powers . They dismissed Press speculation that the 22-year-old from Glenbervie Road, Torry, was a witch. But her mother Mrs Pamela Compton said today: “They must be kidding. Any excuse will do for these people.” Carole is away from home staying from friends.
A written explanation of the December 16 verdict – publication some time after the sentence is normal – said Carole did not have a supernatural effect on inanimate objects. The court document said she had started fires in the hope of being reunited with her Italian boyfriend. She hoped her employers would leave their country houses and return to Rome where he lived.
Carole received a two-and-a-half-year suspended jail sentence for starting fires in the homes of two Italian families for whom she worked as a nanny in 1982. She was acquitted on a charge of attempted murder. Her Italian lawyer Signor Minervini said today there would be an appeal. “There is no reason to suppose paranormal phenomena when the facts do not appear abnormal and fine a possible explanation in wholly natural causes,” the document says.
On the lack of physical evidence of arson, the judges said Miss Compton had probably used spirits, of which no trace would remain, to start the blazes. Referring to domestic objects which were said to have shifted or fallen of their own accord, the court said they had really been moved by Miss Compton, who was trying to create an air of unease as part of her bid to return to Rome.
Signor Minervini contested the findings and said it was hard to believe that Carole, said by the court to be of below average intelligence, could have thought up such a complicated plan.
Earlier today, Mrs Compton broke her silence for the first time since the trial. And she backed claims by an international interpreter that Carole had not had a fair trial because of translation difficulties. “Justice was not done,”said Mrs Compton. Mr Albert Daly, president of the International Association of Conference Interpreters, has attacked the interpretation at the trial. “It is impossible to get a fair trial unless you can get the evidence across,” he said. And his association is offering to help at any appeal or retrial.
Mrs Compton said: “The girl doing the translation had taught in England but she could not understand Scottish. She wants a crash course.” Throughout the trial, translation was “an awful problem,” Mrs Compton added. At one point Carole said she went to make a cup of tea and it was translated as making a meal. The defence had to ask for phrase-by-phrase translation.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 5th January 1984.
Blaze nanny ‘not a witch’.
Scottish nanny Carol Compton did not use witchcraft to start fires in the country homes of her Italian employers, a court ruled yesterday. She started the fires deliberately in the hope that she would be allowed to return to Rome, where her boyfriend lived, the court said. The court in Livorno, Italy, was giving its reasons for convicting Carol of arson last month. Carol, 22, returned to Britain after she was given a two-and-a-half-year suspended sentence.
Daily Mirror, 6th January 1984.
Appeals from both sides in Carole Compton case.
Defence and prosecution lawyers are planning to appeal against the verdicts given last month at the trial of Aberdeen nanny Carole Compton in Italy. Carole (23) Glenbervie Road, was held in prison for 16 months before being cleared of attempted murder. She was found guilty of starting fires in Italian homes where she worked, but walked free after being given a backdated two-and-a-half-year jail sentence.
Her Italian lawyer is working on an appeal against her conviction which could be heard before the end of the year. But her Aberdeen solicitor, Mr Nicol Hosie, revealed yesterday that the state prosecutor also plans to appeal against the trial verdict. Mr Hosie said details of the prosecution appeal were not yet clear, but added, “It would appear to be on the basis that the reasons for her acquittal were not well-founded.”
Aberdeen Press and Journal, 1st February 1984.
Mr X to wed Carole Compton.
By Alison Shaw.
The Aberdeen girl branded a fire-raising witch is now planning a perfect end to her months of misery .Carole Compton is to get married this summer. But she is keeping the name of the man secret as she is under contract to a TV company. And the girl who suffered such heartbreak after being jilted by her Italian fiance when she was suspected of trying to murder a child, has now found happiness back home.
In just four months following her ordeal in a grim Italian jail Carole (22) has found romance again and the wedding is set for August. She is to marry a man who knew her before she left Aberdeen for a love which quickly turned sour after an extraordinary chain of events. And at last the happy ending to the saga has pleased her family.
“I’m glad for her,” said her mother Pamela, of 26 Glenbervie Road, Aberdeen, who stood by her daughter during her 16-month nightmare. Carole left Aberdeen in the summer of 1982 to follow her Italian fiance Marco Vitulano, whom she had met in Scotland, back to his home where he was to complete military service. She quickly found a job as a nanny but soon after that the first of a series of mysterious fires flared up in her employers homes. In the fifth strange blaze her employer’s three year old charge’s cot was found alight and Carole was detained by police.
Then the long-winded Italian legal system began to creak along and the Scots girl was put into solitary confinement until a judge interviewed her during his secret, pre-trial investigation. Her foreign fiance broke up with her shortly after the arrest and she has not seen him since. She was later cleared of attempted murder, found guilty of two charges of arson and one reduced charge of attempted fireraising and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years imprisonment. But because of the time she had already been in prison she was given a conditional discharge and freed immediately.
Her case was given world-wide publicity and in a recent magazine interview Carole said she had even thought about changing her name to cope with life back home. However, she recently found work with a city fish merchants and now has the wedding to look forward to. Today she wouldn’t say who would be her groom. Her mother explained she was under contract to a television company but added, “She’s going to have a nice wedding. It’s a happy ending.”
Aberdeen Evening Express, 3rd April 1984.
Freedom at last.
By Judy Mackie.
Prison is a nightmare which still haunts Carole Compton. It transformed her from a popular, carefree young girl into a terrified recluse, shunned by the drug-addicts who were her cellmates. Jailed for fire-raising and attempted murder, she had been branded by the press as a 20th century witch – and those wild-eyed, drug-tormented women weren’t taking any chances. Now, as she lounges on the comfortable settee at her home in the suburbs of Bradford, with her children playing happily around her, Carole’s calm blue eyes and the simplicity of her words belie the horror of the memories.
“It was a terrible experience. I felt completely isolated. No one would talk to me, or touch anything I had touched. I cried a lot.” She speaks of terrifying scenes in the cells when the women suffered violent drug withdrawal symptoms, yet her expression never changes. Following the fire at the Cecchini’s house on Elba, shse had been taken to an ancient, crumbling prison in Livorno. Believing that her arrest was a misunderstanding, she was sure that her fiance Marco (posted on national service at Ortisei), would help sort things out. But she never saw him again. When he heard that she had been accused of attempting to murder a child by arson, he ended the relationship without hearing her explanation.
Rejected by Marco and facing serious allegations, Carole telegrammed her mother in Aberdeen. Convinced of her daughter’s innocence, she fought tooth and nail to raise money to travel to Italy and help pay Carole’s expenses. “She was tremendous,” she remembers with a smile. “If she thought things weren’t happening fast enough, she wasn’t scared to chase people up.” Another friendly face Carole came to rely on was Sergio Minervini, the fatherly Italian lawyer who took over her case. “He treated me like one of his family, even though I couldn’t afford to give him half the fees he should have had.”
Her story was broadcast world-wide, and letters of sympathy flooded in from as far afield as New Zealand. Yet in spite of all the support, Carole was to remain in prison for 17 months before being brought to trial. The notoriously slow Italian judicial system allowed the prosecution (both the Cecchini and Ricci families) months to gather evidence. Press sensationalism angered the judge and he refused to give her bail. “I said that if I was a witch, I’d just bend the bars and fly out of the window on my broomstick, but teh authorities didn’t think that was funny,” Carole says wryly. But she wasn’t amused either. Italian newspaper headlines grew ever wilder as members of both households revealed their side of the story. Rosa, Emanuela’s maid told them that a hot water boiler had started to bubble and a picture of the Madonna spun round and fell off the wall when Carole passed by. Emanuela claimed that little Emanuele was scared of Carole and screamed that he was burning every time she touched him. “It was all rubbish,” she says.
When she was eventually brought to trial in December 1983, the courtroom resembled a circus. She was locked in a large iron cage – used for terrorists, around which swarmed crowds of reporters, photographers and cameramen, hungry for a glimpse of the “witch.” The betrayal continued. Carole listened, stunned, as members of both households made statements which she insists were lies. It’s something she has found difficult to come to terms with. “When I came back home, I used to think about it all the time and wonder why they said those things. I never did them any harm. I told the truth. I was the stranger in the family and I got the blame. I still wonder who really started the fires.”
A group of people had their own ideas about that. Two leading British experts in the paranormal, Guy Lyon Playfair and Dr Hugh Pincott, offered to give evidence on Carole’s behalf. They believed the fires and breakages were a result of the poltergeist phenomenon – that Carole, alone and homesick in a strange country, was the unwitting focus of telekinetic and pyrokinetic activity. Her maelstrom of emotions unleashed some inexplicable psychic forces which have nothing to do with witches or the supernatural. Their testimonies were never heard, not least because Carole herself wanted nothing to do with them. She left the court a free woman, although she was found guilty on two counts of arson and one of attempted arson.
Today, she’s less fearful. The appendix of her book, Superstition, contains Playfair’s fascinating explanation of what may have happened. “I don’t really know about the paranormal explanation… if I was somehow causing these fires, I wasn’t aware of it. All I know is that nothing like that has ever happened since.” And as far as Carole is concerned, the fact that she has at last found peace with a loving husband and two beautiful children, is purely coincidental.
Superstition, by Carole Compton with Gerald Cole, is published by Ebury Press.
Aberdeen Evening Express, 6th February 1991.