The ‘Untalented Mr Ripley' accused of double murder
Francis Charles Kaufmann, 46, fled from Italy to the Greek island of Skiathos after the discovery of the bodies in a park in Rome last month. He has been arrested and awaits extradition.
He is, according to the Italian magistrate Flavia Costantini, 'a highly skilled criminal'.
The hunt for Kaufmann started on June 7 when the body of Anastasia Trofimova, a 28-year-old Russian, was found hidden in the bushes in Villa Pamphili park. Trofimova is likely to have died of suffocation. Nearby, the body of her 11-month-old daughter was found, possibly strangled.
Witnesses had seen the mother and daughter sleeping rough in the park with a man who had also been spotted drunkenly wandering with them around the centre of Rome, and who was identified during a police check as Rexal Ford. This was later found to be a fake name used by the American.
The man's final encounter with police was on June 5, when he was seen walking without the woman but carrying the baby in one arm and a bottle of wine in the other. Officers let him go, although investigators suspect Trofimova may have already been dead by then, and the infant had hours left to live.
Kaufmann, a Californian, had posed as a film producer in Rome to obtain €863,595 in tax credits from the Italian culture ministry for a film that was never made. The head of the ministry's film department resigned over the incident this week.
Using another alias — Matteo Capozzi — Kaufmann claimed to have worked with the American director Clint Eastwood and on the 2017 Ridley Scott film All the Money in the World, which has been denied by the production.
Investigators realised they were searching for a fraudster whose life increasingly resembled the film and novel The Talented Mr Ripley, in which an American con artist invents his past and goes on a killing spree in Italy.
Kaufmann is said to have met Trofimova while she was on holiday in Malta in 2023. Their daughter was born last summer. Since Trofimova's tourist visa had expired, Kaufmann chartered a yacht to take them to Sicily to avoid customs upon entering Italy.
Once in Rome, Kaufmann tried to broker new film deals but appears to have run out of money. When his real name emerged, the Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica tracked down his sister in Los Angeles, who claimed Kaufmann was a dangerous con man.
'Charlie was brilliant, he had a way with people,' she told the newspaper. 'He knew how to empathise immediately. When he lived in Los Angeles he would go to dinner with Hollywood directors, with famous musicians. He knew hundreds of stars of the entertainment world.'
Even though he studied film he had only been involved in a few productions, she added. 'He would be capable of selling you your own clothes. He has always been brilliant, handsome, with thousands of women flocking after him,' she said. 'At home we called him the Untalented Mr Ripley.'
He also had a dark side, she claimed. 'He is violent, especially when he drinks or takes drugs. His brain goes blank, he cannot manage his anger. He becomes a monster.' She added that after attacking one of his brothers, he changed his name to Rexal Ford and left the US.
Italian magistrates have reported that Kaufmann was arrested for assault five times in the US and had spent 120 days in jail. On June 5, the day he was spotted by police with Andromeda, Kaufmann left a voice mail for an Italian contact, claiming Trofimova had left him for a richer man, leaving him with the baby.
'Unfortunately, she is not seeing the big future,' he said, adding: 'Whatever it is, it's all good.'
On June 11 Kaufmann took a Ryanair flight to Skiathos and was arrested two days later. He will be brought back to Rome for interrogation next week.
In a video conference with an Italian magistrate, he said: 'I am innocent, I didn't kill them.' He also accused the Italian police of being 'mafiosi'.
Writing in the arrest warrant, Costantini accused Kaufmann of strangling his daughter, describing it as an act of 'instinctive cruelty' that revealed 'the extreme dangerousness of the man'.
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There were people online saying these horrible things about me, and you would expect that to translate into the real world, but it doesn't.'
