Tanti’s jacket was found next to Lisa Zahra’s body – with his passport and car-keys in it
The big mystery so far has been why Erin Tanti decided to climb down after he pushed/threw Lisa Zahra off the cliff.
Wouldn’t he just have unlocked his car, got into it and driven off to the airport? After all, he had his passport, his cash and his..car keys.
He climbed down to make sure she was dead, I said. But that didn’t quite justify the risk and effort.
He climbed down because he remembered that she had her mobile phone on her and he wanted to destroy it, others commented on this website. But all calls and messages are logged by the service providers, and probably even he knows that, so that explanation doesn’t quite cut it.
It is clear that he climbed down, and climbed down for a reason. A climb like that needs to be motivated by something that left him with no choice but to do it. What could that be?
Also, why did he not climb back up, once he had done/got what he wanted? Why did he stay down there waiting to be ‘rescued’?
Another blank is drawn.
But then, of course, when more evidence emerges in court, the reason becomes obvious, as clear as day.
Tanti’s jacket was found lying next to Lisa Marie’s body. And his passport and car-keys were in it.
He went down to get them. He had no choice. The passport would have linked him to the crime, and without his car keys he would not have been able to move his car from the top of the cliffs, putting his link to her death beyond doubt.
He faced a choice between:
1. walking off, leaving his car at the top of the cliffs and his passport and car-keys next to Miss Zahra’s body below, and
2. making the risky climb down to get them.
He chose the second option. When he got there, he found that he couldn’t reach his jacket (or couldn’t find it to start with) and so he was forced into a second choice:
1. as 1. above, or
2. stay down there and pretend he jumped.
So how did his jacket get down there without him, but with his keys and passport in it?
I think Lisa Marie snatched it and threw it off the cliff in anger when she realised where they were and that his plans were not hers. There was already some of that in the text messages. She wanted to live with him. He pretended he wanted to kill himself.
And he retaliated by pushing her after it. And that is why jacket and girl landed in the same spot, and he did not.
80 Comments Comment
Reply to Benny Hill Click here to cancel reply
I actually do not understand you.
Let’s say the Courts take 5-6 years to decide this case.
Let’s say this fiend is found guilty and imprisoned. He’ll be out in 7-10 years.
This means that 12-16 years down the line there’s gonna be one psychopath on the loose who’d be after your scalp.
Are you sure you wanna forge ahead with this campaign?
I mean – it’s a free country, do as you please … but I’m not sure you’re doing yourself a favour, ma’am.
[Daphne – What a stupid man you are. Each one of your comments irritates me more than the last. You’ve always got some unpleasantness or double meaning simmering below the surface. I despise people like you.
You are speaking to somebody who had her home set on fire twice, who has had to live with police protection at various intervals, who is set upon in the street by mad mayors and their mob, who is routinely and savagely insulted in the worst possible ways by the worst possible hamalli, the dregs of Maltese society, and who has been targeted by that vicious criminal Meinrad Calleja, no less, who has been out of prison for a while now. For 20 years now, I have known how to carry out a bomb check on my car – the police taught me. Am I likely to worry about what Erin Tanti might do several years hence? No. It is people like you who worry me, because you are more morally corrupt than than they are, the difference being that you stay on the right side of the law. You do not realise, however, that your morality of ‘saving yourself first’ is exactly what made Erin Tanti do what he did.
And your use of the word ‘campaign’ gives you away. I fear people like you more than I fear Erin Tanti, who I don’t fear at all. Individuals like you are far more vicious and underhand, and just as I can read Erin Tanti, I can read you. Know that I can see your agenda and that I have registered the motive in every single one of your insidiously malicious comments.]
You really don’t come here very often, do you ‘Reporter?’
Very poor choice of monicker there, by the way.
[Daphne – He does, actually, usually with some double-edged remark. Very unpleasant person.]
Oh he does? Then he’s every bit as dim as his namesake over at MaltaToday it would seem.
Another very unhinged ‘Reporter’. Sick, also.
Tanti can always choose to be true to his word.
Reporter, why should this case take 6 years?
Ten years, but only on one count, there are more.
Do you for one moment think that you can make Mrs Caruana Galizia shut up? You just don’t know her.
One might, like myself, find it difficult to agree with her on many topics but one simply can’t not admire her for her guts.
So try climbing another tree.
How right she was when she said, “What a stupid man (or boy) you are.”
With that kind of reasoning, would you have advised Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino not to fight the war against the Sicilian Mafia? Both knew they are marked men, both used to joke between themselves that they are living cadavers; so was the Palermo police commissioner a marked man.
Hundreds of law enforcers fought the was against the Mafia and many got killed trying to protect society from such evil doers.
Are you afraid to face the truth, Reporter?
And he calls him “Reporter.” He definitely does not have the attitude of a reporter.
Oops: And he calls himself…
The majority in Malta (including myself, alas, on too many occasions) are moral pygmies – feigning ignorance of wrong doings, refusing to openly acknowledge the impropriety around us.
Others, like Reporter, furthermore gleefully observe the troubles of, and even ‘subtly’ threaten, those who dare shine a light on wrongdoings. One can see Reporter voluntarily joining the ranks of informant networks like the Stasi-Spitzel; the sort of person one avoids like the plague.
You sure sniff them out, Daphne. I once knew a person who reasoned exactly like this creep; all innuendo and what-if scenarios meant purely to creep you out. For a moment there I really thought it was my unsavoury ex-work colleague…
Mrs. Caruana Galizia does not need me to defend her but I still feel I should say that, were she afraid of the likes of Erin Tanti, she would not have had the stamina to continue with this blog.
I disagree at times with her strategy and tactics but I admire her strength of character and her sense of what freedom of expression is about.
If others in Malta, including myself, had half her spine the country would be better for it.
daphne,why is it that everytime someone doesn’t agree with you, you call him/her stupid or ignorant etc. who do you think you are? 1 minute you are a “journalist and the next minute you are a “detective”.
the only thing you are good at is being nasty and a rotten bitch.
You need to be like that with stupid people. It’s the only way one can make absolute sure he’s still sane when faced by stupid people like you who ask stupid questions.
Good journalists are good detectives.
Makes more sense that she tried to hold to him by his jacket once she discovered what’s going on and pulled his jacket down with her.
The jacket is lighter than her body mass and most probable they would have ended up in different location if she threw it.
[Daphne – You can’t pull somebody’s jacket off them. People have arms. So does Erin Tanti.]
Could it be that Lisa had Tanti’s jacket on her shoulders? I think it was cold at 4 am on Dingli Cliffs.
[Daphne – Ever the romantic, in the face of mounting evidence to the contrary, canon. And ever illogical. Let’s just take this step by step. A girl gets out of the car planning to jump. But it’s cold, so she takes the guy’s jacket and slips it over her shoulders (even though she had one of her own) so as not to be cold on the way down. That really makes a lot of sense. About as much sense as a man locking his hoard of cash in his car before killing himself.]
The jacket was next to, or near her. Not on her. He was THERE! Maybe the booze and pills are the reason he left it there, I don’t know. But that jacket puts him RIGHT there next to the girl’s body.
My first reaction (before I knew what I knew now) was that this girl – who I did not know – must have, for whatever reason, tried to get away from Tanti (as in “escape from him”), and lost her footing in the dark, resulting in her falling.
Always assuming that he walked down (seeing that he not only remained conscious, but alive too, and that he was found perched on a rock several metres away from the cliff edge), I had naively thought that he went down to find her/help her.
The more I hear about this cold, callous man, the more I wonder how Masquerade and St Michael’s Foundation employed him to work with children.
And yes, Daphne, I think that your conclusion is correct.
My thoughts exactly all along!! However reading this post I just recalled reading the comments on Times of Malta’s Facebook page when they were reported missing.
Someone wrote that they were wearing matching military jackets. Perhaps she was wearing his jacket, passport and all when he threw her off, and then he realised his passport and keys were in that jacket.
I am horrified by this terrible tragedy and my heart bleeds for the poor girl and her family, and I am so shocked at the ignorance of people and the comments of those defending this horrendous man! May justice prevail.
She wasn’t wearing the jacket if it was found near her. There might have been a struggle between them.
I think he must have used the clothes as props. Why would he have taken off his trousers?
The jacket was there first, the trousers came off afterwards in an attempt to distort the reality of what happened.
How can someone survive a 40 foot fall, then be able to take off his jacket, with 3 broken ribs, then with a broken hip, remove his trousers?
[Daphne – Forty metres, not 40 feet.]
Read the TVM report. He had his trousers off for bizarrely different reasons, given the circumstances.
Erin did not have a fractured hip, what he had apart from cracked ribs was a grazed knee, injuries commensurate with a fall from a very low height.
This is even beyond tragic. To think of all the children and youngsters this warped excuse of a human being came into contact with makes me sick.
I really feel for the Zahra family and can’t even start to imagine what they might be going through.
I hope that the whole truth will come out and justice is served. May God rest Lisa’s soul.
Amen. May her faith in humans lighten our misery.
‘Also, why did he not climb back up, once he had done/got what he wanted? Why did he stay down there waiting to be ‘rescued’?’
He probably unintentionally injured himself in the dark. That place isn’t easy to move about in during the day, just imagine in the dark.
Now that he’s hurt and cannot climb up again his only other option is to pretend he jumped too.
Yes the darkness definitely plays a part, and is probably why he sustained his piddly little injuries, stumbling and fumbling about looking for his jacket, etc.
That would explain the cause of his injuries. He evidently made his way down to the foot of the cliff only to find that his jacket was stuck a few metres above the ground.
He then climbed up to recover his jacket, only to lose his hold and topple down sustaining his slight injuries, cracked ribs and a grazed knee.
His jacket could have been placed on her by him acting as a gentleman in the cold air of the night or early morning while they argued outside near the cliff.
He then pushed her off that cliff in a fit of anger and rage to only realize too late that the car keys and his passport were in his jacket that went down with her.
[Daphne – That’s the second time in a few minutes that a man of a certain age has had this mental image of Tanti placing his jacket on the girl’s shoulders to keep her warm. You’re out of date. Younger men don’t do that any more, girls don’t expect it, and people like Erin Tanti just don’t even know it’s an option.]
But why was he found posing trouser-less on that rock?
Because, while jumping off a cliff, he took off his shoes and trousers and placed them at the foot of a rick before he slammed into another rock at 100kph simply grazing his knee and cracking a few ribs.
How do you explain the “multiple rib fractures”, Xerlokk?
How do you explain his surviving a 40-metre ‘jump’, kev? The second coming of Christ?
1. Falling off a tree.
2. Jumping out of a tree.
3. Falling off a rock.
4. Jumping off a rock.
How do you explain his surviving a 40m leap onto jagged rocks, Kev?
How do you explain everything else, kev?
“You’re out of date.”
Well, I still do listen to Buddy Holly and Gene Vincent recordings and I must admit it is a different world out there than when I was a young man.
Yes I suppose, things are done vastly different now by youngsters old enough to be my grandchildren.
very simple… perhaps his trousers were in his locked car.
They were found near a rock.
Now the whole situation makes sense… sadly, we will never know the truth because it seems that Tanti has no intention to deviate from his lies.
Wrong, the truth will come out – that’s why there are forensic experts who are capable of determining what happened without referring to Erin Tanti..
Wrong, the truth died along with Ms Zahra.
We will never know what happened exactly…R.I.P Lisa!
If people think like Spite does or like Spite would like to think, forensic experts and medical experts would be removed.
There’s a trail leading to the girl’s death and the trail started with Erin Tanti – his sicko thoughts on Facebook, deviantart and other social networks which he will never be able to remove.
There’s a trail at the school he worked at – I never understood how her friends are claiming that she skipped lessons to join his classes – the school has to answer for this
There’s a trail in the exchange of messages.
There’s a trail in the last moments of Lisa’s life.
Trails can not be removed
How can you dare mention RIP and at the same time wish it’s just RIP finito ende?
from Maltatoday: 11:58: Arnaud: The jacket found on the scene, worn by Tanti, had been removed because he felt hot from the sun as it went up. He also says that the jacked was moved from the spot by the police, but used as a marker to track movements.
Read: Moved from the spot by the police. May be far-fetched but could this be defence’s plan to cast a doubt whether the passport and keys were “planted” inside the jacket by someone? possibly the police? If there is a doubt, the theory that he climbed down to retreive his keys and passport will not hold.
Here we go, Maltese ‘loopholes’. ‘Beyond a doubt?’
This story is terribly sad.
I agree with most of your analysis here, Daphne. However, I am not sure that Tanti pushed Lisa Maria out of simple retaliation for throwing the jacket. There’s more. I think he murdered her in retaliation to the girl rejecting him in some way.
[Daphne – You misunderstand me. I did not mean that he killed her in retaliation for throwing his jacket off. I meant that he planned to kill her all along and it was that plan, accelerated by immediate anger about his jacket, which would have made him push her there and then.]
For example, Lisa Maria, at some point during the fateful day, could have told him that either she wanted to end the relationship because her father found out or she had second thoughts about the affair because of guilt, of conscience or some other reason.
She expected a normal reaction; the man walking away heartbroken or something of the sort. (We all expect normal people to walk away when they are rejected. And, at that age we certainly cannot foresee the entire range of possible reactions of adults. In middle age very little surprises us. At teenage almost everything does.)
As a sociopath with an over-inflated ego and a deep-seated feeling of entitlement, that rejection triggered the subsequent manipulation and attempts to play on Lisa Maria’s feelings.
That’s where I think Tanti quickly consolidated his plan.
I am not casting any blame on Lisa Maria here. Hers was normal behaviour. The SMS wherein she tried calming Tanti down is a tell-tale sign of her normality. That he drove her to Dingli Cliffs shows not mere premeditation but callous forethought.
I think the psychological definition of sociopath will be important in the trial. I just hope that he does not plead insanity or some mental imbalance and that the jury swallow that hook, line and sinker.
Isn’t that what he is aiming for? Why did he have a “nurse in blue” next to him for the duration of the sitting?
The moment she discovered the passport in the jacket-pocket her time was up.
It was up before then if she did not have her passport with her herself.
Many have used diminished responsibility as a defence, or MacNaughton’s rule, the defence might try and bank on diminished responsibility swaying the jury towards a lighter sentence.
Going for an insanity plea meaning that the accused cannot distinguish between right and wrong, but in this case I cannot see anything other then a crime committed with premeditation.
Although I agree with most of your theories, Daphne, there seems to be a point which no one has mentioned. At fifteen a girl is not used to drinking much alcohol, and alcohol combined with an amount of aspirins over a 4 hour period would surely have had an effect on Lisa Zahra.
How did she get out of the car? Walk to the cliff edge? Look for a good spot from where to jump? And finally jump?
[Daphne – The autopsy will have determined the amount of alcohol/pills present, and that will come out in court. The police will also say how much of the whisky bottle was gone, and how many of the pills were missing from the packets.
I don’t think Tanti drank significantly or took pills. If he had, he would have been unable to drive to Dingli cliffs at 4am without passing out at the wheel.]
Agree that Tanti didn’t drink much and doubt if he had any pills as after 12 hours he surely would have had severe side effects.
I think that he got her drunk, if not passed out thanks to the combination of the alcohol and pills, and then helped her to the edge and pushed her off.
He has already paved the way with regards to the amount of whiskey originally in the bottle, by saying that it was left over from his (recent) birthday party.
The conclusion you’ve come to makes a lot of sense.
There is one thing which I am not completely clear about in my head – Erin Tanti’s motive for killing Lisa.
In Maltese criminal law, finding a motive is not necessary to prove guilt, but I still feel it would be very useful to know exactly why Tanti decided on killing her.
You hinted that he may have wanted her dead because of the feelings of hatred he felt towards what he perceived to be her and her family’s higher social status. I agree with this, but I would appreciate it if you could elaborate on your thoughts regarding the motive aspect of this crime.
[Daphne – The difficulty you are facing is that you are using the yardstick of normality to assess the abnormal. That doesn’t work. You and I would never even have thought about casually throwing somebody off a cliff to get rid of inconvenient situation (her talking to the police/her father about how he had sex with her). But to somebody like that, needs must when the devil drives, as they see it. They do it casually because human life matters little to them, and human dignity even less. You only have to look at his obsessive writing about the ‘functional’ aspects of human sexuality to see that. For example, I know (knew?) a couple of men who thought nothing about having sex with other men to get what they want from them, even though they are not homosexual (the other men were). One even did it so as to sell them stuff, in much the same way a certain kind of woman would. They regard it as the means to an end. The end is the be-all and end-all and the means don’t matter at all. The word you are looking for here is ‘brutalised’: these individuals are completely desensitised.]
I see, I think I understand better now. He is truly evil. The look on his face as he was photographed in the police car, outside the law courts, sent shivers down my spine.
Interesting you should say that, about the ‘functional’ aspects of human sexuality. Erin also dated a guy and he definitely seemed like the sort of person to do even so though he wasn’t particularly interested in him.
Erin Tanti has said that Lisa Marie was mistreated by her family. Photos of the girl show her as normal child with a very healthy glow on her face. Children who are treated badly do not dye their hair, would not have lovely skin. Lisa had everything to live for. Erin had none.
In my view, and this is pure speculation of course, Tanti knew that Lisa Marie would have been the most important or key witness in any trial on a charge of statutory rape.
Her death would have rendered a conviction much more difficult.
The testimony of other witnesses would have been simply hearsay (dictum de dicto).
‘I just hope that he does not plead insanity or some mental imbalance and that the jury swallow that hook, line and sinker.’
I am of the opinion that ALL murderers are mentally ill.
To deliberately kill someone requires crossing a profound boundary. Most of us couldn’t do it. We couldn’t even think about it. But they can.
Mental imbalance is all the more reason for keeping someone away from society and locked up for life.
I take a behavioural approach to jurisprudence: evidence that Tanti killed someone is sufficient to lock him up and throw away the key. As soon as we open the door to concepts like insanity we introduce reasonable doubt and the possibility that Tanti may walk.
The evidence we have before us is sufficient. We do not need to establish whether a person is mentally ill or not.
So he faked an attempted suicide. Wasn’t he unconsious at the hospital for a couple of days? Or not?
Not. He spoke to his rescuers, to the ambulance staff and, initially, to the police.
He was conscious enough to refuse to cooperate with the police when they questioned him in hospital.
Or how about we apply Occam’s Razor here.
She was wearing his jacket because it was cold.
[Daphne – When girls and women are cold, they wear their own jackets. And you’ve just walked into that one, haven’t you. If she put on a jacket because she was cold, she had no intention of jumping.]
Yeah, he went down at 4am, couldn’t find her or his jacket because it was too dark, and slipped and hurt himself somewhere, also because it was too dark to see, and then decided to come up with the story that he wanted to commit suicide too.
If the proper toxicological tests have been performed at the hospital it should be easy to determine whether Tanti was lying or saying the truth when he said that they had both taken pills.
From blood tests it should be possible to determine what amount of medication he took and even approximately at what time. Similar tests would have been carried out on Lisa Marie Zahra.
A person who is at the point of falling off a great height will grab at anything nearby, including another person, to save her/himself.
A jacket not actually worn as it should be, for any reason, could easily have been grabbed in such a case.
I have been struck by Tanti’s statement to the police that his pupil looked him in the face before her fatal fall, however it happened.
I see that someone has already flagged the article in the magazine “Seven” that comes out with “The Sunday Telegraph” on the characteristics of a psychopath.
I feel there is a point which is being overlooked; in the video it is almost clear that Erin was in his boxers. Why would he take his trousers off if his sole intention was to jump in a sort of Romeo and Juliet scenario – and I certainly don’t believe THAT.
Daphne, well done for standing up that idiotic pea-brained “reporter”.
I read your blogs religiously every evening. I love your wit. You are one brave woman.
I look up to you without shame, as a hero, and someone I so wish I could be. But I happen to not have your strength.
I am so sorry for what you have been through. I think even the toughest of characters would have crumbled at some point. But you proudly dusted yourself down and got up again. You are the epitome of the strength of a woman.
May God bless you and keep you safe always.
For once I am agreeing with Daphne. 100% something is not right. I don’t know them but I know how a 15yr old girl’s mind works and if she thought he was her true love she would have done anything to please him.
Poor girl. The name he gave her on his mobile is not helping with my feelings about him right now especially when he said he was planning to run away with her.
[Daphne – Not WITH her, but without her.]
Can’t they ask Tanti whether he jumped off the cliff or whether he went down to see if she was alive or not.
Surely that’s the reason he was found down there as you previously stated.
I may be asking a stupid question as I’m sure these things have been thought of but I remain curious about this, especially with blatant liars and schemers like him.
[Daphne – He was asked repeatedly during interrogation and he refused to answer. Then eventually he claimed to have jumped. But obviously, he can’t have done because he had no injuries. When asked about that, he refused to answer again.]
There is one detail that strikes me as strange. When the AFM rescuers reached him he immediately declared that his ‘friend’ was dead and he repeated this a couple of times.
Unless you know that for a fact – which he could not have done unless he actually climbed down to check her pulse – wouldn’t normal behavior in that situation be to hope against hope that your ‘friend’ had survived and ask repeatedly for the rescuers to go to her aid first?
After all if he expects his story to be believed he survived a 40-metre fall so why should he have assumed beyond doubt that Ms Zahra had not survived unless he knew otherwise?
[Daphne – Yes, I thought the same thing. But that would be because he knew for a fact that she went over (and obviously died), whereas he walked down (and so did not). He gave himself away.]
The motive? It crossed my minds, after hearing about his likes/interests before this tragedy happened, that he could have well done it to get a kick out of it. It’s the sort of thing that appears to excite him.
Where can I email you, Daphne, please?
[Daphne – dcgalizia@gmail.com]
I honestly think you’re just speculating. The girl was suicidal, with previous suicidal attempts. I doubt it was him who pushed/ threw her. On the other hand, there isn’t a chance in hell that I’ll believe he also jumped, no human being can jump 40 metres and come out of it with a few fractured ribs and a grazed knee. But yes, the whole him throwing her off or whatever you’re trying to pass on to your readers is ridiculous and definitely a dirty trick of yours.
Oh and by the way, as the 20 year old that I am, men do still give you their jackets and open doors for you.
Go on now, call me stupid because I’m not believing every word you’re trying to feed me.
[Daphne – No, I won’t call you stupid, but I will say that young men like you and Erin Tanti make a strong case for mandatory military service.]
Bombz you are beyond stupid.
Dave, please explain to me how you’ve come to this conclusion? I am not defending Tanti, anzi, like many of you , I think that the fact that he was out boozing with a student of his up till the early hours of the day is appalling and I surely think serious action must be taken towards that. Hopefully better back ground checks will be done when employing anyone dealing with minors. But, although not completely eliminating Daphne’s version of events, I would not be surprised if the girl actually wanted to commit suicide seeing as she had previous suicide attempts. I also imagine that if someone wants to end their lives being a bit intoxicated would help make it a bit more bearable. Again, not defending Tanti, never knew the guy before all of this so obviously I did not care for him, and now my feelings are still the same.
But congratulations Dave on your arrogance, you seem like an absolute delight.
(And Daphne, I am a 20 year old woman.)
[Daphne – When minor are in the company of an adult, the adult is responsible for their welfare. So whether she wanted to commit suicide or not is irrelevant. He is 100% responsible, as an adult, for buying pills for a minor and taking that minor the the cliffs at night. A man of 23 and a girl of 15 are not equal in this situation: this is what you fail to understand. If you are 20, as you say you are, any 15-year-old you may take out for a drive or a picnic in whatever context is considered to be in your care at the time. In your care, and not in your company.]
I think that the teachers at St Michael must have felt that something was not quite right with Lisa Maria, just visiting her tumblr blog left me quite shocked even though I’m not a naive young girl any more: http://omensofdarkness.tumblr.com/sluts
Didn’t any of them care enough to try to help this poor girl and maybe even talk to her family?
There are images posted here of the girl showing her slit wrists with blood…and this creep Erin Tanti thing couldn’t have found an easier prey.
If Erin Tanti really cared about Lisa Zahra he surely would have alerted her family or school guidance teacher after seeing her posts of tumblr under her name: Murder (written the other way round) and many, many hints of something very dark brewing up: http://omensofdarkness.tumblr.com/archive
I mean, sure, who doesn’t go through a dark patch at 15, but Tanti encouraged the girl, took her to the exact location where I would never ever ever dream of taking my pupil of 15 going through a rough patch in the middle of the night, giving her whisky and aspirin too.
If Erin Tanti cared about his pupil he would not have become involved in a relationship that could only destroy her. He says he planned to break up the night she died – to abandon her, in other words, leaving her to face the music alone.