The police really need to look at the possibility that Erin Tanti could have got his stubby claws into Lisa Zahra as far back as two years ago
I can’t shake off the nagging feeling that Erin Tanti must have been mucking around with Lisa Maria Zahra for at least two years before he killed her. When I think about it, it’s not really possible that he met her for the first time when he began teaching her at St Michael’s School and immediately took over her life and mind and was able to do all that.
Nor would a man of 23 consider an entanglement of just a couple of months so burdensome, no matter the complications, that his solution to the exhausting problem would be throwing the girl off some cliffs or setting up the scene for her to go over.
It must have been going on for a while before that. Did he pick her out at the theatre school Masquerade or some similar context, and groom her from a much younger age?
I seem to recall comments to that effect, from some of her contemporaries, when the news of her death first broke. An anonymous commenter who described herself as her fellow pupil said that Tanti knew Zahra already when he began teaching at St Michael’s last October, and this girl even went so far as to say to me that Tanti put himself forward for that job at St Michael’s precisely because Zahra was at that school. Lisa Zahra used to miss her own lessons to hang around with him, other pupils said.
If so, then it would explain a lot of things, including Lisa Zahra’s state of mind in the last 18 months or so. We older people sometimes have trouble remembering that it is now perfectly possible for somebody to have a conversation with a 13-year-old in that child’s bedroom without the parents’ knowledge.
In our time, they would have to present themselves on the doorstep and somehow make it past the parents (impossible) or ring the fixed telephone line on a telephone set that tended to be wired into the wall somewhere public like the hallway or the living-room. Parents would immediately notice any odd conversation or strange callers.
Internet and social media changed all that, but even so, until up to just a few years ago it was possible to at least try to monitor situations because most households had just the one computer and, like the fixed telephone sets of old, it was in the living-room. That computer would also have had a big and visible screen that could be seen by anyone else in the room.
Laptops and smartphones now mean that children can have ‘conversations’ with strangers and the adults who look after them are none the wiser. They don’t even need to lock themselves in their bedroom to do it. They can be sitting right there with you watching television and engaging with somebody like Erin Tanti.
Lisa Zahra’s tumblr blog, started around two years ago when she was 13, looks fairly normal, if shaky, in the beginning. The name, theme and username were probably inspired by pop culture video games, and vampire books and TV shows. At around 12 and 13, children of both genders tend to have a fascination with the grotesque and the Gothic. The weirder and the more horrible, the better, because they love scaring themselves. It’s also their way of confronting the reality of ‘scary things’ out there as they emerge from the sheltered chrysalis of childhood.
She started using tumblr in January 2012, posted nothing that February, and there is a smattering of posts that March and April. Then, in May 2012, some creepy posts appear. After that it becomes progressively more disturbing, dark and pornographic. Why pornographic, with a 13-year-old?
Even the colours change. The first months’ posts are in full colour. The more recent ones are black and white. The last four months of posts are especially disturbing. At that age, you do not get to that point alone. You need direction from peers who are a little older, or from evil adults.
Some people have objected to Erin Tanti being called evil. This is probably because they can’t believe that evil presents itself as a gnome-sized amateur actor aged 23, who does stand-up comedy and has a day job as a drama teacher at a private school. The philosopher Hannah Arendt called it the banality of evil when, at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, she was struck by what a mundane individual he seemed.
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Same, I’ve heard from pupils her age that they met at Masquerade and were ‘close’, and she then let him know that St Michael’s was looking for a drama teacher.
He definitely knew her when she was 14, and probably even when she was 13.
Excellent post. Hopefully the police and the legal eagles are reading it and reaching some obvious conclusions.
You’re doing a great job, Daphne.
With her various articles and comments, the lady is doing a great service to all parents and grandparents who may be too busy or indeed too naive and uninformed to note the disturbing early warning signs in their adolescent children and grandchildren. A sincere well done.
Its me or you re defending and normalizing the fact that some people practice self harming like cutting??? that is not normal mind that means that the person needs psychiatric attendance ASAP!!!! the people that self harm theirs self normally is because they are trying to commit suicide and they are not happy with their appearance and they try to destroy their body!!!! that is NOT normal!!!!!! if you are over stressed or depressed do something else but not cutting for God sake!!!! don’t miss inform people if this girl was doing that their parents must have to take it to professional attendance!!!! i am a Psychologist and i know what i am talking about so please don’t say that is normal that women cut their self’s because is not!!!! this people that do that have to go to the doctor ASAP!!!! that by any doctor is consider like a suicide attempt!!!!
[Daphne – ‘i am a Psychologist!!!! Don’t miss inform people!!!’ Indeed you are. No, of course I am not ‘defending and normalising’ cutting. I am merely pointing out the crucial distinction between cutting (a form of self harm) and slashing one’s wrists to severe the artery (suicide). The distinction is essential in the light of attempts being made to portray Lisa Zahra as suicidal. She did not try to kill herself. She used to cut herself, which is different.]
Oh dear. If you really are a psychologist, what does that say about professional standards in Malta?
No. Self-harm is NOT always an attempt at suicide. Suicide IS the extreme form of self-harm but, in the latter case, the practice is akin to other forms of addiction that provide relief from negative emotions or the absence of feeling.
Treating self-harm as if it is always a failed suicide attempt is destructive, not constructive.
If you’re a psychologist I must be Elizabeth Taylor or the standard of educational requirements must have really come down in recent years.
With that style of writing and grammatical mistakes, may I ask what kind of psychologist are you?
I agree with everything you have said so far on the matter, Daphne. Though it had not crossed my mind, in hindsight, yes it makes sense that they’d known each other for a while.
It smelt fishy right from the start. I too believe he had absolutely no intention of killing himself, and that the only intentions he had were of getting rid of the girl.
The stakes were too high, so he needed her out of the way. She must have known something about him, something that would have meant him being imprisonment or maybe killed had “people” found out. What are these stakes? Why did he want her dead?
The thing she knew about him that would have incriminated him is the fact that he was in a sexual relationship with her.
That, in itself, is not a threat.
As has been vociferously demonstrated here and elsewhere, Tanti’s relationship with his pupil wasn’t a secret among her contemporaries.
Ann Rule should be consulted by the Malta Police to help them put this devil behind bars for ever. In this day and age nothing is impossible. Daphne, you have an excellent critical mind, which many out there envy. Keep the good work.
This was posted on Facebook today. Erin’s comment is quite interesting, for all the wrong reasons, “… this is so me (plus sticking out tongue, as you do)”. Check out the date, 31st March, 2012, two years ago, Lisa was 13.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10203807226761073&set=p.10203807226761073&type=1&theater
Dear Ms Caruana Galizia, it is clearly perplexing why this scenario happened.
It is also perplexing that someone who is 23 goes out with a schoolgirl.
However, I feel very uncomfortable at the extent to which you are going to defend Lisa Zahra and put 100% blame on Mr Tanti. Shouldn’t you let the court take its necessary course of action without influencing others?
You make many many statements that may be both true but equally untrue. Your regular attempts to make a character assassination of Mr Tanti makes me feel that ………..for some unknown reason……….you are being deliberately unfair.
In my opinion, they both had problems. It is a question of two emotionally confused people happening to be together at the wrong time. Why are you so keen on defining Ms Zahra yet equally keen on finding every little defect Mr Tanti had? I suggest you read a bit John 8:7 in the Bible please.
I’ going to butt in here. Are you nuts?
Tanti was a 23-year old teacher exploiting his minor pupil. Two confused people? There was only one adult in this relationship and he had a professional and legal obligation to guide his pupil, not bed her and mess with her mind.
Let’s put this differently – would you put yourself in the hands of a surgeon who isn’t compos mentis and then excuse the ensuing mess on the basis of a Bible quotation?
No, not me, either.
Can this appalling story get any worse?
First we read that this monster’s mother knew of his relationship with a minor, and did not do anything about it as though Lisa Marie was some prize trophy for her son.
Now we read that he knew her since she was 12 or 13.
This is a very dangerous man who must never be allowed out of his rotting cell.
His mother should be charged as an accomplice.
Self harm is also another attempt to attract attention. It’s very common for children of that age to feel neglected or hard done by and they frequently look for various ways to be noticed.
I hardly think that a beautiful and clever young girl like Lisa Maria, whatever it was that she was going through, would contemplate suicide. Her advice to him to ‘keep calm’ hardly points at an unbalanced mind.
Thanks, Daphne, you helped me shed some light on this issue.
To tell you the truth, as I admitted earlier, I was quite shocked when I saw the posts on Lisa’s tumblr account, and thought and thought about it constantly, because it made me think in depth about her state of mind and wondered how a young person would arrive at that point.
In fact, in hindsight, yes, I now realize the change in Lisa’s posts and overall mood.
Come to think of it, at first she posted coloured photos, photos that any 15-year-old would take of herself and share on her blog, but then things started turning black and macabre.
Tanti must have started exerting his darkness and evil; it seems clear now.
I hope the police are investigating seriously the fact that the poor girl had fallen victim of this person well before he started teaching at St. Michael school. This venomous snake should get exactly what he deserves.
Well done, Daphne. Excellent.
Good job indeed – what beats me is why Mrs. Caruana Galizia is doing it, and all hoping that the authorities concerned take heed. They should not need any prodding.
You are right about the length of the relationship – it had been going on at least for months.
My 17-year old son was a friend of Lisa Marie Zahra from the drama school. Last July they were part of a small group of students who went on an exchange visit to London and, at the time, she was already involved with Erin Tanti. All their friends knew.
As that anonymous fellow pupil said, Lisa Marie would sometimes skip her own lessons to attend Erin Tanti’s classes, obviously without the school’s knowledge and permission.
[Daphne – So it must have started when she was 14.]
Her old tumblr URL was actually ‘thishellwecallearth’, it was not always ‘omensofdarkness’
Song lyrics, lest anyone assumes the worst.
So she was going through her Goth phase, followed by grunge – which fifteen-year-old with a particular affinity to music doesn’t?