There is only one douche-bag in this equation, and he is also a psychopath
UPDATED: It has since been reported by The Malta Independent that Tanti refused to cooperate with the police during three interrogation sessions, and that he told the police that he took all that cash and his passport (we didn’t know about the passport before) in the car with him because “he planned to leave the country if his suicide attempt failed”. So my assessment below is correct: he planned to kill Lisa Zahra and leave Malta, but something went wrong. “In case his suicide attempt failed”? What – a 40m plunge off the cliffs? He is not just a murderous psychopath, but stupid with it.
—————————————–
I cried when I read Times of Malta’s report about what Erin Tanti said in court today. It was cold, calculating, emotionless and he is lying through his teeth. The temptation to fly at him and tear him limb from limb must be nearly overwhelming for those who loved her.
It is nearly overwhelming for me, and I never knew her except when she was a baby, but I was 15 once and so were my children.
There is no remorse. His first words to the police who pulled him up from beneath those cliffs were: “I screwed it up.” Nowhere is there any indication of emotional distress.
He had Lisa Marie Zahra’s number listed in his phone under DOUCHE BAG. No, I am not surprised. I have been adamant from the start that what he felt for her was contempt, that she symbolised for him all that he despised even as he envied it, that he targeted her precisely so as to derive pleasure from abusing, demeaning and eventually destroying the symbol of what, to him, was privilege.
The evidence presented in court also shows that my information was correct about his having stolen thousands of euros that belonged to his comedy group – but that money was not held in a bank account, as I reported, but in a cash box in his Valletta house. His comedy partner James Muscat, known on stage as James Ryder, confirmed to the police that the box held Eur3,000.
The police found only Eur2,500 in cash in Tanti’s car, so unless the couple of cheques they also found made up the balance, they might well find that he used that balance to pay for a flight out of Malta. He can’t have spent Eur500 on whisky and pills.
He claims that they planned suicide together. What a blinking liar. People intending to kill themselves don’t raid the ‘company’ cash-box of all its contents and run off to the suicide spot with Eur2,500 in cash and three cheques (was he planning to cash them at the Afterlife Bank?).
The least credible part of his story – screaming, outrageous, insulting and offensive lie, actually, because nobody can be expected to believe it – is where he described how Lisa Marie Zahra and he ‘jumped’.
He would have the court believe that Lisa Zahra jumped after saying to him ‘don’t be a coward’ – and he claims he saw her at the bottom. It was 5am, before dawn. Even allowing for a full moon, you can’t see somebody lying at the bottom of a 40m cliff at 5am. Rescuers and picnickers couldn’t even see her in broad daylight.
Tanti then said that he felt he had to jump as well, so he closed his eyes and did so. “When I opened my eyes, I found I was at the bottom,” he said. Oh for heaven’s sake: this is a 40m drop we are talking about, and we are expected to believe he floated.
Significantly absent was any description of the sensation of falling, or of finding himself alive after floating down 40 metres onto a large rock.
His comedy partner, James ‘Ryder’ Muscat described him to the police as a psychopath.
The testimony in court also makes it clear that he first met Lisa Marie Zahra in the classroom around three months earlier, when he was her teacher and she his 15-year-old pupil. He won her trust, began having sex with her, made her pose for obscene pictures (no doubt filed under something worse than DOUCHE BAG) and when her father went away for a few days on business, he went to her home, parked himself there, and slept in her bedroom. Her brother, who is in his 40s and married with a child, called the police on being alerted by their father, who had in turn been alerted by the handyman. (Their father flew back immediately).
I hope that the dimwits who are still defending Erin Tanti now get their thoughts in order. Here we have a teacher who had sex with a 15-year-old pupil shortly after meeting her, who had her pose for obscene photographs, and who parked himself in her bedroom when her father was out of the country. A TEACHER. A GROWN MAN.
Imagine what a thrill he got out of that – if I know that kind of man well enough (and I do), the biggest thrill he would have got would have been out of having sex with Tony Zahra’s 15-year-old daughter in Tony Zahra’s house, when Tony Zahra doesn’t know. Many of those defending him have, tragically, the same lanzit mentality, the mentality of doing in those you believe more privileged than you are. Tanti said that he was afraid of the consequences because ‘her father is a powerful man in the country’. That reveals his mindset. Somebody like me would not perceive Tony Zahra as ‘a powerful man in the country’ but as Tony Zahra.
Tanti told the court that he decided to kill himself because he didn’t want to be known as a paedophile. Even if that were true, it is does explain why he wanted Lisa Marie Zahra dead too. People who plan to kill themselves do not take money with them for the trip to the afterlife.
Of course he wrote a letter to his mother, a so-called ‘suicide note’. I suspect that if we were permitted to read that suicide note, we would see that it is in fact ambiguous and that what he is talking about is ‘going away’.
My considered view from the outset is that this man, whose own business partner described as a psychopath, panicked on realising that 15-year-old Lisa Marie Zahra’s father had discovered that one of her teachers was having sex with her, and that the inevitable was about to happen.
This would have happened whether her father was powerful or not: a police report, followed by criminal prosecution, dismissal from his job, and headlines that meant he would never work again. It is the law that decrees it illegal for a teacher to have sex with his pupils, and not the power of the parent.
He decided to kill Lisa Marie Zahra, fake her suicide, and abscond with the cash that he stole from his comedy group. He either threw her off the cliff himself or he pumped her full of whisky and pills and talked her into jumping.
The only explanation I can think of as to how he ended up down there when he had locked the car and had all the cash inside and clearly had every intention of staying alive, is that he decided to make his way down after dawn to make sure she was dead and couldn’t report him, and was then unable to make his way back up again.
That’s how he knew exactly where she was – in the tree he pointed out to rescuers. He couldn’t have known that unless he went looking for her. It is possible to get down there – you might have noticed that there are cultivated fields in the same place.
Then, when he couldn’t get back up, he devised his emergency Plan B: pretending that he jumped in a double suicide but somehow miraculously survived by floating down on the back of the Angel Gabriel.
The point that shouldn’t be missed here is this: had his plan succeeded in its entirety, he would have driven off and Lisa Marie Zahra’s body would not have been found. Nobody would have assumed that a girl of 15 would be lying dead hidden by shrubbery at the bottom of Dingli Cliffs. There would have been nothing to link him to the murder except for circumstantial evidence, and he would have got away with it.
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It seems rather clear from the text messages between them that she wanted to kill herself. He, on the other hand, was having second thoughts all throughout the ordeal (which is why he took cash and his passport), and instead of jumping he probably just slid down the cliff in a failed suicide attempt.
The fact that he put her under Douche Bag definitely did not mean anything. He just didn’t want people to know he was speaking to her. That’s what men do when they have a mistress.
[Daphne – Get your head examined. I mean that.
1. You are talking about an adult teacher and a minor pupil.
2. You cannot ‘slide down’ a 40m drop.
3. The fact that he listed her under ‘douche bag’ means that this is exactly what he thought of her.
4. When men have a mistress whose phone call ID they want to hide, they list her under another name, and not under DOUCHE BAG. This is not only because men don’t think of their mistresses as douche-bags, but also because there is no name flashing up in a list or on the screen more likely to attract further investigation than something like DOUCHE BAG.
5. Erin Tanti is 23 and unmarried. He has no need to hide the fact that somebody called Lisa is calling him. He does not have a wife. Lisa can be anyone.
6. Now dial a psychologist and make an appointment, fast. ]
Young people call each other douchbags (and bitches and whores and other things) all the time. Both men and women do this. It’s a term of endearment. Are you not aware of that?
[Daphne – No, they don’t. You are wrong. ‘Bitch’ and ‘douche-bag’ are used in good-natured teasing as ironic and not literal names, and almost always by people of the same gender. If any man, however young, were to call any woman, however young, a douche-bag, he would expect to be flattened.
No, men and women DON’T do that. Very young teenagers do. Listing the girl you are ‘seeing’ in your phone book as DOUCHE BAG says that this is how you think of her. Don’t clutch at straws. Your hero is a murderer who treated Lisa Marie with contempt. Face up to it.]
And he admitted he was embarrassed that he was going out with a minor, and extremely worried about the consequences, and in fact he only told his grandmother about it. So he didn’t have to be married to want to hide the fact that his pupil named Lisa is texting him 24/7.
[Daphne – You need an IQ test too, I see. How many girls and women are there in the world called Lisa? If the name ‘Lisa’ flashes up on the phone of an unmarried male teacher, would you assume that it’s one of his pupils? Obviously not. I repeat: this is a teacher having sex with a 15-year-old pupil because he despises what she stands for. Do you even know what the term DOUCHE BAG means in reference to a woman? Well then, I suggest you find out fast.]
If I was his grandmother I would have trashed him within an inch of his life and then then found diplomatic ways and means to get the message through to the victim’s family that the victim needed help and was heading for disaster.
Are MALE TEACHERS in the habit of calling their young FEMALE PUPILS douchebags, whores and bitches?
If that is the case then one should start considering seriously educating their children at home.
Just because I don’t think he’s a murderer and that I don’t think he held her in contempt, doesn’t mean I don’t think he’s in the wrong.
Malta’s becoming a ****** dangerous place to be a 15-year-old girl with people like you running around desperate to defend the indefensible.
What young people are you hanging around? Tragic ones? I’m a ‘young person’ and can assure you that’s not a norm.
Also embarrassment is not an emotion. It has social ties, which sociopaths are highly concerned with
@Daphne, please I beg you , stop wasting time with these weirdos. I sense they are enjoying themselves. This country is sick big time.
Tragic, I can’t decide whether you are disturbingly stupid or worryingly dangerous.
If you want to read some worryingly disturbing comments, you should head to timesofmalta.com:
Franco Attard Trevisan • 2 hours ago
I think both kids were in desperate need of help…
Mario Zammit • 15 minutes ago
both youngster were desperate for help
And this one takes the cake:
Joseph Borg • 24 minutes ago
L-inhabba m ‘ghandiex eta.
Disturbingly stupid can very often turn into worryingly dangerous
100% both
‘It seems rather clear from the text messages between them that she wanted to kill herself.’
Assuming that this idiot/amoral/evil person is right (which s/he isn’t), would any decent person, let alone a decent teacher, drive a suicidal 15-year old to Dingli cliffs? It’s not just wrong; it’s criminal.
Besides, he started the suicide conversation and claimed that he has already starting taking the pills.
This case has convinced me that Malta is absolutely barking mad.
Erin Tanti’s actions are appalling, but they happen everywhere. The scariest bit is the rush to defend the bastard and cast him in the role of some innocent Romeo, while the minor is a temptress, a harlot, or a lunatic…it’s Victorian in all the wrong ways.
According to the media reports on the court case, the Douche Bag moniker came about because that was the Skype name of the young woman in question.
However, it is a pointer into the state of mind of the man if he has his ‘girlfriend’ listed as Douche Bag.
If you want to see the level of offence involved, imagine if he had her listed as Shit Head.
Reading the news reports made me not only sad, but angry too. It looks like this man has no respect whatsoever for his victim, nor for the norms of society. I don’t think we can expect to hear the truth from him. My thoughts are very much with his victim and her family.
I would also like to appeal to anyone who knows anything further to contact the police, in the interest of Lisa Maria Zahra, and in the interest of all other possible – past and future – victims of this man.
It’s fact that he didn’t care. He only cared about himself, so much that he couldn’t jump over the cliff like she did.
Just another one out of that section of Maltese men who only care about: sex in her comfortable villa, in and out as much as possible and because he had no other alternative.
The man is appalling in looks, in character and in everything else.
“It’s fact that he didn’t care. He only cared about himself, so much that he couldn’t jump over the cliff like she did.”
The last part of the sentence should be: he couldn’t jump over the cliff like he’s saying she did.
Tanti said he jumped AND LANDED ON A ROCK.
Yes, right. That’s why he’s alive.
A pathological liar, hoist by his own petard.
The spot where he claims to have landed shows he didn’t jump.
Had he jumped from where Lisa Marie did, he would have landed exactly where Lisa Marie did — in the trees, after hitting the rocks, like she did.
Had he said he crawled to the rock where he was eventually found, then that would be just a little more credible. Of course he would have to explain how he managed to go through all this with an insignificant bruised knee and a couple of cracked ribs. But that shows that although he thought he was committing the perfect crime, in reality he was showing how perfectly stupid he is.
So do you think he actually killed her? I never thought about this, I always assumed he helped her commit suicide.
My blood is boiling right now. I never knew her or anyone in her family but the evilness, maliciousness and extreme irresponsibility is too much to bear. I wouldn’t have believed such persons were real before this episode.
[Daphne – I always thought he killed her. I didn’t spell it out at the beginning because I didn’t want to cause further upset to her family, as I didn’t know the full details. But they must have thought the same thing too, as they would have been apprised of everything the rest of us did not know.
My deduction that he killed her was based on a proper reading of the his character traits and of the psychology of 15-year-olds girls, and the key evidence was that Eur2,500 cash in the car, which most dismissed as a detail when it was the biggest, glaring evidence that he planned to abscond. I already knew at that stage that he had stolen it from his partners, but said nothing until I was certain.
I don’t even think she knew she was at the cliffs. Fifteen-year-olds are not aware of roads and directions – they don’t drive and rarely venture out of their normal ‘habitat’. He drove her there at night. She would have had no idea where they were going or where they were when she arrived. Few 15-year-olds know where Dingli cliffs are or what they look like when they get there, because most have never been. If somebody had driven me to Dingli Cliffs at night when I was 15, I would have had no idea where we were going or where it was when we got there. During the day, I would obviously have worked it out by the visual evidence, but not at night.]
Only she left a detailed suicide note.
[Daphne – Actually, she left a running-away note.]
I believe the guy planned what he thought would be the perfect crime.
He planned what he thought was the perfect script with a starring role for himself. Too bad he’d never got the message that he’s a lousy script writer, despite the rotten reviews his efforts earned him.
It looks like he’d realised she had something with her which could have linked him to her death and he wanted to get rid of it. Perhaps her mobile phone?
All calls are logged by the service providers, as are all text messages. He just needed to make sure she was really dead. It makes me sick to think what he thought he’d do if he’d found her alive.
He definitely wanted to make sure she was dead.
That’s what I am thinking. I reckon he wanted to get rid of her, for a reason yet to be figured out.
He convinced her to jump or he pushed her, and then either because he wanted to retrieve something or to make sure she died, he decided to climb down the cliff.
But he might have slipped when he was almost all the way down causing himself the reported injuries.
These injuries coupled maybe with panic rendered him unable to climb back up. He tried running away or else crawled away to attract attention to save himself explaining where he was found, and then made up the story he’s telling the police.
Tanti isn’t a douche-bag or a psychopath.
He’s a disgrace to humanity.
He’s all three and worse.
I have just read the reports on Times of Malta and The Malta Independent. I am appalled and so should anyone who is a parent or grandparent of a young impressionable teenager. Fancy referring to her as douchebag!
Words fail to express the indignation and fury I feel right now for how this psychopathic man and how he seems to have cold-bloodedly planned this.
I am truly sorry for what this young girl went through and for the grief her family has suffered, and also for his family. Facing the evidence that your son is some kind of monster is not easy.
Same line of thought. I Agree.
I wish to ask a question.
Can anything that is said here or elsewhere be used by his legal team to declare that it affects his ”right” for a fair trial?
[Daphne – No.]
Thanks for the reply.
This is the hue and cry of the public. After every criminal act is committed by a felon the public cries out, first for the arrest of the perpetrator then for justice to be done.
The hue and cry of the public is so much acknowledged at law that the public can arrest a felon if he is being pursued by citizens. What are we expected to do in the face of such a heinous crime as murder is?
I say we are supposed to be humans with intelligence. People who think and let it be known that no felon can take the world for a ride.
Then yes, the public cries for justice in place of exercising the dreaded public lynching. Finally society defends itself from such people by providing preferably for their reform failing which an endeavour is made to heal the felon from any psychiatric disorder, failing all, then society has the right to keep the felon away from the possibility of a relapse.
No. Any information that Daphne is posting is public knowledge. Any opinion she may be expressing is her own (and while I may not agree with the extent to which she takes freedom of speech at times, it’s her right and she’s entitled to it), and definitely cannot be taken as fact, at least at this stage in the investigation.
Of course, if by some miracle, he is found to be innocent, he could sue Daphne (and a handful of others) for slander/libel/whatever it is they do. Something tells me this won’t happen though.
The legal team probably already have more than enough for a conviction. They won’t risk losing such an easy case over a banality like taking an opinion from a blog. As Daphne pointed out, the cash – and now we discover that his passport was also in the car – is a key part of evidence.
It’s possible to spin everything else in the direction of a Romeo/Juliet style suicide, even the messages, but not the cash and passport in his (locked) car. If he really wanted to screw people over financially with his death, he’d have thrown it in the sea, and that doesn’t account for his passport.
A 40 m drop will DEFINITELY not result in those minor injuries – rather, he must have been climbing down/up and slipped.
No. It is NOT possible to spin everything in the direction of a Romeo/Juliet style suicide because of the inherent contradiction of Tanti’s words and actions.
The inherent cruelty of Tanti’s account is that he had no feeling at all for his victim. She was just a prop to his starring role in his own carefully scripted drama.
Even if his account is taken at face value, his indifference to her is heartbreaking.
He makes out that he’s the only person who mattered to her, yet shows no shame in saying that, when she jumped, she turned to look at him, which means she could see that he’d abandoned in the last, lonely seconds of her life.
For her sake, I hope she died instantly. As for him, I hope he lives a long, long life.
[Daphne – It won’t make any difference, because people like that are incapable of remorse. On the contrary, he will live off it and feed off it. It will become his claim to fame and he’ll dine out on it. Look at Meinraad Calleja: 15 years in prison for cocaine trafficking, and when he gets out it’s as though nothing happened and people continue to socialise with him as though he’s a normal person ‘ghax pulit minn tas-Sliema u t-tifel ta’ Maurice u Muriel’. Sickening.]
I mean a long, long life filled with nothing, not remorse.
Did the part of the story where he stayed at Mr. Zahra’s happen recently?
[Daphne – This is not a story. It is real life. So treat it as such. Yes, he stayed overnight in her bedroom the day he absconded with her. He absconded with her because he was discovered in her bedroom by the housekeeper, who told her brother (in his 40s, married), who told their father and the police.]
Who released the photograph of him as a 17 year old to the press/police?
[Daphne – That would have been his family, as is usually the case except where the person is a criminal and the police already have his picture on file.]
The Times of Malta article states that Tanti’s friend described him as a PSYCHOpath whilst The Malta Independent article reports his friend as describing him as a SOCIOpath.
They are two different and distinct psychological terms.
Hope they put him away and lose the key.
And three fractured ribs and a grazed knee are indicative of at most falling three metres (and landing like a sack of potatoes) not that 40m. He must have tried climbing down to check on her “status” and slipped. Murderous Douche.
I have no words to describe my feelings after reading the reports. How can people still defend this man.
I am getting nervous about people not understanding or getting the real facts in their heads. A 40 metre fall is a 130 feet fall equivalent to 13 floors, or Preluna Towers in Sliema. How can you survive such a fall?
One can’t survive such a fall. And yet, Facebook is replete with fools disputing the “theory” that he climbed/walked down simply “ghax qalet hekk DCG”.
I do not like the way The Times of Malta have reported this case. Feels like they’re on his side, giving him yet again, benefit of doubt. Disgusting.
TVM too. They were again referred to as “iz-zewgt zghazagh” at one point during the evening news.
Malta Today reports:
“His only regret was not dying with her,” Arnaud told the court. He also said that Tanti “could not explain how he survived the jump from the same spot.”
Is this more irresponsible reporting?
Surely that should read that Erin Tanti SAID his only regret was that he not died with her. They way they report it implies that the inspector is judging this to be the case.
[Daphne – He didn’t even say that. His exact words were ‘Ghaxxaqta! Jien bqajt haj u habibti mietet.’ I’m not surprised at the interpretation Malta Today gave those words. Most of the staff there seem to be men with Asperger’s Syndrome.]
I agree fully with what you are saying re this issue DCG
When this case first broke I thought you were overdoing it and being unnecessarily hasty and, yes…insensitive. After reading what’s coming out of court I have to say you got it right…too damn right. I don’t know the guy at all but I am sure he never jumped off that cliff….and yes there are ways to go down there, not one but several and I am pretty sure that is what he did after sunrise. I also believe you are completely correct in your analysis of his thinking in this post, not least your lanzit theory. Kudos.
[Daphne – Kudos? I don’t know. It worries me that I can read twisted minds, dysfunctional characters and ulterior motives like a language other people can’t. I suppose I must have developed that inadvertently as a survival skill because I have had to contend with so many of them, some of whom have posed a real direct threat. When you live permanently in a ‘can’t trust anyone’ situation, you become hyper-alert to nuances in people’s character, speech, behaviour, attitudes. Even the slightest detail, which others might miss, can give you a complete character reading.
As for ‘lanzit’, it’s one of the first lessons in life that I ever learned, my family having been the subject of so much of it. The mentality of people like Erin Tanti is something I learned only too well by default. It’s also the reason I understand just how vulnerable Lisa was and how much of a target for people (male and female) with what I call the ‘Brigate Rosse’ mindset.]
The reason Tanti had Lisa’s name listed as ‘douchebag’ is that this was her moniker on Skype. It is therefore impossible to adduce this as evidence of his attitude to her.
It’s risible that you imagine 15 year old girls don’t know they are at Dingli Cliffs or the road there! I suggest you talk to some fifteen year old girls for corroboration of this obvious misapprehension. There is nothing to suggest ( at least, so far) that she didn’t know their destination.
[Daphne – And once again, everyone forgets that 1. I was 15, and 2. I had three 15-year-olds and a house ever full of varying processions of their 15-year-old friends. No, if you were to take a 15-year-old of whatever gender, from that social background, to Dingli Cliffs at night he or she would not know where he or she is. The reason for this is that before people start to drive they rarely take notice of roads and directions, and also because Dingli Cliffs is not a destination for children from that kind of background and their parents.
You wouldn’t take small children for a picnic or walks on a cliff-edge, and by the time they’re 15 they don’t want to go with you anyway. But the point is this: it was 4am. At 4am, you can’t tell where you are unless there are buildings and landmarks. At 4am, even with a full moon, you can’t tell whether you are at Dingli Cliffs or Mtahleb – not at 15, anyway, not unless your father is a hunter who takes you there every weekend.
Whether or not Miss Zahra’s listed herself as Douchebag on Skype is irrelevant. Even if Tanti’s relationship with her were entirely legitimate, he should not have listed her under that name. The fact that he was having sex with her while listing her as Douchebag only serves to make the situation worse.
Are you a woman? I find that very hard to believe. But then this is Malta, where women attack other women and defend the men, even if the ‘woman’ is just a schoolgirl. Malta’s greatest misogynists are women themselves.]
Daphne,
I too find it hard to believe she is a woman….!!!
A couple of things irk me.
His jacket was found next to her with his passport and car keys in it.
He was only wearing his under-shorts, with his clothes on the side when he was found.
She was not wearing one of her boots.
It all seems to me a drug-induced murder gone wrong when she went down with his car-keys.
This man deserves a lifetime of imprisonment, coupled with an invitation to all other male prisoners to do with him what they wish, as long as they keep him alive.
Tanti claims he told Lisa Marie “that it was not right” and that she called him a coward.
What if the inverse is the truth and that it was Lisa Marie that said “that it was not right” and he called her a coward inducing her to jump.
My original suspicion remains. Tanti never planned to injure himself let alone commit suicide.
Of course he didn’t plan to commit suicide. Someone who’s just been to see the prime minister and boasts publicly that big things are in the offing is definitely not planning a suicide.
What a disgusting creature. One of his acquaintances was right to describe him as a worm but Lisa Marie was too young and vulnerable to realize how badly he was using her.
For her to have died, and for him to continue living and probably be given a second chance, is so senseless.
Why would he attempt to leave Malta, if he had a bright future with Joseph Muscat. In fact, they met in Castille.
The only reason to escape was the planned murder.
I don’t know whether he killed her or she jumped off deliberately. Whether he intended to jump or escape. That is for the police to investigate.
What I know is that whatever problems Lisa might have had, he was her teacher.
Normal teachers whenever observe such problems do not go to bed with their underage pupils and do not take photographs of them in the nude.
They don’t have sex in their pupil’s parents’ home either, and they do not take money from their business partners. They do not take their pupils to Dingli Cliffs and buy them whisky and pills.
Simply put, serious teachers take action by referring to professional guidance.
Whatever happened after 4am, I am sure the police and investigations will let us know better.
But the build-up before both ended at the bottom of the cliffs (however they did) is simply sad and pathetic.
I agree. Erin Tanti climbed down and when he saw that poor Lisa was dead, he found a 3-metre drop and jumped.
He must have climbed down after her and hidden her body. How else explain how she landed in a tree but was found in deep scrub?
How else explain that he knew exactly where she was when no one else could see her? How else explain his presence, unhurt, 40m down a cliff?
For those who are ‘gullible’ to say the least, let me tell you what the phrase ‘douche bag’ really means when it’s used figuratively to describe a person: “a wretched and disgusting person, or ugly”. That explains the ‘esteem’ Erin had for Lisa Marie. Can’t you all understand what Erin really is?!
Here is something interesting as well (from Maltatoday):
– The texts were read out, saying ‘I’m going to live with you… doing this alone’; ‘Erin don’t you dare – we’re doing it tonight no matter what’ and ‘I love you so much right now. Be a brave little soldier for me’. –
These SMSs are being produced as evidence that it was Lisa Maria that instigated the ‘suicide’.
However, ‘I’m going to live with you’ does not read ‘suicide’ to me. Also ‘Be a brave little soldier for me’ might actually mean that she wanted him to defend the relationship.
Being that he took his passport and €3k in cash, it could mean that the intention was for them BOTH to leave the country. Not that 3 grand would have got them far, for long mind you.
[Daphne – I despair, I truly do.
1. Why would he have wanted her with him when he despised her?
2. If he was planning a double escape, why didn’t she have her passport too?
3. If he had escape on his mind, why were they at Dingli Cliffs instead of the airport?
4. You cannot possibly believe that he cared about her when all the evidence says otherwise.
5. This is not 1920. If you get on a plane with a minor and the police are alerted in the country of departure, they will alert their counterparts in the destination country and the police will be waiting at the airport with handcuffs. Even Tanti would have known that.]
True enough. Lapsus!
Even in the 1910 murder case involving Dr. Crippen, early ship to shore wireless was used to facilitate the arrest of Dr. Crippen, who had absconded with his disguised mistress on board a steamship.
http://murderpedia.org/male.C/c/crippen-hawley.htm
Tanti’s story isn’t consistent.
http://www.inewsmalta.com/dart/20140407-ornat-hi-taqbe-daret-arset-lejja
Qal li hi ħarbet mid-dar u hu qagħad jistennieha ftit ‘il bogħod mid-dar. Mar jixtri l-aspirina – tliet kaxxi tat-33 gramma, u ħa flixkun whiskey Johnny Walker Black Label. Il-pilloli qal li xtrahom għalih biex ikun jista’ jiblagħhom jekk hi ma tiġix.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140407/local/updated-cliffs-fall-police-inspector-says-tantis-version-to-police-contradicted-by-sms-messages.513958
INSPECTOR: SMS MESSAGES CONTRAST WITH TANTI’S VERSION TO POLICE
It was clear from the SMS that it was Mr Tanti who had instigated the March 19 events. He was the one who encouraged her to leave the house and for him to pick her up. This went on for some five hours.
He had also, in one SMS exchange told her that he had ‘bought everything they needed’ with reference to the aspirin. In her reply she asked him: What did you buy?, an indication that she did not know what was going on.
Have a look at this video which was published on timesofmalta.com, last June.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20130603/thezone-careers/a-man-walks-into-a-bar.472312
James Ryder’s description of Erin “Socially awkward’ in the video is ‘spooky’
Tanti’s lies are contradictory.
He bought pills and texted Zahra saying “I have what we need”.
He later said he bought the pills in case Zahra didn’t turn up while he waited for her.
He said they planned to kill themselves and that it was her idea, when the evidence so far is that he was the instigator.
And in this morning’s session, Inspector Arnaud reports on Zahra’s last minutes according to Tanti: “At around 5am they counted to three. She turned and looked him in the eyes and he saw her hitting the bottom. He felt he had let her down and decided to jump too.”
A last-minute decision to jump too? I thought he said that was why they went to Dingli in the first place.
Exactly.
I cannot express how sad and angry I feel that this has happened – he was in a position of trust as a teacher and has abused of this – this is something that we all need to have more awareness of.
Young girls at that age are vulnerable and impressionable and he obviously groomed her to pander to his sick desires.
I cannot even BELIEVE that people are defending this poor excuse of a man. I couldn’t even bring myself to read this full article or the ones on news sites as it makes my heart feel like it is exploding with anger and sorrow for the poor dead girl he abused so vilely, and for her family.
Let us hope that justice will be served and that he is put behind bars for ever – although, sadly, I somehow doubt that this will come to be.
I had to stop reading this article half way, sorry, but I cannot read any further. This is so ugly and sinister. How can anyone attempt such evil? This guy is seriously dangerous. I shudder to think how many more are out there.
This, manum, is exactly the whole point of comparing the public outcry for the cat-killer to the almost complete silence to something so horrific and evil as a teacher being involved one way or another in the death of one of his pupils.
As a teacher he was duty-bound to act in her best interests and that did not include a cocktail of aspirin, whisky, cliffs at 4am, sex in her bedroom at her parents’ home, stolen cash in the car, his jacket with car keys and passport at the bottom of the cliff next to her body, and the rest of the detail.
People rush to call Daphne names, but the logic in her arguments is just so clean and well, logical.
I don’t understand what’s wrong with this country. What an utter bunch of prehistoric morons. L-aqwa fl-Ewropa iva mela.
I always try to stay impartial and hear both sides of the story but the more I hear the more I believe Tanti should be charged for the death of the poor girl.
[Daphne – Tina, that is exactly what happened. He has been charged with murder. That is how we know all this – from the evidence in court this morning.]
First of all he was her teacher and had a duty to protect the girl.
She was just fifteen and he abused his position to go with her. Even if he did harbour feelings for her he didn’t have to act on them.
When Lisa told him she was worried that her father would catch them together he could have broken up the relationship and kept away from her even if his career was ruined.
He also drove her to Dingli Cliffs at night and than let her jump (if as you say it is true). He did not try to stop her. Plus you’re right he took his passport and money with him that is very very suspicious because it seems that he was planning for the future and someone who planned to die wouldn’t.
The worst thing is that Lisa could still be alive today if it wasn’t for him. As a responsible adult if she was depressed he should have tried to help her and not encouraged her to kill herself at 15 every small problem seems big and he was a bastard to abuse his position and I’m really angry at people who defend him.
As a responsible adult he should have referred the issue to a guidance teacher and found her professional help. He should not have taken advantage of her.
Enough said – this person is and, apparently has always been, bad news and the nightmare of any parent with an impressionable teenage daughter.
I just hope that in prison, he is treated as the paedophile he is.
Oh but they will.
I rarely agree with you on political subjects, but I must say… outstanding analysis.
Kris, Daphne’s analysis of this particular case is not any superior or inferior to her other analyses.
People can either analyse situations or they can’t. They don’t perform better when it’s suicide/murder or when it’s politics, or ‘ricetti’.
Only the politically-blinkered would have brought themselves to write what you did. Shame.
Times of Malta reports that they went to Dingli and began taking pills. He asked her if she was ready and she said yes. She said if he was not ready, they would not do it. He said “OK, may as well do it here”.
Oh come on – May as well do it here? Does anyone say that to commit suicide?
When we’re searching for a nice spot to have a picnic, we might say ‘May as well do it here’ but not to jump off a cliff.
He’s such a liar! I don’t believe a single word he’s saying and I totally agree with you, Daphne – I also think he killed her.
What I can’t figure out is this: if he wanted to get rid of the poor girl, why didn’t he run away after he killed her? Why did he try to picture himself as committing suicide as well?
Maybe he thought that this way they will send him to Mount Carmel Psychiatric Hospital and then he will be out in a couple of years?
I just can’t understand it. Because he had the money to leave the island and he had his passport in his car, and could’ve done so easily. Why didn’t he do it? Well, maybe he figured that they will still trace him.
[Daphne – No, the real reason would be that it finally clicked with him that the police would have notified the airport and he would have been stopped as soon as he presented his passport at check-in, or his boarding-pass at the gate, if he checked in on line. You can’t fly out of the country when the police are already looking for you. You have to leave by private boat.]
True – makes perfect sense what you’re saying.
His passport and car keys were in his jacket which was found near her body. That explains why he climbed down.
Makes perfect sense up to paragraph 1.
He just outlined his motive. The only way to get Tony Zahra off his back was ridding himself of the main witness.
Lisa Maria Zahra did not kill herself.
From The Malta Independent
‘….SMS exchange belies Tanti’s version of events
Questioned by the Zahra family’s lawyer, Inspector Arnaud said that the messages exchanged between the two hours before they went to Dingli cliffs indicated that it was Tanti who appeared to be the one who was pushing the idea of committing suicide.
In one of the messages, Tanti threatened to harm himself if Zahra did not meet him on the night, to which Zahra replied, “calm down, calm down.”
In another SMS exchange, Tanti told Zahra that he had bought the pills, with Zahra’s reply indicating that she did not know what he was talking about…..’
And she was the one going through a bad phase in her life in need of his support. It remains to be seen whether she went over that cliff dead or unconscious.
http://www.independent.com.mt/articles/2014-04-07/news/lisa-maria-was-intent-on-jumping-but-erin-preferred-a-slow-death-4537483265/
“Arnaud, when questioned by Gianella de Marco, appearing in parte civile for the Zahra family, said that he believed it was Tanti who instigated the suicide, telling her where to leave her suicide note. “She looked forward to sitting for her exams; she would tell him to calm down; he told her ‘I bought all we need’; she seemed oblivious to all this when she asked him ‘what did you buy’.”
I never liked this guy from the moment I saw pictures on news sites of him posing (yes, literally posing) on a big rock at the bottom of the cliffs, in his jockey shorts.
So he either climbed down and jumped from a safe height resulting in a minor injury or found another way down there to make it look like he jumped in an attempt to kill himself.
The fact that he had a lot of cash in his car, and also his passport, when all this went down clearly indicates that he wanted to make a grand escape once he did what he wanted to do. So he didn’t try to commit suicide. He wanted to use it for something.
How the hell can people not understand this? Why are they still defending him?
As for Lisa Zahra, she did not deserve to be lumped into this mess. Instead of helping her, he took advantage of her until he took her life by taking her to Dingli Cliffs. He clearly wanted her to die because he either hated her family or for some reason that is just plain insane.
The scary thing is that this Erin Tanti is not the only psycho out there. Who knows how many others there are.
I was going through some emotional trouble at 15 and thank goodness mad men like him were not around me when I was that age.
Where were his clothes?
Did he need them to remain clean?
His jacket was near his victim. His trousers and shoes were ‘under a rock’.
He may have taken his clothes off to avoid getting any blood on them when he climbed down to make sure Lisa Marie was dead.
Spot on, Tabatha.
The only thing that looks iffy is that police have charged him (as far as I’m aware) with both murder and with assisted suicide… isn’t it an either/or situation?
Think it’s quite likely that he somehow climbed down after her, possibly not to check that she was dead but because he realised she had her mobile phone on her, with texts/calls which might have incriminated him IF she were found.
Other than that I think your version of events is pretty close to spot-on.
Text messages and mobile phone calls are logged by service providers. It is not possible to destroy the evidence by destroying a phone.
To all readers out there: don’t call it suicide any more.
HE KILLED HER. Full stop.
And another thing – let’s stop saying he is mentally disturbed, crazy, insane, sociopath, psychopath or anything else which could land him in Mount Carmel Hospital instead of prison. His place is solitary confinement in prison, for life. And that’s life, not 25 years and parole and whatnot.
[Daphne – Psychopaths are not kept in psychiatric hospitals as they are not psychiatric cases. That’s why prisons the world over are full of them. The worst criminals tend always to be psychopaths.]
The television stations had better stop doing that, too, further fuelling the discussions of the ignorant people..
Spot on
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10737827/Psychopaths-how-can-you-spot-one.html
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20140407/local/updated-cliffs-fall-police-inspector-says-tantis-version-to-police-contradicted-by-sms-messages.513958
I worked with Erin Tanti during the stand-up period and when this whole thing came to light, I was on the fence.
I was not convinced that he could be so f*cked up, but at the same time his character traits made me believe that maybe somewhere deep down, it could be something he would do.
However, the evidence has swung me to believe that he really was/is a screwed-up person.
I do have one question though: is it possible that they initially planned to run away however changed their minds last minute? That being the reason why the found so much cash?
[Daphne – No, it isn’t possible. And you can’t read characters and situations if you think that might have been a possibility. I feel very old and tired, as if I have lived five lifetimes, when I find myself explaining what should be obvious to any sentient adult.
1. Twenty-three-year-old Erin Tanti had no interest in 15-year-old Lisa Zahra beyond the sexually abusive.
2. He did not care for her, but rather the opposite – he despised her.
3. She was not a person to him, but an object.
4. When she was no longer worth the hassle (trouble brewing & c & c), he decided to get rid of her.
5. Because he didn’t see her as a person, it was one short step to seeing murder as the simplest and most obvious way to get rid of her. He cannot be assessed by the yardstick of normality, because he is not normal. Murder would not occur to us as the obvious solution to a girl we want to get rid of, but that is because we value human life, understand the magnitude of murder and its ramifications, and are normal.
6. When men abscond, they always do so without the dead weight of a woman, and this even when they are not sick of her and their relationship is not illegal.
7. He planned to abscond BECAUSE he planned to kill her.
8. Even the most stupid and uninformed man, and Erin Tanti was both, knows there is such a thing as an international arrest warrant/European arrest warrant. A man cannot abscond with a 15-year-old girl without finding the police waiting for him at the airport when they land.
9. Bad people exist. Really bad people exist in Malta. Malta has produced some vile criminals and exported vile criminality. This might be cultural or it might be genetic, or both. Either way, it is a fact. Those vile criminals did not all grow up in the gutter. Some of them were extremely privileged.]
I read this with silent sadness. This episode has exposed a very shady and dark side of our society.
He saw her as a challenge, he got what he wanted, tricked her, and tried to get rid of her, but it didn’t work out the way he planned.
I have never seen such a cold blooded person who could come to this. Just to think, that if he managed to get away with her murder, who was to be next victim?
Pardon me for feeling unashamedly unchristian but I hope this monster rots very, very slowly in hell; preferably accompanied by his depraved fan club.
He said he wanted to die slowly after all.
Daphne, I hardly ever agree with what you say and with the way you draw conclusions but this article is spot on.
The cash in the car should have been considered as a HUGE piece of evidence from the beginning and not dismissed as just a minor detail.
[Daphne – He had his passport in the car too, not just all that cash, but the police didn’t release that detail. If they had, it would have been obvious even to the most bloody-minded of newspaper reporters that Erin Tanti planned to abscond. Imagine packing your passport and Eur2,500 in cash when you’re heading off to kill yourself…you do that when you’re planning to leave the country for a while.]
I just hope people learn from this heartbreaking story because only God knows how many under-age girls see older guys and are constantly abused and used just for the thrill of telling their friends they are going out with a man and not with a boy.
When I was 15, my thinking was very similar – I guess most people that age go through a ‘particular’ period in their life.
Unfortunately Lisa met a tragic end.
And this message goes to ‘Tragic’: you should seriously go and check your own state of mind because your thinking is unbelievably scary.
And the fact that he used cash is even more important. Cash cannot be traced, whilst if he went to an ATM to withdraw, it would have been recorded.
This Erin Tanti person seems to be a follower of Aleister Crowley and his “Do What Thou Wilt” motto.
We still don’t know why he was wearing shorts and a half sleeve top – in the middle of March, at 4 in the morning. It must have been cold. I can’t think of a reason why someone thinking about committing suicide would remove their clothes before jumping.
A short, tubby, talentless and ugly male teacher seduced the clever and attractive daughter of a ‘powerful’ and rich man and he did so deliberately.
And now he thinks it’s not his fault.
Indeed, he is a douche-bag. In the last part of the report in The Malta Independent, Tanti said that Lisa was abused by her family.
What scum. He is trying to shift the blame onto her family.
A low-life, sub-human species.
Whatever his victim’s family did or didn’t do is irrelevant to Tanti’s case. Lisa Maria Zahra died because her teacher, quite literally, drove her to it.
Whatever her family did or didn’t do, Lisa Maria didn’t deserve to cross paths with someone who had a duty to help and guide her but instead drover her to Dingli Cliffs at the dead of night.
Hands up who never rebelled against his parents and who are those parents who have never felt guilty about not doing their best for their children. It’s all very natural but nobody deserves Lisa’s fate.
But you are forgetting an important detail: how come the multiple rib fractures? How can you explain them? He must have jumped from somewhere to smash his ribcage.
[Daphne – I admire your resilience in defending this man, but I suggest you measure out 40m – perhaps by asking an architect friend to show you a comparable building – and then work out whether it is possible to jump from that height and stay alive, let alone alive with just a minor fracture to the ribs.
No, it is not necessary to fall a great height to fracture ribs. All it takes is a hard blow. Two years ago, I fell from a step-ladder that is exactly my height, when it overbalanced. Because of the way I landed, I lost consciousness and when I came to wondered whether I was alive or dead because I could see an enormous pool of blood spreading beneath my head and couldn’t move it. I was taken to hospital bound to one of those rigid stretchers, given myriad tests, and kept for 36 hours for observation. And I couldn’t move properly for two weeks afterwards. Seven years ago, I smashed my wrist so badly that a long operation was required to pin it back together. I was kept in hospital overnight and wore a plaster cast for six weeks afterwards. I didn’t fall off any height at all. I was knocked sideways by my 90-kilo mastiff, who has a tendency to force his way past people, on level ground.]
You are so right, Daphne. Minor fractures of ribs are not associated with falls from any heights. A fall from 10 – 15 feet is enough to fracture ribs so bad that the sticking end/s will perforate the lungs with ensuing complications and even death if not attended to urgently (from collapsed lung/s).
40m is more than 10 storeys. The only way to survive such a fall would be by wearing a parachute.
[Daphne – It’s 13 storeys. A contemporary storey is 3m.]
40 metres is the distance from the top of the Preluna down to the pavement below. (13 floors at 3.0m per floor = 39m)
You can crack your ribs by just falling a couple of metres.
A friendly bear hug from my best mate, when I was Tanti’s age funnily enough, cracked a rib (or three – didn’t bother with an x-ray) meaning that for several weeks taking a deep breath was painful, and raising my right arm above shoulder height was sheer agony.
Two very telling statements in Times of Malta’s report:
1) “The police found a note addressed to her family explaining why she had left.”
Why she had left? Not why she felt compelled to kill herself…but why she had left.
I think if someone were planning to kill themselves (after allegedly discussing it for 5 hours) they would dwell a little on that point in the note; it’s not exactly a detail.
2) Erin Tanti told the constable at the rescue scene, “I screwed it up. I jumped and I’m still alive and my friend is dead.”
How could he have possibly known that she was dead? If he ‘miraculously’ survived a 40 m fall with just a couple of broken ribs, couldn’t she have survived as well?
Just goes to show how badly thought-through his scheming is and what a rubbish liar he is.
His reaction on being rescued is creepy. It’s all about him. A decent man would have shown sorrow or remorse at the death of his ‘friend’. Then again, a decent man would not have dragged her there at all.
Which is why he’s facing both murder AND inducing her to suicide.
U aħna fejn nafu jekk in-nota ġagħlix tiktibha hu? U kif qed tgħid /jgħid Disconcerted… kif kien jaf li kienet mejta jekk mhux għax iċċekkja jekk mititx? M’hemmx ħlief kliem moqżież biex tiddeskrivi lil dan il-bniedem/annimal!?
He actually said “it-tfajla” (my girlfriend), not “il-habiba” (my friend).
Yeah right. What’s next now? That it was some kind of miracle that he survived?
He ‘jumped and fell down 40 mtrs’ yet he opened his eyes again, and even felt the sun’s rays so warm on him that he had to remove his jacket, pants and shoes, and lay there sunbathing after an ‘attempted suicide’.
And just after only a few days, he’s ‘up and running’ well again.
And poor Schumacher still lies in a coma after that December accident in which he hit his head (whilst wearing a helmet) on a rock while skiing.
Does this psychopath/sociopath/paedophile/monster/DOUCHEBAG really think everyone is as gullible as his victim?
What did she see in that tubby and greasy Oriental-looking chinless wonder?
I mean look at him in that photo above, and be honest with yourself !
I think I am being too kind in describing Erin Tanti, even if I am my usual politically incorrect self.
[Daphne – You’d be surprised at the kind of men/boys who were ‘golden’ when I was 15. Some of them were really good-looking, yes, but others – well, today I think how you wouldn’t even bother scraping them off your shoes.]
But if he absconded on that same night, it would have been obvious that her disappearance was linked to his. No?
[Daphne – Yes, but proving it would have been a different matter. And not being particularly bright, he probably imagined he could fly out of the country without being subject to an international arrest warrant, which is what would have happened.]
can i please have your email?
[Daphne – dcgalizia@gmail.com]
Although he was troubled, peculiar and strange in his way of saying and doing things, sometimes lost in his own madness and passion for the arts… I would have never imagined it would come down to this. From what I’ve read so far it appears that it was just a matter of time.
If his best friend and business partner thought of him as a psychopath – well, why the hell was he doing business with him then? Oh yes, he stole money from him. Tit for tat.
[Daphne – Tit for tat? That’s hardly it. Most times, when we have been unable to see somebody for what they really are, because we are too close or too dependent, it takes a single event for everything to fall into perspective, and not even an event as terrible as this.]
He directed plays involving suicide, he wrote scripts regarding violent sex. I bet that this, in his own perception, is his masterpiece and we are his audience.
I agree.
I agree too.
“sometimes lost in his own madness and passion for the arts”
I don’t believe he was truly passionate about the arts. I think he liked the potential of fame and attention that the arts could offer him and his ego. From what I have read by him, I do not think he was a very talented writer. Just wordy and very pretentious.
He was into shock value and favoured controversy above everything else – not because he had anything vital or important to say, but because he wanted to create an image for himself. That is what I think, anyway.
Those who are still defending him probably think of him as some tortured artiste. Let’s stop this train of thought now, please. Even if he was actually talented, it’s still no excuse for his actions.
Malta Today reports that it was her nickname on Skype.
[Daphne – Erin Tanti is a 23-year-old man and a teacher. Twenty-three-year-old men who are teachers (and even if they’re not) do not refer to 15-year-old girls who are their pupils (or those who are not) by any repellant and demeaning nickname, regardless of whether it is a Skype name or not. Let alone when they are in a physical relationship with the girl. That is what a pimp might call one of his prostitutes, just to put you in the picture. I feel such sorrow at the tremendous naivete of teenagers who are led right up the garden path because they know so little about humanity and think they know so much. The role of any adult in the life of a 15-year-old who thinks of herself as a douche-bag is to persuade her to the contrary, not to go along with it and adopt it as his name for her. If you were also a mature adult, you would know that the fact that he called her that while having an illegal sexual relationship with her shows what he thought of her – and what he is.]
Maltatoday beg to differ.
‘…building up to the fateful day when the two attempted to kill themselves from Dingli cliffs on 19 March….’
As if that’s proven fact.
They’re much more interested in this swine’s allegations about her being some Cinderella surrounded by an evil family of rich and powerful men out to do him in.
And if those messages sent by his victim are supposed to instigate suicide then the defence is utterly lost.
Miss Zahra was referring to something else, and it wasn’t throwing themselves off a cliff. It’s also why she chose to enter his car and let herself be driven to the middle of nowhere.
http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/news/court_and_police/37704/compilation_of_evidence_in_zahra_death_starts_today
The major flaw in your theory is that there is no reason whatsoever for Tanti not to be able to get back up.
Three cracked ribs, though not pleasant, should not have impaired him from climbing back whence he descended (I’ve fractured ribs three times, so I know what I’m talking about – they tend to hurt more 2 or 3 days AFTER the event).
I tend to think that the failed suicide gambit was always his first preference. Let’s face it, just upping sticks and fleeing the country would never have been easy.
Be that as it may, though I try my best to follow the Roman Catholic faith, I think it would be difficult for me not to get hold of a sawn-off, give Tanti both barrels and take my chances in court had it been one of my daughters. The Zahras have my sympathy – precious little good that does them.
Oh, please. You don’t seriously believe he took a flying leap off a cliff edge onto a rock, only cracking three ribs and grazing a knee in the process, while his victim landed in a tree but died of her injuries?
If you can explain that, maybe you can also explain how he managed to leap so far off the cliff that he was found several metres away from its foot.
Please also explain how, when taking his flying leap, he managed to divest himself of his trousers and shoes and tucked them under a rock and shed his jacket because he felt too warm.
Read what I wrote, Redoute: I said he could have climbed back up from where he had climbed down precisely because he was not seriously injured. Where did I say he leaped off the cliff?
Do you have an English ‘O’ level?
On second thoughts, if he really wanted a ‘slow death’ like he said he did, why did he signal to be rescued instead of just lying there? He could have been baked and dehydrated, a ‘slow death’ indeed.
If he wanted a slow death, he’d have stayed home with his pills and whisky.
Anyone else would have started by saying Ï TOLD YOU SO.
But since “HUMILITY” is my second name I will only refer you to what I wrote on the 5th April.
I now bow and await your applause (for once).
[Daphne – You and I both, Mr Loporto. All I can say is that it’s astonishing how your perspicacity failed so catastrophically in the last general election. I share your astonishment, however, at the inability of so many people to understand that bad people do not exist only in books, films and foreign parts. They must have lived a very sheltered life. I have known some incredibly awful people in my time, women as well as men, and no doubt you have too.]
TRAGIC, you really live up to your name. Get a life man and smell the coffee. If this happened in the US the guy will be on death row.
It’s the story behind the story that shocks me more than anything else. But then I’ve some to expect no less from this benighted island.
This man was received by “Jo”, the Prime Minister, feted (or nearly) by the “local theatre community”, given a job, given various lucrative slots for various comedy skits, and so on.
Whether or not he is a criminal is beside the point. What is the point is that he was completely talentless. And yet again, everyone fails to recognise this.
The French distinguish between an “artiste” and a “faiseur”. The Maltese don’t. As long as you DO something, you’re always worthy of review, and very often you’re worthy of praise.
It’s all about standards. The Millennials may think that being a go-getter is the be-all, but it isn’t. There is something called standards. Not to mention talent.
Of course now that the crime has been exposed, the floodgates of criticism have been opened and this man is being lambasted as a chinless wonder, devoid of literary ability, devoid of art, and completely talentless. Quite right. But too late.
I suggest our “local” glitterati and weekend intellectuals take a good, hard look at themselves.
[Daphne – Of course people don’t talk straight about lack of talent. Look at the reaction I got when I said he’s crap: “EEEEE, you’re just jealous.” “AJMA, you’re only saying that because he said something about you.” “MAAAAAA, you think you know everything. Issa fil-comedy ukoll tifhem?” “Ghax ma tmurx thares fil-mera?” And it was the same with those awful photography sessions – I said what I did because I’m jealous, and I am not qualified to speak because I don’t understand anything to do with make-up and models. I would love, for example, to rip apart most ‘local artists’ (for which read painters), but one must pick one’s battles and I’m exposed on too many fronts as it is. Most of them are sh*t.]
And I still believe that Edward Debono is a self-promoting fraud.
I once took my hat off to him and he bloody ran off with it.
Dear Baxxter,
There is one major inaccuracy in your post: Erin Tanti is not and, to my knowledge, was never feted by the local theatre community at all.
Indeed, he was snubbed by most and I know of many actors and directors who wouldn’t work with the guy because of his grating ego.
This may very well be what spurned him into starting his own little theatre company to put up contemporary classics such as “Cock ‘n Clit”.
Yes, and “Cock&Clit” was performed at the MITP. That’s University of Malta property. You can’t just turn up there to perform your play. You meet the directors, show them your script, and they agree (or not) to stage your production.
Bookings were managed by St James Cavalier.
So we have two state-owned arts centres hosting some of the worst drivel since Zeza tal-Flagship.
I’ll concede that Erin Stewart Tanti might not have been feted by the theatre community. But accepted he certainly was.
When he gets released, he can try his hand in the London theatre with Zobbi and Patata.
A question, how and why was the PM involved in promoting this accused murderer? Strange relationship.
Or Equus, Alexander Ball. Live and uncensored.
I’m probably boring everyone with this mantra, but here goes: this country went straight from a provincial Middle Ages to modernity. So we labour under the illusion that anything that shocks the censors must be good art.
I hope we all sober up after this terrible tragedy – heads of schools and institutions, members of government, directors of various funding agencies, decision-makers in the arts and elsewhere. Rude, loud, pushy and shocking people aren’t all intelligent and brilliant. Self-promotion doesn’t make you a genius.
A bit of scepticism won’t kill us.
Baxxter’s right.
The silence from the arts scene is deafening. And don’t give me sub-judice, he had no place in a fifteen year old girl’s life.
The Italian ambassador to Turkmenistan has just been suspended no questions asked, a dry statement issued immediately. He’s just been arrested in the Philippines after being caught in the company of three small boys at a waterpark.
He said he was on holiday.
What happened in Malta was an entropic process leading to a forced uniformity, judgement considered taboo and the opposite of quality replacing it, in the name of some freedom of expression. Throw in a political debate vying for poseurs and self-promoters, and ‘I’m in’ became a self-legitimising prospect.
Someone has to explain why Tanti was at Muscat’s three months ago.
Clarification required whether this meeting was in any way remotely linked to Tanti’s employment. There was this buck passing to his warrant at one point.
I believe that Erin Tanti murdered Lisa Marie Zahra in cold blood, and that it was premeditated.
When this story first broke and it was reported that he had survived the jump and that Lisa Marie had not, my first thought was, ” Who survives a jump from Dingli Cliffs? Nobody.”
My second thought – as someone who has been a physiotherapist for 30 years – was that he must have massive injuries. If you jump from that height you would expect to see spinal cord injuries, head trauma, and multiple fractures and lacerations.
I have had patients fall off a ladder or off a one-storey building with more injuries than he had.
It was initially reported that he had a hip fracture (which means he had a fracture of the femur) and since it did not require surgery, it could only have been a hairline fracture.
This is the kind of fracture you would get from tripping and falling. Though they don’t require any surgery, they can be quite painful and it is difficult to bear any weight on the affected leg.
I believe that after he pushed or threw Lisa Marie off the cliff-edge, he climbed down to make sure she wad dead.
It was dark and the terrain is rocky and so he tripped.
Though fractured ribs would probably not be enough to prevent him climbing back up, a femoral hairline fracture and knee injuries would. He couldn’t get back up to get away so he tried to stage (very unsuccessfully) a double suicide.
What’s astonishing is that he says he didn’t want others to think him a paedophile. As if though that were an unfair or false accusation – if an adult is in a relationship with a 15 year old, it IS an illegal one.
The correct term I believe is hebephile (somebody please correct me if I am wrong) – an attraction towards pubescent or developing children in their teens. Perhaps he fancied himself some sort of tortured Humbert Humbert – a character despised even by his own creator.
Semantics aside, however – he must be really stupid. He might as well just have come out and said he knew it was wrong but didn’t care. He only cared and worried about it when he was found out: a sociopath.
The guy was a poseur and he suckered in for what passes as the current avant-garde in Malta, who, for the big part, happen to be poseurs themselves.
His cover was very useful to commit his psychopathic agenda, as he believed himself smarter and more intelligent than any human alive and able to get away with any crime.
He lucked out when the perfect victim landed in his lap and a script for her dramatic demise was written out in his head, to be played out on the world stage for real.
What a thrill this would be, he must have thought to himself.
He’s lying when he said that he met her for the first time at St Michael’s Foundation school. He had met her the Masquerade school before that.
All I can say is that he wanted the job at St Michael’s to grab her in his trap.
He had been acting his way through it all but he got tired of acting his way through it and he needed to end this “play” with a grand finale, but he refused to be the dead one.
He wanted to leave people puzzled about the sequel and get all the attention.
I’m his student and I can say that he loved to attract an audience and he always tried to be different. Lisa used to skip lessons to stay with him. He was tired of his act and started making sexual references in plays being produced at school, and also swearing in class.
He was constantly receiving calls and messages. He was mesmerized by his phone while scrolling through pictures.
If she was even skipping other classes where were the rest of the teachers? Didn’t they raise the alarm/feel any concern?
Please speak to the police if you have any information that can be of worth. Do it for Lisa Zahra and for any other possible victims of Tanti.
You can send information to the police here http://www.pulizija.gov.mt/opres/home.asp?lng=1
Just what I was thinking.. he certainly knew her for much more than 3 months as she was a student at Masquerade and he a tutor.
‘Tanti said that he was afraid of the consequences because ‘her father is a powerful man in the country’. That reveals his mindset. Somebody like me would not perceive Tony Zahra as ‘a powerful man in the country’ but as Tony Zahra.’
Madame, you nailed it!
Yes. It would take a chippy nobody to think like Tanti does.
These drama types must have some kind of weird fetish:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2598934/Infatuated-woman-teacher-26-took-16-year-old-pupil-hotel-break-sex-school-training-weekend.html
Was a medical report actually filed that Mr. Tanti had suffered from multiple rib fractures? If yes – he seems to have enjoyed a speedy recovery considering it was a fall half the height of the Portomaso Tower!
[Daphne – I trust you realise he was in hospital for a couple of days, so what medical report are you on about?]
Yes that is my point – it is being alleged that he was not diagnosed for fractured ribs at all but just for some sort of pulmonary infection.
What I would like to ask, and maybe it has been covered already, but possibly didn’t the school notice this inappropriate relationship? Maybe if it did, the outcome wouldn’t have been fatal.
Where was Lisa Marie’s mobile found? Could it be that he also went down to look for her mobile so as to delete everything in it connected with him? Then when he found that he could not reach her, he quickly changed his plans.
I am not defending him in any way, his actions cannot be justified under no perspective, but for someone who has been following this case on the news, you are now blindly bashing the man out of your own personal spite.
Your blog has now become fiction and you are twisting words to suit your own tastes. You are probably right that he was planing on running away but there is no way that he could have faked his injuries. He had issues but he was not a murder, this is a case of something exciting getting way out of hand which resulted in a poor young girl’s life.
[Daphne – You are as abnormal as he is. How many of you weirdos are there out there? Any number of you could be standing in the supermarket queue behind us and the rest of us wouldn’t notice. Freaks, the lot of you, dressed up as normal, passing for normal, with all these lurid thoughts and twisted reasoning.]
TVM’s news report today shows where Tanti and Zahra were found. Compare the two locations and then explain why he survived and she didn’t.
http://www.tvm.com.mt/news/dettalji-xokkanti-mill-istqarrija-ta-erin-tanti/
Is this Sophia for real?
If she is I think it is your duty to uncover her identity (if you know it) as she is nothing but a potential menace to society. I think she needs help before her illness gets out of hand.
We have enough perverts as it is.
U il-Laburist jitfacca! Prosit, Silvio!
It usually takes a stranger a very long time to gain my trust, if ever, but reading such comments is scarier than the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.
For all I know this could be just anyone. Malta has become a very dangerous and scary place.
Hi Daphne, you are so spot on this time round.
If he didn’t want to be caught having a relationship with a minor, why did he go and sleep with her in her own room, in her own house?
Was it maybe because he did want her family to know (out of spite) and ultimately to lead her into thinking that now there was no other way out except to commit suicide.
Probably he thought he could get out of it and write a play about it in some other country and become famous.
It was not his grandmother who knew about their relationship; it was her grandmother. And we only have his word for that.
The most bizarre part is that he parked his car outside the house. Which person trying to hide an illicit relationship would do that? The story that is emerging is a very perverse one indeed.
The whole of Malta is probably still recovering from the shock of Lisa Maria Zahra’s horrific death while in the company of her teacher, Erin Tanti. His sister, Enya Stewart Tanti, is meanwhile keeping herself busy changing her Facebook profile picture and this time, getting it professionally done (because now lots of people might be looking).
Their father, Alex Tanti, is distracting himself by uploading pictures of Peugeot cars on his FB page, and instead of telling his daughter to stop attracting more attention by posting one picture of herself after another, instead commented beneath her latest show-off pose: “You are beautiful, my dearest daughter.”
She isn’t. But at least, unlike Tony Zahra’s daughter, Alex Tanti’s is alive.
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202564259981102&set=a.1468041594400.64462.1634389348&type=1&theater
These people are sick. It may explain a lot of things.
When people who are nothing keep feeling the need to put themselves on Facebook to receive likes and the assurance that they are beautiful, it means they are NOT.
I will not venture into more speculation than to say that I do not believe one word this accused guy says.
At a distance of sixty years Malta now has its own Caso Montesi.
No, it does not. Montesi’s murder remained unsolved. What happened here is as clear as day.
You are an optimist, I am a pessimist.
Do not forget that whatever happened has to be as clear as day to a jury.
The members of that jury might not be as smart and as clever as you.
This is a sad story.
I would want to kill him if she was my daughter. Yes, she was under age and it is a criminal offence to have sexual relations with an underage girl, more so when she was his pupil.
I believe the two of them were passing through a bad time and they found each other for consolation.
Alas their love story ended tragically.
It is for the courts to find out if he was guilty or not. It is simply not our job.We have to wait until all the evidence is out.
[Daphne – Love story? If this is the Maltese woman’s definition of love, no wonder so many relationships are completed scrambled. ‘He loved me, so he killed me’. You people have no self-respect. And as for your statement that you would have killed him if she was your daughter, I just love the double standards. Aren’t you the same person who said we should forgive Marie Louise Coleiro for wrecking another woman’s home, family and happiness, just because her biological clock was ticking? Suppose that other woman was your daughter? Wouldn’t you have wanted to kill Miss Coleiro?]
Love story?
What love story?
If this is a love story then I have advanced Alzheimer’s.
I would want to kill him…..alas their love story ended tragically.
Kill him…..feel sorry for him…..
This isn’t some really bad South American soap opera from the ’80s, Persil. He’s killed a child. His pupil at the school he taught at, no less. Cut the romantic, pseudo sympathetic crap.
Are u for real Ms Persil?
Mama Mia!
How on earth can you call this a ‘love story’?
You must be utterly out of your mind (like Erin).
I bet you would not have used the term ‘love story’ if this happened to your daughter.
Given that he was found in boxer shorts and his other stuff hidden under a rock, he may have made himself more comfortable to try to up-scale the cliff (after having somehow down-scaled it) when he accidentally fell from a relatively short height (hence the minor injuries compared to a fall of 40 metres).
Small mistakes unprofessional murderers make when they panic. He thought that the police wouldn’t have found his jacket near the victim and his stuff hidden under a rock and even if they did, he would be out of the country in no time.
Tanti must have known the place well. Who would find his way about down a cliff in the dark if he had never been there or studied the place from above?
How and why would anyone know those cliffs well, unless it was their regular, cliff/mountain climbing training haunt? A pro cliff-hanger, he definitely is not.
Compare his cold comments in court today with the emotional testimony Oscar Pistorius gave today crying in tears and asking for forgiveness from his wife’s family and friends.
Had this girl been my daughter and he did say he desired a slow death I would have very gladly obliged … with a blow torch
Still I disagree with your bombardment here. Not sure what you are trying to achieve with this.
Let the police do their job … so far they have been very professional and appear dead set to give this little runt what he deserves.
The moderator rarely remains passive at predominant implications made to female nature. Let alone let these undertones taint the victim’s memory.
Unless we want to fail her in death as well.
There is no doubt that these people inhabit a parallel universe to mine.
I just cannot get my head around the fact that in the midst of her only brother being arraigned in court for murder, and with the whole country talking of nothing else but this tragic case, his sister responds by uploading a new studio portrait (dated 5 April) of herself onto her Facebook page and sending self-satisfied smilies to the inevitable ‘gorgeous pix hon’ messages. Un-bel-iev-ab-le.
The worst bit is a ‘Like’ from a teacher who works in a reputable sixth form college. Sickening.
What if she threatened to expose him for what he had done with her and he then panicked at losing everything?
[Daphne – She didn’t need to expose him. The reason he absconded with her is that he was discovered in her bedroom, and it was reasonably assumed that he wasn’t visiting his pupil out of hours to play Scrabble.]
That would fit with the theory that he either threw her over or encouraged her to jump.. or worse still maybe she died in the car from an overdose and he then had to throw her over to make it look like a suicide.
As you say, he took the money. Why would he do that if he wanted to die?
He definitely did not want to do anything of the sort. His only plan was probably to get rid of her and make his escape. but then it all got out of hand.
Daphne,
She left a suicide note.
Several of my friends have seen it (the girl’s father showed it to them as they were mentioned in it)
Don’t get me wrong I’m not on team Erin, Lisa was a good friend and I do hold him responsible for her death and want him to pay.
I don’t know what happened that night anymore than anyone else, but the girl did plan to die.
It is irrelevant whether she wanted to commit suicide or not. Tanti still failed her as an adult and as her teacher.
I teach teenagers who are Lisa Zahra’s age. If (God forbid) one of them came up to me and said she wanted to kill herself, my duty as her teacher would be to inform the school authorities, who would in turn inform the parents, or failing that, a social worker.
Needless to say, unlike Tanti, I would have no qualms or hesitations about doing so because I care enough about the well-being of my pupils to not get involved in a sexual relationship with them.
To egg on a 15 year old’s suicidal thoughts, to encourage her to kill herself, is a vile moral transgression on a number of levels. Bottom line, Tanti must have wanted to get rid of her so she couldn’t testify to their relationship in court – the fact that she said she wanted to die by her own hand must have been a blessing for him.
It is a murder by proxy.
Funny how you pick up on the “powerful man” (whilst referring to Tony Zahra). I had hitherto read so many comments online referring to “her powerful famiy” that I was quite perplexed. Why powerful? Why is Tony Zahra powerful? Now that I’ve read this the penny dropped.
So much has been said here that I do not have much to add. I am appalled at the level of ignorance being shown by people – most arguing that the press should not report this.
I do believe Tanti is nothing but a cold, calculating murderer who reminded me somehow of Dr. Crippen – who was a poisoner but who had planned his escape after his killings. I am more than sure that Tanti preyed on Zahra and the text messages shown in court should shed light on the exact nature of their relationship.
I cannot stop asking myself why people are so hell-bent on absolving Tanti. I do believe it is to exorcise that worst nightmare a parent can have, that of knowing that one’s daughter has been first deflowered then killed.
I do believe that at the basis of this mass public defence there is a strong sense of denial of what actually happened.
People just cannot face the truth that a teacher to whose care the minor was entrusted has preyed on the minor leading her to her death.
What people do not realise is that denying that this actually existed will not exorcise it, will not just make it go away. They will simply make it come back, in another shape, in another form, under another guise.
Running away from it will not make it go away. But then, people are too shallow to realise this and they just hope to wish it away.
I hope they will realise one day that acknowledging what really happened is the only real way in which menaces like Tanti can be recognised at the very early stages and stopped in their tracks before they can do serious harm.
He felt “embarrassed” for dating a minor? Embarrassed? What a word.
I bet he might even try to start a debate on lowering the age of consent. What utter rubbish!
Even if someone were to date someone else without knowing their real age (let’s say they lie about it) and then finding out after a while, they wouldn’t feel embarrassed – they would panic like crazy, and rush for the evidence that proves they thought that person was 18 and hope to God they don’t get in trouble.
Is he trying to play some sort of “forbidden love” card here? What nonsense.
Plus, if he were to be dating someone who he is in love with, wouldn’t he use a nicer pet name for her, if not her actual name?
Also, I don’t get all this dramatic nonsense he’s spouting. She probably didn’t call him a coward, or anything of the sort. Personally I think he got her drunk and doped up on pills and pushed her off the edge – literally.
Sadly, I thnk your last paragraph is correct. The only reason his jacket was found next to her is because she probably grabbed it instinctively as soon as he pushed her. (He would have been holding the jacket himself, seeing that his keys were in it, and that it would have been him who locked the car.)
Anyone who has any relevant information about this scum should pass it on to the police, in the interest of any of his possible victims, be they past or future.
First Tragic, then Sophia – and now I read the below in The Malta Independent comments.
Natasha Borg says:
07 April 2014 15:45
Before you start judging and pointing figures it is obvious that both individuals were vulnerable enough to contemplate suicide, and perhaps we can feel some compassion for their situation. They were both troubled youth, one had the misfortune of dying, the other the misfortune of living and facing the consquences. I hope our justice system gives Erin a fair trial and his psychological background is taken into consideration. I don’t think he was entirely to blame for what happened judging by the troubled nature of the girl.
Sickos.
But why kill her? He could have left the island if he was so scared of her father.
[Daphne – No point in leaving the island. There are such things as European and international arrest warrants, and those for having sex with minors in a teacher/pupil situation are acted on immediately. THAT’S what he was afraid of, not her father as such, but her father filing a police report.]
On the subject of “lanzit,” “slightest detail,” “survival skill” and “language” I think it is worth going into more detail, if this will save the younger generation and anyone at all extreme pain on its discovery and effects.
As Daphne mentioned, it is not particular to those who have what they themselves and others may consider underprivileged backgrounds. Sometimes even where the background has been privileged, there is a vein of something that you may not quite be able to put your finger on, until one day it’s staring at you in the face. A particular and specific sore point that would have accompanied this person his or her life long, no matter how academically degreed that part of the person’s evolution is.
If you are able to, it is always worth thoroughly scanning somebody’s family history for signs of this vein, or reasons it may be present. If you are not able to put your finger on it immediately, the scan may aid the perspective.
If there is the slightest discomfort, learn to trust and thank that gut instinct. Stay with it until it pans out and helps you recognise and put words to that sense. Where it exists, it will have surfaced for a reason, but when one is young, that instinct may be suppressed because it isolates from the thinking of the rest of the crowd who may not be sensitized by family upbringing in the same way. One suppresses it to go with the flow, out of fear of seeming different. Difference, in fact, it where the precious element lies. It is what attracts lanzit.
——–
Somebody wrote that this was “something exciting” gone wrong. “Something exciting?” That should always set the alarm bells ringing. “Something exciting.” Why is it exciting? Because it is out of the norm?
Take time to ask yourself, and write down – on your own first, before this is discussed in a group – a list of why exactly it is exciting. This first list should be about your own reasons. Sometimes at 15, and despite all and any bravado, one thinks own reasons are not as sufficiently important as the group’s or not more so, but they should be.
After that ask yourself what the established thinking on the matter is and again list the points.
Compare the two lists and look for areas where they are on the same lines, and areas where they differ.
Isolate the specific areas that are of particular interest to you and see where these get situated in the comparison and within the two different lists.
Determine what exactly the consequences of those priority areas and actions are, and also of the other points on that list
When looking at consequences, don’t forget to think of different time-frames. The importance of what appears to be a right-now decision, may fade into complete relative unimportance when looked at through the perspective of different time frames. There is right now, there is immediate, there is short-term, medium-term and long-term.
Nobody has the same definition for the amount of time they would each allocate to each span, but it is useful to check how these could be determined differently by the different people involved in the different contexts, and after this private thinking takes place. If it is not possible to ask these people, put yourself in their shoes for the exercise.
It can help to clarify much of the existing thinking where right-now thinking seems imperative and over-riding.
This is how discussion with anyone on difficult, strange or “exciting” matters can be started or explored: by checking out and doing a bit of investigative thinking, or research, of your own first.
——–
People with lanzit will injure to create lasting damage with absolutely no qualms about doing so. It is precisely the quality you have and the other person doesn’t have that is being stalked for attack and that is why it will be difficult to see initially, until you start recognising the quality in the more than one person, and are made more aware of that highly desirable value that is part of your make-up.
Lanzit will recognise a particular rare or magnificently scented or exotic flower, or enchanting intriguing spice, in the dark by its perfume and will beeline in, usually with characteristic aggression – even charm overdone can be aggression – until it has devoured the taste and consumed it to its satisfaction. It couldn’t be damned about that flower’s part in an arrangement or the stage of its development or the care and trouble taken to cultivate that flower under careful conditions.
It is the stand-out quality in the person that attracts the dangerous lanzit that decides it must have it, own it, or snatch it at any lancing short-cut cost. Lanzit leaves a trail of wreckage. That is what differentiates lanzit from healthy normal competition or challenge. Only once you are part of that wreckage, is lanzit satisfied.
What “it” is changes: it can be your lifestyle, it can be your sense of style, it can be your ability, it can be competence, it can be your best friend, it can be your boyfriend, it can be
your magnetism. Whatever it is lanzit has identified that you have and it doesn’t, it will take at any cost, and spare itself the effort of recreating it uniquely for itself. Lanzit mistakenly believes that the quality morphs-in by absorption, association or by (mis)appropriation.
This is not at all a rare phenomenon.
It is extremely common.
Be very careful who you trust completely.
Beware of people who change their colours and “want to know all about you.”
When it comes to trust, family is your safest bet.
No one is ever going to care for you more.
It is the antennae of family that are most closely matched to your own.
Lanzit is greedy, lustful, voracious, devastating and insatiable. It is a frame of mind. Once a trophy is under its belt it identifies another must-have.
Lanzit can travel as a group, not only as an individual – if only to justify its behaviour within that group and to reinforce it outside of it.
Lanzit belongs with inferior, at every level of society
Lanzit is a parasite.
I rarely agree with Daphne, but when I heard of this story the first time, I immediately smelt a rat, and yes my mind ruled out suicide and instead saw homicide.
I sincerely hope justice will be done. Had I been the girl’s father, I would want deliver my justice to this scum bag.
So yes, on this occasion I am on Daphne’s side.
[Daphne – There are no sides. This is not a game and there are no teams. There is only reason or the absence of it.]
For all those people who have no idea about the law (but purport to), one is innocent until proven guilty.
I am finding it hilarious that there are people here calling those who actually want to abide by this legal maxim, ‘sickos’ – or, if not directly calling them that, clearly insinuating it.
Unfortunately, the law permits all this babble online, even though it may clearly affect a jury’s state of mind when it comes to the interpretation and adjudication of the facts at hand, as they are being put forward.
I am not on team Erin, nor am I on team Lisa (yes, I have seen people refer to teams – LOL) – it appears this issue has become a breeding ground for ‘fun’ gossip and several attempts at jigsaw puzzle solving.
The universal and undeniable truth, supported by the (human) right to a fair trial (just in case you do not know what this is, please look up Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights and article 39 of the Maltese Constitution), is that one is innocent until proven guilty.
It may seem hard to swallow, but swallow it, please.
[Daphne – The trial takes place in court. It is entirely separate to any discussion in the press. The press is not responsible for defective jurors.]
I had the misfortune to know Erin Tanti quite well when I was younger as we lived close to each other.
Last time I spoke to him well he was around 14 and already he had begun to give me the creeps. When I look back at his behaviour and his choice of words I realise what a narcissist he really was, craving attention and being overly sensitive mixed with serious lack of empathy.
He experimented with his sexuality and went with both boys/men and girls/women probably just to see if he could – to enhance his own self worth.
I don’t believe for a minute he went there with the intention to kill himself because he loved himself too much.
My thoughts go to the girl`s family and I hope they get justice by seeing him locked up in prison for a very very long time.
I met the late Lisa just two weeks before the events at Dingli took place. Little fact for you, Daphne dearest, he was saved in her phone as something very similar to ‘douchebag’, I believe it was ‘Dickhead’ or something akin to that.
Speaking as a 16 year old male, I can tell you firsthand that referring to those you care about by derogatory terms is commonplace and ENTIRELY normal for people of my generation and those on either side.
I’m not going to get involved with a debate with you over Erin Tanti, as you are without a doubt the most vindictive and hard-headed woman I’ve ever had the displeasure to hear of, and no doubt any valid arguments I raised would be drowned in a sea of patronizing language and your reluctance to see beyond they end of your nose.
You have a great many problems with Erin Tanti as a person, that’s GLARINGLY obvious, and it seems to me (And this is just my opinion, maybe the concept of ‘opinion’ is one you should invest some time in researching) that you’d been hiding away in your middle class bubble, WAITING for an opportunity to strike out at him.
Judging by some of the things you write, Erin Tanti isn’t the only person on this island who needs to assess their lives.
Willis,
Ok, I tend to agree with you that the ‘douchebag’ part is simply not of any particular significance. 15 years olds today are not the 15 year olds of 20 years ago either.
However, can’t you see why many people are disgusted by Erin Tanti? He was sleeping with a 15 year old… do you doubt that he knew very well, that what he was doing was wrong?
That the moderator was hiding in a middle class bubble, is all a little extra. Just as irrelevant as the profiling of a guy that is well just a guy, seeing as most of us here have never met him.
Bottom line: Erin Tanti was dead wrong, regardless of his intentions. The rest of the people here – should really stop being so selfish and stick to disliking him in private.
Her family deserves so much more then this. If they read this blog, all they would read is how their poor daughter was ‘used’, ‘abused’ and what not.
They need to go through the court proceedings anyway, do they deserve people gossiping about the facts, which will hurt them to revisit etc. I doubt they haven’t already understood and assumed what is likely to have happened their daughter.
I vote that this topic is wiped out together with all our comments. Voice your support for the moderator to consider joining us in a real act of solidarity to the Zahra family.
If my words piss you off, please excuse me – I’m not after an argument (really).
[Daphne – Rest assured that if they minded they would have told me. After all, we know each other.]
Ah… you know each other.
[Daphne – I know very many people, Egypt Graffiti, and not necessarily through work, either. I know Erin Tanti’s family, too, incidentally – they sold ice cream and pastizzi round the corner from where I grew up: Tanti Palmier at Ghar id-Dud.]
Willis Petit – if you see nothing wrong with Erin Tanti’s character and behaviour, keep a close watch on your own. I mean that sincerely, not sarcastically.
“I’m his student and I can say that he loved to attract an audience and he always tried to be different. Lisa used to skip lessons to stay with him. He was tired of his act and started making sexual references in plays being produced at school, and also swearing in class.”
————————-
Is the school in question for real?
Yes. And they employed at least one other abuser before this one.