VIC: Ice-cream vendor who hacked rival to death gets 22 years

AAP General News (Australia)
04-22-2004
VIC: Ice-cream vendor who hacked rival to death gets 22 years

MELBOURNE, April 22 AAP - A Melbourne ice-cream vendor has been jailed for 22 years
for the "cold blooded assassination" of a competitor who was hacked to death with a home-made
sword.

Francesco Mangione, 46, of suburban Moonee Ponds, was ordered to serve a minimum non-parole
term of 18 years.

Victorian Supreme Court judge Justice David Harper said Mangione "hacked his victim
to death" with the sword.

The court heard Mangione wore a mask when he attacked his 26-year-old cousin, Denis
Giunta, in the victim's suburban Williamstown home in the early hours of February 5, 2002,
stabbing him 55 times.

The Mangiones and the Giuntas had been engaged in a turf war over territory in which
both families operated ice-cream vans, the court was told.

A previous fight with the victim and the turf dispute were the only suggested reasons
why Mangione should have wanted Mr Giunta dead, the judge said.

"If there were any redeeming features of this crime, the evidence did not reveal them,"

Justice Harper said.

"It was a planned assassination. It was committed in cold blood in the principal bedroom
of the victim's house."

A jury convicted Mangione of murder.

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KEYWORD: MANGIONE

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