U.S. citizen Francis Charles Kaufmann, who is accused of murdering his partner and baby daughter in Rome, has been extradited to Italy from Greece.
Italian media reported that Kaufmann arrived at the Rome airport of Ciampino on an Italian Air Force Falcon just before midday local time.
Kaufmann was originally arrested on the Greek island of Skiathos on June 13 on suspicion of killing his 28-year-old Russian partner Anastasia Trofimova, and their 11-month-old daughter Andromeda, whose lifeless bodies were discovered in Rome’s Villa Pamphili park on June 7.
He denied the accusations in a hearing in Larissa in Greece shortly after his detention, saying: ” “I am innocent: I didn’t kill them.”
The mother and child had reportedly accompanied Kaufmann, who claimed to be a well-connected film producer, to the Italian capital for meetings on a number of feature film projects he said he was trying to get off the ground.
As reported by Deadline last month, it emerged in the wake of the murders and Kaufmann’s arrest that he had been operating under a number of aliases and that many of his producer credits on IMdb were untrue.
It also came to light that Kaufmann had secured a €863,595 ($996,112) tax credit from the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2020 for a feature entitled Stelle della Notte, which never got made, using the alias of Rexal Ford and fake passport.
Under the rules around the Italian film tax credit, the application was handled by Italian production company Tintagel Films and Kaufmann did not have direct access to the monies, but one hypothesis is that he traveled to Rome to secure part of the payout.
This revelation led to the resignation of Nicola Borrelli, the General Director of Cinema and Audiovisual at the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Kaufmann has now been transferred to a secure section of Rebibbia prison on the outskirts of Rome and a preliminary face to face hearing with Italian investigators is expected to take place next week.
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