Florence, September 7, 2026 – Lorena Isceri was still alive when, last Thursday, she was thrown off the Lora viaduct of the A1, in Barberino del Mugello, by her ex-boyfriend Federico Vella, who committed suicide a few minutes later by also throwing himself into the void. The fatal injuries on the woman’s body are indeed consistent with trauma from a fall from a height of about 25 meters.
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The autopsy and the file for kidnapping that ended in femicide
These are the first and distressing indiscretions from the autopsy that began today at the legal medicine institute of Careggi, by Beatrice Defraia and Elisa Ferri, consultants appointed by the prosecutor Antonio Natale as part of the investigations of a file opened for kidnapping that ended in femicide. A file opened to include all the investigations the prosecutor intends to carry out even though, for Vella’s death, there will never be a trial against him. For the 36-year-old, who was assigned, ex officio, the lawyer Federica Guarducci, in addition to the autopsy, toxicological tests were requested to determine the state of any alterations – from drugs, narcotics, or steroids – he might have potentially been under during his criminal act. In the prosecutor’s office was also Lorena’s brother, Danilo, accompanied by his lawyer, the Salento attorney Cosimo Miccoli.
The plan on the smartphones
What was Vella thinking? Where was he headed in the Audi Q3 of his ex-partner, whose abandonment he could not accept? These are questions that might find answers in the next investigation to be ordered by the magistrate, namely the analysis of the content of the seized smartphones. There are four devices in the hands of the police of the Mobile Squad led by Domenico Balsamo. Two iPhones were collected at the bottom of the viaduct, near the two bodies; two other devices, another Apple and an Oppo smartphone, were instead in the cabin of the 45-year-old’s Audi parked in the emergency lane. Vella had planned the raid in the garage of the manager’s home on via Panciatichi. A neighbor, present at the torchlight procession on Sunday evening, says he had often noticed him lately wandering around the condominium. He was probably intent on monitoring the movements of his ex-girlfriend but also carrying out those inspections with which he would have fine-tuned the details of his action: the previous morning, he had bought what was necessary to immobilize Lorena.
The torchlight procession for Lorena Isceri, the woman killed by her ex (photo Gianluca Moggi / NewPressPhoto)
Lorena’s last minutes
Everything happened dramatically fast, in a sequence of about thirty minutes marked by the woman’s calls for help, police tracking, and finally the report of a driver who noticed the man outside the car on the viaduct.
It remains to be understood, and perhaps it will never be clarified, where the 36-year-old was headed after entering the highway northbound, if his plan, certainly studied, contemplated a different outcome. The aggravating circumstance of premeditation, in short, in the virtual charge contested by the Florence prosecutor’s office. Lorena, beaten but still alive, had managed to send an SOS, but perhaps it was precisely hearing her speak that triggered the final murderous instinct in Vella’s mind.
The farewell on social media
From the analysis of the smartphones, investigators will also try to extract another piece of information: to place in those dramatic last thirty minutes of the couple’s life, the “story” on Instagram in which Vella said goodbye. It could be a further clue of his predetermined will to kill the woman who, after discovering a betrayal, had decided to leave him.
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