Multiples – Toni and Teri

I have twin cousins, Toni and Teri.  Everything you hear about that special bond between twins was certainly true in these two.  They would finish each other’s sentences or reply with the same comment simultaneously.  They even would find out they both purchased the same article of clothing or piece of jewelry.  They even married brothers and went through one of their pregnancies together.

Unfortunately, that bond was broken many years ago when in 1998 Toni was killed by her ex-boyfriend in Italy under mysterious circumstances in which he claimed self-defense.

Toni’s story was all over the press and even on TV’s 48 Hours where her twin, Teri, tearfully told  48 Hours correspondent Bill Lagatutta, “I miss her laughter. She was really funny. We would laugh about everything. And there’s so many things I want to tell her.

A week before her death, an Italian tribunal had granted Toni sole custody of her daughter.  The court said that Carlo Ventre, Toni’s ex-boyfriend, had illegally abducted Santina Ventre, then 2 years old, from the United States to Italy.  Toni had also been awarded sole custody before a Los Angeles Superior Court.

Toni’s death came after a long bitter two-year struggle, mixed with allegations of abuse and threats of murder by Ventre, for custody of Santina, who was born in CA.  After her mother’s death, Santina was placed in foster care in Italy.

On July 28, 1998, Toni was found dead in Ventre’s apartment in Rome, killed by a single blow to the head, according to local authorities.  Ventre told Italian police that he pushed her into the fireplace after she came at him with an ax.  She and her daughter were scheduled to return to the US the next day.

After Toni’s death, Terri and her husband cared for Toni’s other two daughters until they went to live with their father.

Toni met Ventre, a business owner in his 50s (she was in her mid-twenties at the time) at a restaurant in sunny California in 1994 and fell in love.  “She thought he was real nice, charming and sweet,” explains Toni’s identical twin sister, Teri. “And [he was] interested in the kids and the family.” “He was so nice and sweet to her,” says Teri, who was also her sister’s best friend.

Teri and Toni told each other everything. They giggled, they laughed, they whispered,” remembers their stepmother, Betty.

After a year of dating, she and her two daughters moved into his home.  Then Toni became pregnant.  After the baby was born friends and family says Carlo became obsessed with the child, who he considered his more than Toni’s. He became argumentative and critical of Toni.  She alleged in court that Ventre would not allow her to breast-feed Santina, bathe her or leave the house with her.  She even claimed that Ventre kicked and shoved her.  Teri even told reporters at the time that Ventre threatened that he would “kill her (Toni) and would chop her up into little pieces.  He said that he would wait until she got to Italy because over there, nothing would happen to him.”

Toni and Carlo had a final blow-up; Carlo kept Santina and locked Toni and her two older daughters out of the house. But even then, he continued to threaten Toni. “He would tell her he would take Santina to Italy and she would never see her again,” says Teri.

Less than a year after Santina was born, they went to family court in California and came to a temporary agreement to share custody of Santina. Until a final deal was reached, Carlo was forbidden to take Santina to Italy without notice.

But on Jan. 16, 1998, without warning, Carlo did just that, boarding an international flight with 2-year-old Santina and returning to Italy.

Despite Carlo’s alleged threats, Toni took her case to family court in Los Angeles and was awarded full custody of her daughter. But the battle was only half over. Carlo, an Italian citizen, was now living in Italy with Santina, which meant Toni would have to take her case to an Italian court.

Toni wasn’t a lawyer and didn’t speak Italian. Nevertheless, she decided to represent herself and worked with a friend, Alan Skidmore, to get a court date and help prepare her case.

“She sat in my office knowing her life was in danger but there was no option for Toni. She was going to go get her baby,” he remembers.

Borrowing money from her parents, Toni bought two tickets — one for her and one for Santina — and made her first trip to Rome alone.

Friends and family were worried for her safety. “The last thing I said to her on the phone was ‘Toni be careful. This guy could kill you,'” her father remembers.

They couldn’t go with, her but they knew Toni was in touch with the U.S. embassy, which put her up at a nearby convent for her safety.

The day after her arrival, accompanied by a translator from the embassy, Toni made her case to the Italian court.

Skidmore says Toni didn’t know what to do when she got into court but that she followed her gut instinct. “She went in and just told her story and she came out of that courtroom with a win,” he says.

On July 17, 1998, an Italian court ruled in Toni’s favor, declaring that Carlo had violated an international law on kidnapping. Santina was to be handed over to Toni and returned to the United States immediately.

But when Italian police arrived at Carlo’s apartment to take custody of Santina, Carlo told them she had unexpectedly fallen ill.

“Carlo said that she had pleurisy, which is a lung infection, and he was going to take her to the hospital,” says Teri.

Doctors said Santina wouldn’t be able to leave the country until she recovered. Until then, Toni was forced to cross paths with Carlo as they both visited their child in the hospital.

Teri says her sister was “very scared at that point.”

Finally, the time had come for Toni to collect her daughter and fly home. Santina had recovered from her illness and Toni had tickets for both of them to travel. But this is where things went terribly wrong. The afternoon before the flight, for reasons unfathomable to her relatives and friends, Toni went alone to Carlo’s apartment.

“Carlo Ventre is an extremely manipulative individual. He could have told Toni any number of things to get her to his apartment,” says Skidmore.

By the time police arrived at the scene, 29-year-old Toni Dykstra was dead. There was evidence of a struggle. A hatchet lay a few feet from Toni’s body.

Detective Domenica Salis, who was one of the first cops on the scene, says Carlo was very agitated.

Det. Salis soon discovered that Carlo’s first call was not to the police. The detective says Carlo called his lawyer before contacting the authorities, and says Carlo never called for medical help.

Teri hoped to one day tell Santina about her mother.  How much she loved her three daughters.  How she would spontaneously start singing and use a hairbrush as her microphone.  How she juggled work at two law firms, night classes for her paralegal certificate and parenthood.  “And she went through all that stuff to get her baby,” Terri said.  “I was really proud of her.  She’s my hero.”