Italian woman found murdered in abandoned church

A 22-year-old woman was found murdered in a church ruin in northern Italy.

She was ghost hunting and may have participated in a new trend on Tiktok, according to police.

Before the murder, she was seen walking dressed “like a vampire” with a man who has now been arrested.

The 22-year-old, who is a French citizen, was found on Friday by a forest wanderer in the abandoned village of La Salle in the Aosta Valley. She lay dead in the fetal position in a church ruin and had lost a lot of blood.

The woman was wearing beige leggings, a black sweater and a long black coat. She had no ID documents or mobile phone on her. Next to the body was a bag of pink marshmallows and items from a local grocery store, but there were no signs of a struggle.

According to the Italian news agency Ansa she had been stabbed several times and then dragged into the church. She had also been shot with two shots. The police tells CNN that they were likely fired after her death.

Would look for ghosts

The 22-year-old woman belonged to a community outside Lyon, France. An Italian police spokesperson told CNN that before the trip to the Aosta Valley, she had told family members of her plans: To look for ghosts in a haunted house.

The police believe that the woman may have participated in a Tiktok trend that is currently spreading in France, which involves hunting ghosts. Other working hypotheses for the investigators, writes CNN, are that she allowed herself to be killed voluntarily in a kind of sacrificial ritual or that all she participated in was a prank on social media that got out of hand.

Man arrested in France

The days before she was found dead, the woman was seen in the village with a young man with whom she is believed to have had a relationship, writes Ansa.

According to CNN, witnesses have told the police that they were dressed “like vampires”. The woman was pale and emaciated and looked like a “walking corpse”.

– They told me that they had come here from the Swiss border. They were looking for a supermarket and wanted to camp in the forest. He was always the one doing the talking. He did not appear to be violent or have a drug problem, says a villager to the Italian newspaper La Stampa.

The man is 21 years old and an Italian citizen. He was wanted internationally and was arrested on Wednesday evening in Lyon. In France, he was already suspected of acts of violence against the woman, writes Ansa.