Mom Confesses to Murdering and Dismembering Her Son, Using a Hacksaw, with the Help of His Wife By Charlotte Phillipp

A woman has confessed to murdering her 35-year-old son, dismembering him and attempting to hide his body with the help of his wife.

According to Italian news agencies ANSA and L’Unione Sarda, as well as the Daily Mail, Lorena Venier, 61, admitted to murdering her son, Alessandro Venier, after his wife, Mailyn Castro Monsalvo, 30, called the police to confess what they had done on July 25.

The outlets reported that Alessandro’s body was found dismembered in the basement of the home he shared with his wife, mother and infant daughter in the town of Gemona del Friuli, located in the region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia.

“I took care of Alessandro’s ‘dismemberment’ myself,” Lorena, a nurse, told the judge during a court appearance, per ANSA. “I used a hacksaw and a sheet to hold the blood and I dissected him into three pieces. There were no blood splatters — that’s why the Carabinieri police found everything in order.”

Lorena allegedly confessed that she and her daughter-in-law had been planning the crime for months, and she cited physical abuse from her son as their motive.

“Mailyn had been asking me to kill my son Alessandro for months, ever since the day their daughter was born in January,” Lorena claimed, per L’Unione Sarda.

“Mailyn was violently beaten, insulted and repeatedly threatened with death,” she alleged. “My son downplayed her postpartum depression, and when I decided to report it, he punched me in the back.”

Lorena also alleged that Alessandro told his wife, who is originally from Colombia, “I’ll take you to Colombia and drown you in the river, because no one’s looking for you there.”

According to the Daily Mail, investigators allege that Lorena and Mailyn served Alessandro a glass of lemonade spiked with a tranquilizer before giving him two shots of insulin — which Lorena had obtained from the hospital where she worked — to render him unconscious.

Authorities claim that Alessandro was then suffocated with a pillow and strangled using shoelaces. Mailyn allegedly then moved her husband’s body to their garage and covered him in quicklime, or calcium oxide, to hide the smell, per the Daily Mail.

Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Sign up for PEOPLE’s free True Crime newsletter for breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases.

Alessandro had recently told friends that he was considering moving to Colombia, and Lorena and Mailyn planned to use that to cover up his disappearance, authorities claim, per the outlets.

Mailyn called the police and confessed soon after, and Lorena told the judge overseeing the case that her daughter-in-law had only moved the remains, according to ANSA.

Lorena has been charged with murder and concealing a body, and Mailyn is being investigated for instigation to murder, per the Daily Mail.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.