Police on Wednesday arrested a 16-year-old and his friend over the brutal axe murder of the boy's parents in near the northern Italian city of Ferrara in the Emilia-Romagna region.
Riccardo Vincelli is suspected of offering 1,000 euros to his 17-year-old friend Manuel Sartori to help him hack to death Vincelli's parents, 59-year-old Salvatore Vincelli and 45-year-old Nunzia Di Gianni.
"There was an agreement to commit murder with an axe," said chief prosecutor Bruno Cherchi.
The schoolboys confessed the double homicide to police interrogators after initially claiming they had discovered Vincelli's parents bodies at the family home in Pontelangorin on Tuesday.
The suspects told police they had thrown their blood-stained clothes and the murder weapon into a canal in the village of Caprile where Sartori lived
The couple were found wrapped in plastic at their home the village of Pontelangorin in the Emilia-Romagna region on Tuesday with multiple head wounds.
Vincelli had been struck three times with an axe and Di Gianni six times in the middle of the night as they slept and their bodies moved to the garage and the kitchen.
The teenagers told police they had intended to dispose of Vincelli and Di Gianni's corpses and tell police the couple had gone missing but failed to carry out the plan.
Vincelli was on bad terms with his parents who were upset with his poor school grades and had plotted with Sartori to kill them, offering his friend the 1,000 euros as a reward.
Vincelli's father owned a restaurant in the nearby town of Comacchio.
