Sky Italia is launching a high-profile documentary series with international ambitions titled “The Overlooked Serial Killer,” reconstructing a true-crime case that has gripped millions of Italians. The documentary investigates the connection between Elisa Claps, an Italian teenager who disappeared in 1993, and Heather Barnett, a British woman whose mutilated body was found in Bournemouth in 2002.
“The Overlooked Serial Killer” docuseries segues from a recently launched podcast about the case titled “Dove Nessuno Guarda –– Il Caso Claps” that has become Italy’s top podcast on Spotify. The show, which will launch on Sky in Italy later this year — and is likely to play on the Comcast-owned pay-TV operator in the U.K. — is being pitched to international buyers at the Rome MIA market.
This podcast-plus-docuseries production, made by Sky’s Italian news unit SkyTG24 in tandem with Italy’s fast-growing Chora Media podcast company, is the first of its kind for Sky Italia.
“We are no longer just a TV channel. We are a news outlet that produces journalistic information and in-depth content that can go on all platforms, including podcasts that are growing and very congenial to our type of storytelling,” Giuseppe De Bellis, director of SkyTG24, told PvNew. “There is interest on Sky’s part to give it international play since it involves non Italian protagonists [victims] and a number of unique events that took place outside Italy. We think it’s absolutely congenial for international distribution.”
The decomposed body of student Elisa Claps, who was 16 when she vanished in 1993, was found in a church in the Italian city of Potenza 17 years after her death. Claps’ disappearance was subsequently linked to the brutal murder of Heather Barnett, 42, a seamstress whose body was found mutilated with locks of hair in her hands in Bournemouth, Dorset. Danilo Restivo, an Italian who moved to Bournemouth and was known by police to have a fetish for cutting girls’ hair, has been found guilty of both murders.
“This project, podcast and docuseries, which we [Chora Media] created with Sky Italia and SkyTG24, is one of the best I have ever worked on,” said journalist and podcast specialist Pablo Trincia in a statement. “It was an incredible journey in two cities, Potenza and Bournemouth, in a saga that seems to never end, full of details, twists and turns and unacceptable oversights. It was also a journey through the pain of a respectable family, the Claps family, who after 30 years is still grappling with this story and with the reopening of the church where their daughter and sister was killed and hidden.”
A TV drama miniseries reconstructing the Elisa Claps case titled “Per Elisa,” produced by ITV Studios and state broadcaster RAI and directed by Marco Pontecorvo, will air on RAI later this month.
