An Irish landlord was killed and mutilated by an Italian man in an alleged argument over a chess game in Dublin, the Associated Press reported.
After being arrested on Sunday at the home he shared with Tom O'Gorman, a policy researcher for a conservative Catholic think tank in Ireland, 34-year-old Saverio Bellante was charged for murder on Monday, police said.
Having suffered dozens of knife wounds to his head and chest, 39-year-old O'Goreman's condition was so severe that a lung was missing, pathologists said. According to the AP, Bellante reported the killing himself and confessed "he had cut open O'Gorman's chest and tried to eat his heart after a dispute over a move in a chess match the two had been playing."
At his arraignment on Monday in a Dublin court, Bellante offered no plea and said he would decline state-funded legal aid. Upon Judge David McHugh inquiry of his lawyers, Bellante claimed he wanted to represent himself, the AP reported.
When charged with murder on Monday in police custody, Bellante testified that he was guilty, Patrick Traynor, a policeman, said.
According to the AP, Bellante was ordered by McHugh to be held without bail in Dublin's Cloverhill Prison and to receive a psychiatric evaluation before his next court appearance on Friday. Bellante, a native of Palermo on the Italian island of Sicily, worked in Dublin for the past two years at a pharmaceutical company.
O'Gorman lived with his mother in the prosperous west Dublin suburb of Castleknock. After she died in 2012, he rented a room to Bellante, who had lived there only a few months, the AP reported.
O'Gorman wrote frequent papers and blog posts for the Iona Institute, which lobbies against same-sex marriage and abortion rights in Ireland, a predominantly Catholic nation.
"He had lots of opinions and liked a good argument, but he was good fun," Iona Institute director David Quinn wrote in a tribute published on Monday. "He had an offbeat sense of humor and was a fantastic mimic, something he inherited from his dad, I am told. He loved to entertain his friends with his mimicry."
