'My son knew who was going to kill him'

Soon before he was gruesomely murdered, 20-year-old Gaetano Romano wrote a letter which showed that he feared for his life and which named the man he was afraid of as someone close to the family, according to his father.

Nicola Romano, a Sicilian, found the letter from his son in his office shortly after finding his body in an industrial oven in Buġibba three months ago with nails hammered into his head.

The letter had been written "in case something happened to him".

"If something happens to me, you know who to look for - you don't have far to look," Mr Romano said quoting the letter.

The distraught father said he was now certain who had killed his son.

Gaetano also wrote that although he was worried he held back from telling his father anything because, knowing his character, he was concerned about the way he would react.

He had once also told his father that he would die young. "I only want to have fun because I will die before you - that is what he told me," Mr Romano said.

The letter has been handed over to the police as evidence. It was Mr Romano himself who discovered his son's body, one day after Gaetano's 20th birthday, in his gypsum workshop. He had flown in from Morocco after he grew increasingly concerned that his son was not answering his calls.

"I had a bad dream that something was wrong and I'm never mistaken," Mr Romano said yesterday.

He recounted the moments before he found his son and said there must have been another person involved in the murder. One person must have held him down while someone else hammered the first nail into his head.

When he got back from Morocco and first entered his workshop, he found several gypsum items broken and objects moved around.

The steel door of the room-like structure that was used as a furnace was bolted shut, which was unusual because Mr Romano usually left it open.

"I passed by the closed door of the oven around nine times but I didn't think much of it," Mr Romano recalled.

His son's friend, Charlene, who had come to help Mr Romano look for Gaetano, was with him at the time.

"Suddenly I had a bad feeling and ran to the oven. I opened it and looked in. The first thing I saw was that the electric oven inside had melted down, then I saw my son," he said before breaking down in tears.

"I screamed out, 'Charlene, he is dead' and she ran out scared."

With tears flowing down his face, Mr Romano described how the partly charred body of his son was lying curled on the floor with one hand on his head and another on his waist. A trickle of blood could be seen on his face.

The people who carried out the act had wanted to burn the evidence, he said.

Gaetano was buried on May 30 but the investigation into his death has so far been inconclusive. His body was released for burial just four days before the funeral.

Police sources said the investigation into his murder was still open, along with the magisterial inquiry. The police believe the killing occurred after an argument got out of hand.

An autopsy failed to determine whether the victim was still alive when his body was placed in the oven.

The family dog was killed eight months ago and was found rolled up in a carpet in a nearby field. A neighbour had told The Times that the family had even received photos of the dead dog. The police have been trying to find out if there is any connection between this incident and the murder.

The police are known to have footage from a closed-circuit camera on a neighbour's house showing the son walking the dog and possibly someone following him. However, all that can be seen is a person's legs, from the knees downwards.

Gaetano Romano's Maltese mother died of cancer aged 45, when he was preparing for his confirmation.

"They took my son and now I have nothing left - it's like I'm dead," his father said, as he made an appeal for information.

He said it was important not to let the case die down and to strike while the iron was hot. "If anyone knows anything, then all they have to do is call the police. We have to protect our children because they are our greatest treasures," Mr Romano said.