Italians were aghast yesterday when it emerged that a grisly murder that has gripped the country was perpetrated by an unremarkable middle-aged couple, who confessed to slaughtering four neighbours over a noise dispute.

"We just could not stand them anymore," Bazzi, a petite housemaid obsessed with cleanliness, told investigators as she confessed to killing the two-year-old with a knife. "He was always screaming, my head was exploding," she said, according to media reports.

According to investigators who had bugged their home after the murders, Romano and Bazzi were heard to say to each other: "See how peaceful it is now? We can finally sleep well."

Bazzi, 43, was unable to have children, which Italian media have suggested as a possible cause of her anger with the sound of the child's crying.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/italy/story/0,,1989529,00.html

[What the press didn't tell is that the baby boy was practicing the covers of "Eye of the Tiger", "Imagine" and "Like a Virgin". Face it, you wouldn't have endured either.]