Custody Fight Ends in Death, but Family’s Grief Goes On

Toni Dykstra spent two wrenching years fighting for custody of her 2-year-old daughter, Santina.

Despite death threats she said she received from Santina’s father, Carlo Ventre, she successfully battled her way through the twists and turns of family court in Los Angeles. When Ventre fled with the little girl to Italy, his homeland, the Downey paralegal borrowed enough money for a flight and followed them.

But a week after an Italian tribunal awarded her custody, the 29-year-old Dykstra’s struggle came to a sudden and deadly end. Rome police Tuesday found her body in Ventre’s apartment. She had been killed by a single blow to the back of her head, they said.

With Santina’s mother dead and her father charged with homicide, the toddler’s fate remains unclear. Doctors are treating her for pleurisy, and Italian child social services will take charge of her when she recovers, a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said. After that, the Italian courts will decide where she lives.

Dykstra’s family in San Pedro said they fear that Italian authorities might release Ventre or reduce the charge against him to one of using excessive force in self-defense.

Ventre told police that he pushed Dykstra into a fireplace because she attacked him with an ax. Police said they found an ax in his apartment and that Ventre showed them wounds where he said Dykstra struck him.

How Dykstra ended up in Ventre’s apartment Tuesday remains a mystery. Her family and friends said she would never have gone there willingly. And Ventre’s claim that the bubbly, fun-loving woman they knew attacked him with an ax rings false, they said.

“Everyone who knows Toni knows that’s ridiculous,” said her attorney, Alan Skidmore. “She was deathly afraid of [Ventre] and would never hurt a fly. . . . He said he was going to kill her, and he did.”

Ventre’s death threats had gone on for months, according to Skidmore and Dykstra’s family. Ventre often told her on the phone he would kill her, they said. He would refuse to let her talk to Santina, and then would beg Dykstra to leave for Italy with them as one happy family, Skidmore said.

“It was a terribly cruel and manipulative game he was playing,” Skidmore said. “She could hear the baby crying in the background as he was speaking to her.”

Dykstra met Ventre at a bar nearly four years ago. There was a wide age gap--Ventre was in his 50s--but Dykstra found him handsome and romantic, her sister Laura Nielsen said.

Dykstra was a single mother, struggling to bring up two young children from an earlier marriage. Ventre owned a business that manufactured plumbing supplies. He doted on her children, urging them to call him “Papa,” Nielsen said. A year after they met, Dykstra moved into his Downey home, although they never married.

Life was wonderful, Nielsen said, until Dykstra became pregnant. Then Ventre assumed a Jekyll and Hyde personality. He would tell Dykstra how much he loved her, Nielsen said, and then suddenly become enraged at the slightest mistake: the bed not made, the asparagus not cooked to his liking.

Ventre’s outbursts continued after Santina’s birth. He screamed at Dykstra’s two older children and refused to let them touch his daughter, Nielsen said. About six months later, worried for their safety, Dykstra called police, and an officer advised her to take her two older children and leave, which she did, Nielsen said. Santina remained with her father, but Dykstra immediately began filing the legal papers to gain custody.

When Dykstra left, her family said, Ventre grew more obsessive. He regularly pleaded with her to return. When she refused, he threatened to kill her, Dykstra’s brother-in-law James Martinez said. But Dykstra remained undaunted.

Then, in January, Ventre fled to Italy with Santina. Not knowing where they had gone, Dykstra pursued her custody case and won in a Los Angeles court, Skidmore said.

Ventre eventually telephoned from Rome. Dykstra called local members of Congress and enlisted the aid of the State Department. She and Skidmore brought the case to the attention of Italian authorities, who began hunting for the pair. Within months, Ventre was found, and a custody hearing date was set for July 20.

Dykstra’s family gathered together what money they could, and soon she was on a flight to Rome. At the hearing, an Italian tribunal ruled in Dykstra’s favor, but before she could reunite with her daughter, Ventre fled again with Santina.

Police caught up with them days later in Ostia, a small town just outside Rome. Santina was ill and needed treatment. Dykstra would have to wait to take her daughter home, doctors said. It might take a week.

Less than a week later, Dykstra was dead.

Researcher Maria De Cristofaro contributed to this report from Rome.