Twin’s Bond to Her Slain Sister Lives On in Custody Struggle

Everything you hear about that special bond between twins--that was Toni and Teri.

The sisters from San Pedro used to finish each other’s sentences or give the same reply simultaneously. As adults, they would discover that they had bought the same item of clothing or piece of crystal. They married brothers (Toni later divorced). They went through one of their pregnancies together.

But when Teri Martinez turned 30 earlier this month, she did so alone.

Her identical twin, Toni Dykstra, was killed by her ex-boyfriend in Italy last July under a mysterious set of circumstances in which he claimed self-defense.

A week before, an Italian tribunal had granted Toni sole custody of her daughter by her ex-boyfriend, Carlo Ventre. The court said Ventre had illegally abducted Santina Ventre, then 2 years old, from the United States to Italy two months before a Los Angeles Superior Court also awarded Dykstra sole custody.

Toni’s death came after a bitter two-year struggle, laced with allegations of abuse and murder threats, for custody of Santina, an American citizen. That struggle continues for Teri Martinez and her family, as the girl, now 3, remains in foster care in Italy nearly 10 months after Dykstra’s death.

Martinez wants the child back in the United States, raised by her sister’s family and reunited with Dykstra’s two daughters from her previous marriage, who are living with their father in San Pedro. Martinez’s father and stepmother, of Stockton, have offered to raise Santina and are fighting for custody of her.

Meanwhile, an Italian court will today hear Ventre’s appeal of a lower court’s ruling denying him custody rights. The Italian citizen, who was arrested but released after two days, is permitted supervised visits with Santina, as authorities continue to investigate him for possible murder charges.

In the United States, authorities have a warrant for his arrest on charges of international parental kidnapping. In addition, a Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday granted Toni’s father, Milton Dykstra, temporary sole custody of the child.

Martinez is hoping that these new developments will influence the Italian court’s decision. In the meantime, she waits.

Sometimes, she wishes she had stopped her sister from going to Italy last summer to try to get her daughter back from Ventre.

“I was terrified for her and she was scared too,” Martinez said inside her beige stucco home in San Pedro, where she lives with her husband and three children. “But a bond between a mother and her baby . . . I couldn’t stand in her way.”

Dykstra, a 29-year-old paralegal, went to Italy after being granted a court date there under the Hague Convention on Child Abduction, a treaty that governs cases of alleged international abduction.

On July 28, she was found dead in Ventre’s apartment in Rome, killed by a single blow to the head, authorities said. Ventre told Italian police he pushed her into the fireplace after she came at him with an ax. She and her daughter had been scheduled to return to the United States two days later.

Martinez said Ventre is lying. Dykstra was deathly afraid of her ex-boyfriend, whom she left after he was emotionally and physically abusive toward her, the sister said.

Martinez, her eyes welling up with tears, said her sister told her Ventre threatened that he would “kill her and would chop her up into little pieces. He said that he would wait until she got to Italy because over there, nothing would happen to him.”

Her sister met Ventre, a business owner in his 50s, at a Torrance restaurant in 1994. After a year of dating, she and her two daughters moved into his home in Rancho Palos Verdes. When Dykstra became pregnant, Ventre grew increasingly argumentative and critical of her, Martinez said.

Dykstra alleged in court documents that Ventre would not allow her to breast-feed Santina, bathe her or leave the house with her. Martinez said her sister told her Ventre kicked and shoved her.

Attorneys representing Dykstra’s family hope the court order granting Milton Dykstra custody, as well as the warrant for Ventre’s arrest, will pave the way for the child’s return to California. Alan Skidmore, a lawyer who is representing Dykstra’s family along with two other lawyers in Southern California and three women’s rights attorneys in Italy, said Italian courts “have no choice” but to hand Santina over to Milton Dykstra.

Teri Martinez remains hopeful. She cannot wait to tell Santina all about her mother: How much she loved her three daughters. How she would spontaneously start singing and use a hairbrush as her microphone. How she juggled work at two law firms, night classes for her paralegal certificate and parenthood.

“And she went through all that stuff to get her baby,” Martinez said. “I was really proud of her. She’s my hero.”