October 2, 2024 • 30 mins
An arrest, a murdered dog, an arson attack; nothing will stop Daphne from speaking out and exposing the truth. Until one tragic morning on October 16th, 2017.
Crooks Everywhere is a production of iHeartPodcasts, Topic Studios and Vespucci.
The voice of Daphne Caruana Galizia is played by Sienna Miller.
The senior producer is Leo Hornak. The producer is Maddie Hickish.
The executive producers are: Christy Gressman for Topic Studios; Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore for iHeart Podcasts; Johnny Galvin and Daniel Turcan for Vespucci; and Sienna Miller.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
A note to listeners, this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There is corruption everywhere in the world, literally everywhere and
at every level. The difference is that in Malta people
have a corrupt attitude towards corruption. They blanket they tolerate it.
The powers are not really separate institutions a week. The
police operate as an extension of the government. Judges and
(00:30):
magistrates are politically appointed. It's a dreadful situation, ripe and
designed for abuse and corruption.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So Manuel, where are we? What we're looking at?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We're in the very middle of the Live Island, the
small hamlet of Bignia, about one hundred farmers this year.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I mean it's dry here, but the tree feels it
was quite a busy road, a line of houses on
the ridge and then the ridges bare.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
John and I are in maltawn on a country road
about half an hour's drive from the capital, Valletta. At
the end of the last episode, we heard how a
team of contract killers were here watching Daphne through her
windows with her rifle. But on that evening they didn't fire.
At the very last minute. Their plan hit a snack.
According to courtrum testimony, just Before the shot could be taken,
(01:35):
getaway driver Chinese George de Georgio, learned there was a
roadblock on some of the roads leading to Dafani's home.
An escape by car suddenly seemed too risky, so the
plan is aborted.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Instead, they decide they will carry out the hit using
a different method, but just as deadly. Over to our
left can see the sea, and then just there there's
a police box.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Who lives here, well, definitely Carmegality. I lived here, her
family still lives here. It's a house that overlooks the
valley within the sort of the center of the island.
This little hamlet is mostly a farming community, and she
had the last house on the.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ridge, So this ridge here, Where were the spots.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Is They're right across so through the trees in a
way that wouldn't be visible to us from here, but
they could see us from there. She was being spotted
and watched by the people who are planning to kill her.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
And it's punishingly hot. We're actually standing in the shade,
but it feels like thirty degrees now, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And I think you're seeing just the atmosphere that would
have been there on the day sixteenth October twenty seventeen.
It was a hot day like this. October is the
tail end of summer, but the landscape is dry, the
heat is on, and Dephnely was running an afternoon errand
on a day just like today.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
From my hard podcast topic Studios in Vespucci.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'm John Sweeney and I'm Manuel Delia and this is
Crooks Everywhere, Episode two.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
The woman who spoke out.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Ter Daphne was a year older. She's the eldest of
us four. We used to share a bedroom when we
were children and up to about the age of twelve
thirteen on.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
A small island. A lot of people thought they knew
a big personal little like Daphne, but her sister Corinne
saw a different side.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The strongest memory I think books and reading writing. She
didn't care for much else, you know, especially at school.
She just loved reading and writing.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This would be the mid seventies definitely, as a young teenager.
Deafney's son Paul has written a biography of his mother.
It describes her so hungry for reading matter that she
forms her own book club in school, sharing British children's
literature like Enid Blyton Exotic Adventures from afar off Land.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
But the other thing I suppose, rather than books alone,
was that she really loved magazines, and she always said,
you know, if you want to know what's going on,
you ought to keep in touch with the world magazines
well the way I mean it's a spre internet. Of course.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Deafnely was born the same year that Malta stopped being
a British colony nineteen sixty four. Let's say a more traditional.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Time, such as the time of austerity. In a postcolonial
we couldn't travel much, you know, people didn't at that time.
It just didn't happen. I mean, we grew up in
a neighborhood where you know, my mom had grown up
in the same street. It is a seaside town, so
it is a tourist destination, but when we were children,
tourism wasn't very well developed.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Back in the seventies and eighties. Who are still a
fairly poor nation and also living under a mild form
of socialism, which made luxuries like foreign travel or teenage
fashion feel exotic and precious. Even Enid Blyton was a
form of escapism. Daphnie's was a family that was fairly
prosperous and successful part of the English speaking educated middle class,
(05:23):
the kind of people sometimes seen as more British than
the British, the kind of people who don't have great
socialist credentials, and that can cause resentment, as we will
hear down.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
With the British Empire and all that. I mean, no
one likes to be associated with all that gasslyl colonial nonsense, right.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right, and these things matter. There are deep social and
cultural divides that still run through our whole culture and
through Daphne's story even today.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
The way her sister Koran tells it, even as a teenager,
young Daphne was already looking outside Maulta for inspiration, a
world that was outside her grasp, listening to Adam Ants
and Bob Marley, reading British teenage magazines, and it.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Was a particular one called Jackie, which was aimed at
teenage girls, you know, dealing with fashion and romance. You know,
the typical problem page you get for teenage girls, that
sort of thing. That was a magazine definitely used to
like very much. I remember that she used to buy
it regularly. My parents used to buy lots of magazines,
you know, Life magazine, Spectator magazine, Newsweek. So there was
(06:31):
that connection, and I do remember this sense of the
wider world.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And the way the country was run at the time
wasn't making things easier for teenagers.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It wasn't, let's say, a time of opportunity for teenage girls.
That way, education beyond the mandatory first years of education
wasn't greatly encouraged.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
At that time, the socialist government was attempting to force
a Catholic schools to abolish fees, effectively forcing them out
of existence. The authorities saw church schools as religious and elitist,
definitely not part of a socialist Malta the kind of
schools that many middle class families like Dafni's used, and
maybe the notion of a church school makes you think
(07:18):
of xalatory and conservatism, but at that time these schools
were a rare spot of independent thinking that the government
could not control. They felt threatened by that. Forcing church
schools out of business became a mission for a government
that wanted to monopolize education and, as they put it,
to cultivate future generations of socialists. And so while Daphne
(07:42):
is reading Jackie magazine and listening to Damant, her classmates
are beginning to join protest marches to keep their school open.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
So this is an unusual coalition. Teenage rebellion meets the
Catholic church.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Deafhney was nineteen at this time and not really political yet.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, huge crowds of people marched through the streets.
And there was a time when there was a protest
in our own hometown. For some reason, I hadn't gone
to that one, but I remember definitely had gone there
with her friends out in the street, a few streets
away from our home, and then the police moved in.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Back then, Maltese police were not known for their life
touch and.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Remember one of them punched deafnely and then she and
her friends were arrested. And then, you know, it's not
like anyone reads you or your rights, and so they knew. Basically,
they knew they could do whatever they liked. Human rights
as a concept didn't exist for many people. Mike was right.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I can't imagine how frightening that must have been for her,
but also how scared her parents must have been.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yes, yes, it's a terrifying prospect, both for the person arrested,
but even more terrifying if you were on the outside.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Definitely claimed that she was forced to sign a pre
written confession for assaulting a police officer. When it reached court,
she was acquitted of all charges, and the magistrate presiding
criticized the police involved, calling for their conduct to be
condemned and severely censured.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
That is the kind of experience that scarce you for life,
especially at that age, even if she did make it
out in one piece.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yes, when I imagined nineen year old, definitely, this I
think has to be a crossroads in her life. Some
people would have learned the lesson to keep their head
down from then on, but with definitely, it did the opposite.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I mean, it wouldn't say radicalized her, but it also
brought home in a very personal way, just how fragile
you know fundamental freedoms are, How you know you need
to protect, you need to fight back every day. You
can't take anything for.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Granted, Malta being a small place. The same young arresting
officer went on to become a major multice politician, this
time quarter of a century later. Definitely was determined to
have her say.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
October seventh, twenty ten. I stand by what I have
said for twenty six years. Angelou Farrugia forced me to
sign a false confession which he wrote himself.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Naturally, this is Daphne's version of what happened, and it
should also be noted that definnely lost a libel case
related to these claims, although an appeals court held that
she managed to prove some of the facts.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We should also note that it would have been hard
for Deafney to prove her case thirty years after the fact.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Malta cannot have a prime minister who, in his days
as a police inspector, forced a nineteen year old girl
to sign a false confession which he himself had written,
telling her that if she did not do so, she
would be returned to the pitch black cell with feces
smeared walls and a metal bucket for a lavatory, where
she had been kept for the past twenty seven hours.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
After young Daphney finishes school, she began also followed the
expected path for someone of her background, marriage, starting a family,
but also something more surprising. She becomes a journalist, Malta's
first female opinion columnist.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And that was surprising even for what was by then
in the early nineteen nineties. I remember she started writing
around the time I started reading newspapers, I obviously didn't
realize how unique she was, because to me, everything on
a newspaper was new. But I became a fan early on.
And it wasn't just that Definnely was a female journalist.
It was also that she wrote openly under her own name.
(11:35):
Until then, most columnists preferred to stay anonymous.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
It felt safer, but that wasn't Daphne's style.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
Well, I started out purely out of my own sense
of frustration with the newspaper's local newspaper.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Definitely spoke about this time. This is a rare recorded
interview with Definitely from the nineteen ninety years before she
started her blog.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
And I also noticed an absence of columns written by
people under their own name, you know, his photograph name,
as I read regularly in foreign newspapers. And that's what
this is very odd. And the reason Giffen was always
that such a column would be impossible in Mortar because
it's such a close, closely knit society, and people are
(12:24):
afraid to offend others are afraid of stepping on other
people's toes, and obviously, if you're going to write a
proper column, you're going to step on people's toes very often.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Of course, on a small island, stepping on toes and
making enemies can be a risky business. You never know
quite who will hold a grudge, but in a small
place you do know that they will be able to
find you if they want to.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Daphney's writing was a hit. People started to buy the
paper purely to read what definitely had to say, to
watch her stepping on toes.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Previously, journalists had tended to be men. In fact, the
newspaper I started out with, The Sunday Times, had had
a policy of never employing staff reporters who were women.
It was a very absurd and antiquated policy, and the
test since of course bitter the dust. I mean, it
was totally absurd, but that accounted for a lot of
(13:23):
my effect at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
She's being very modest here. The quality of her writing
and the urgency of it where what really made her
stand out.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
But not surprisingly, the idea of a strongly opinionated female
columnist didn't go down well with everyone, and.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
That became a very difficult time for Defne because she'd
get all these ominous messages which weren't sort of avert
but you get a sense that you know something creepy
going on.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I know this myself as a writer on news and
politics in Malta. You can't prove where the hostile messages
come from or whether it had anything to do with
any specific piece of reporting, but people know who you are,
and on an island this small, if people want to
find you, they will find you. So there's a reason
why it was normal for a journalists to write anonymously
(14:16):
for their own well being.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
But you know when you hear something on the room,
you know, on the grapevine, or someone says you'd better
be careful because you know x y Z is feeling angry.
That's the kind of thing that she was experiencing where
you'd get these sort of not so subtle hints, And there's.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
A mother dafinitely did her best disguise of pressure she
was coming under.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
After she was skilled, her son said they had to
revise a lot of what they experienced when they were children.
So when they were pulled out of school and taken
for an impromptu holiday to Gozo, which is a neighboring island,
they then realized that that was a time when definitely
possibly was feeling unsafe and thought, you know, getting out
of the house, getting out of their normal environment would
(14:57):
take them out of harm's way. For a while, I never.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Really thought of my mother as a woman journalist, you know,
I taught of her as my mother and as this
incredible writer.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Definitely had three boys. Matthew is the oldest, Paul the youngest.
This is Andrew, the middle son.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
I guess what I always found striking was that she
was so different to my friend's parents, to my friend's
mother's you know, in Malta, in my parents' generation, maybe
twenty percent of women worked, maybe thirty percent max. And
the fact that she was the sort of famous journalist
(15:43):
was you know, it made her almost like an alien somehow.
And she was able to live these two lives very effectively,
you know, to be the Maltese mother who was sort
of very you know, like a typical Mediterranean mother who's
very sort of you know, attentive and proud of her
(16:04):
children and just you know, very warm, but then was
able to be this sort of like razor sharp journalist.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And Daphne's razor sharp journalism had real world consequences for
the family.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
So I remember coming home from school and there was
you know, we had this dog. All our dogs were
mongrels at the time. We used to just adopt whatever
straight dogs would show up, but this one actually was different.
It was a colligue, really beautiful dog called Messalina.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
And on this day when they get home, somethink is
waiting for them on the doorstep.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Its throat had been slashed, but rather than making a
fuss about it, definitely just walked inside and said, you know,
it must have drunk eaten some poison from the garden
or something of the sort. So she played it down
a lot and dealt with it that way.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
And obviously I believed her because I was, you know,
maybe seven years old, But I remember thinking, Jesus Christ,
I mean, is that what snail poisoned us? To you?
How much poison do you need to kill a snail?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And yeah, And then things moved beyond even warnings like that.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
And then there was when our front door set on fire.
The explanation was that we left the candle out that night,
so so sort of semi plausible for a child, but
over time, you know, you realize, okay, that that obviously
was not true. The door was completely black and then
(17:42):
obviously as we grew older, we you know, our parents
stopped pretending.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
The family decided they needed more protection, so they built
the first of several walls around the property. Sadly, that
was still no guarantee of safety.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And there was another ugly incident which came later on.
So they were asleep in their own beds and somebody
crawled across the fields at the back of the house,
piled rubber tires at the back of the house, filled
them with fuel and set them alight. And this was
in the early hours of the morning, so they had
(18:18):
obviously been watching the house and waiting for the lights
to go out, which was a signal everybody was actually
in bed.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
And petrol obviously is explosive, so the idea was that
the petrol would would blast through the glass and the
fire would spread into the house. But luckily my younger
brother came home. So this was about three in the morning.
We were teenagers, were going out all the time. It
was a weekend, and Paul came home maybe ten or
fifteen minutes after the fire was started and saw the
(18:46):
smoke and woke up the family and they were able
to put it out, But otherwise it would have been Yeah,
it would have been completely I mean, my mother was
in no doubt that, yeah, it was an attempted murder.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
There were other measures that could have been taken, but
somehow that would have felt like giving in.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
I would often see these kind of anonymous houses in
Malta covered in security cameras and alarms and things like that.
But in comparison, my parents were on the sort of yeah.
The philosophy was, we need to feel good in our home,
you know, our home. Our home shouldn't be a prison.
(19:27):
You know, if someone wants to kill my mother, they're gonna,
you know, a sort of off the shelf alarm isn't
going to stop them.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But for all this, Daphne's writing doesn't change. Nothing deters
her from writing difficult troops, whether biting gossip or hard
hitting stories about those with power and money.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And by this time many of Dephanie's regarding themes had
clearly emerged. One of them is what she sees as
more as deep cultural divisions, our culture war, what definitely
called the Maltas.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Daphnie is, Molta is fatally divided into two opposing camps,
a country cut in half by education, language, and politics.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
On one side, there are the professional classes with a
preference for the English language, people who have the skills
and resources to maybe work or study in Britain or
elsewhere in Europe. On people with an international outlook, people
who might have marched for the right of private schools
to stay open back in the seventies, people like Dafnie.
And on the other side of the barricades, there is
(20:31):
the other Malta, a more blue collar, working class culture,
people with less interest in the rest of the world.
According to Dafnie, they might be making a lot of
money in today's world, and they might be buying fleshy,
designer cloaths and going on short trips to Sicily in
their boats, but they would be culturally hostile to Daphnie's Malta.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
But start off it, I'd like to say that I
believe the greatest problem and moret is society is that
it's a clash of two cultures, and because it's such
a small population and the territory is so limited, those
cultures on head on confrontation.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The same interview from nineteen ninety eight, you can see
she doesn't make any effort to hide her view that
her side of the culture war is superior.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
So you have, on the one hand, you have people
who are subjected to I won't call it Western democratic culture,
but I suppose that's what it really is, through exposure
to foreign news media, particularly magazines, newspapers and so on.
So they're continuously reading and absorbing American, British, Italian, French
(21:38):
ideas and they get used to that way of doing things.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And you can also understand why some people saw heretitudes
to the rest of Malta the other Molta as s petronizing,
almost colonial.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Then on the other hand you have the other cultural block,
which Perhabs, which is raised in a culture of not
reading but listening to the radio, are watching the television.
Once again, it's part of the conflict of cultures. Basic
Multis culture fundamentally is quite primitive and quite savage, and
with a total lack of concern for other people. All
(22:12):
that counts as the family. No absolutely no civic conscience whatsoever.
It's totally totally alien to Northern European culture. The nearest
comparison I can make is to backwater Sicilian culture. We
see the same problems.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's the afternoon of Monday, sixteenth October twenty seventeen, the
end of the long multie summer, two of the hitmen
are back overlooking Daphnese house in Benea.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
As before, we've taken evidence heard in the courtroom and
dramatized what happened, providing color in places without changing any
of the material facts or allegations.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
After the plan to kill Daphanie with a sniper shot
was abandoned, the killers have come up with a plan B,
a new method of murder, and they know they needed
to work this time.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
They're getting pressure from their handler to get the job finished,
so over the last few weeks they've been practicing and
rehearsing intensively, all the while finding off impatiently inquiries from management.
And on this day, everything finally seems to be coming together.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
From a hideout across the shallow valley, Alfred Deban and
Vincent de Kov are watching Daphne's driveway through binoculars or
a telescope. They've already been here nearly eight hours since
before dawn, lying watching and waiting, waiting for the moment
when the compound door might open.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Alfred's brother, Chinese George, is a few miles away, also waiting.
He's on his own in a small boat that belongs
to him and his brother, waiting somewhere not far from
the letter harbor, close to the shore, close enough to
sue will be within mobile phone coverage. He will be
the trigger man, the one who will activate the murder weapon.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Inside. Completely unaware, Daphne is at her kitchen table finishing
a blog post about the Prime Minister's chief of staff,
Keach Cambri Husha calls a crook.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
At two thirty five pm. She posts the article. It
will be the last thing she ever publishes.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
A few minutes later, through the binoculars, Vincent Koff sees
a light come on above the outer gate to the
garden as sign that someone is coming out. First to
Alfred that this could be the moment they've been waiting for.
Alfred de Bean calls Chinese George on the boat and
tells him to get ready. The moment has come.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
While Stephane gets in the car, the trap will be sprung.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But then, at the very last moment, Vincent the cough
and Alfred de Bean watched Stephanie hesitate, turn around and
re enter the house a false alarm.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And then one minute later she returns she's forgotten her checkbook.
This time, Jephaney does get in the car. She starts
Ignition and begins driving along the short dusty path to
the main road.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And at that moment, once the car is in motion,
Alfred de Bean calls his brother on the boat again
and tells him that everything is ready. The plan is
back on out at sea.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Chinese George acknowledges the message and uses a different phone
to send a specially coded text to a SIM card,
a SIM card attached to an explosive device underneath Daphne's
car seat.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Daphne's eldest son, Matthew, is in the family house when
he hears the bomb. Immediately he runs out in his
bare feet to find out what is going on. Outside,
he sees the burning car in a field by the
road and tries to save his mother, but it is hopeless.
Pieces of Daphne's body are strewn across the bomb site.
(26:45):
Then two cops in a passing patrol car get out,
one of them holding a pitifully small fire extinguisher. Matthew
screams at them to do something, but it's too late.
There is nothing they can do. A neighbor and a
passing cars gets out starts videoing the scene with his
mobile phone. Outrage, Matthew seeses his phone and smashes it
(27:26):
across the valley. Alfred de Bean and Vincent de Cough
are leaving the observation post and making their way as
quickly as possible to a car parked close by, but
Alfred de Bean has blundered. They had a strict rule
on site to put every piece of letter, every cigarette
butt at the observation point in a bottle to be
taken away to avoid leaving any race. But perhaps in
(27:49):
the excitement or just in a moment of carelessness after
all the long hours waiting in the sun, Alfred de
Bean has let a cigarette butt fall.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
The cigarette carries irrefusable DNA evidence of his presence at
the scene of the crime. The killers are making it
so very easy for the investigators, if that is the
authorities choose to investigate.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And out at sea in his fishing boat, Chinese George
has also made a fatal error. Earlier in the day,
he realized that one of his Berner phones was short
on credit. If he can't make or received calls, the
whole murder plot will fail.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
But he's in a boat out at sea, he can't
get a top.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Up, so oh I was being smaspituality credit for a
telephone lip.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Up tamil litop up. That means can you top me up?
He calls friends, a couple of friends until someone agrees
to top up his burner phone account, and he makes
those calls on his personal legit phone.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
But Chinese George doesn't seem too concerned. After he hears
that the car bomb has been successfully detonated, he's in
a relax, celebrate removed. He steers the boat backs through
the quayside, and he sends another TEX on his personal
phone to his Romanian girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Open a bottle of wine for me, baby.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It's good to let a wine breathe before you drink it.
No point rushing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
It just in time for the first sip. He reaches
the shore a job well.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Done, or so he thinks. That's next time.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Crooks Everywhere is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Topic Studios
and Vespucci. It's reported and hosted by me Manuel Delia
and John Sweeney. The singer producer is Leo Hornack. The
producer is Maddi Hickish. Krish Denesh Kumar is the assistant producer.
The story editors are Emma Ederill, Matt Willis and Philippa Geering.
(30:10):
The managing producers are Thomas Curry and Rachel Byrne. The
voice of Dafnie Karvana Galizia is played by Ciena Miller,
acting direction by Christopher Houghten, Maltese voices by Mikhail Basmajan
and Pierre Staffrach. The executive producers are Johnny Galvin and
Daniel Turken at Vespucci, Christi Gressman at Topic Studios, Katina
(30:32):
Norvel and Niki Etoor at iHeart Podcasts, and Cienna Miller.
Marketing leader is David Wassermann. Audio recording by Tom Berry
at Wardoor Studios. Audio mix and sound design by Joel Cox.
Special thanks to Andrew Botchcardona, Alessandra di Crespo, Eddie Isles,
and Andrew Krvana Galizia
A note to listeners, this episode contains graphic descriptions of violence.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
There is corruption everywhere in the world, literally everywhere and
at every level. The difference is that in Malta people
have a corrupt attitude towards corruption. They blanket they tolerate it.
The powers are not really separate institutions a week. The
police operate as an extension of the government. Judges and
(00:30):
magistrates are politically appointed. It's a dreadful situation, ripe and
designed for abuse and corruption.
Speaker 3 (00:48):
So Manuel, where are we? What we're looking at?
Speaker 1 (00:50):
We're in the very middle of the Live Island, the
small hamlet of Bignia, about one hundred farmers this year.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
I mean it's dry here, but the tree feels it
was quite a busy road, a line of houses on
the ridge and then the ridges bare.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
John and I are in maltawn on a country road
about half an hour's drive from the capital, Valletta. At
the end of the last episode, we heard how a
team of contract killers were here watching Daphne through her
windows with her rifle. But on that evening they didn't fire.
At the very last minute. Their plan hit a snack.
According to courtrum testimony, just Before the shot could be taken,
(01:35):
getaway driver Chinese George de Georgio, learned there was a
roadblock on some of the roads leading to Dafani's home.
An escape by car suddenly seemed too risky, so the
plan is aborted.
Speaker 3 (01:48):
Instead, they decide they will carry out the hit using
a different method, but just as deadly. Over to our
left can see the sea, and then just there there's
a police box.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Who lives here, well, definitely Carmegality. I lived here, her
family still lives here. It's a house that overlooks the
valley within the sort of the center of the island.
This little hamlet is mostly a farming community, and she
had the last house on the.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Ridge, So this ridge here, Where were the spots.
Speaker 1 (02:23):
Is They're right across so through the trees in a
way that wouldn't be visible to us from here, but
they could see us from there. She was being spotted
and watched by the people who are planning to kill her.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
And it's punishingly hot. We're actually standing in the shade,
but it feels like thirty degrees now, yeah.
Speaker 1 (02:45):
And I think you're seeing just the atmosphere that would
have been there on the day sixteenth October twenty seventeen.
It was a hot day like this. October is the
tail end of summer, but the landscape is dry, the
heat is on, and Dephnely was running an afternoon errand
on a day just like today.
Speaker 3 (03:08):
From my hard podcast topic Studios in Vespucci.
Speaker 1 (03:11):
I'm John Sweeney and I'm Manuel Delia and this is
Crooks Everywhere, Episode two.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
The woman who spoke out.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
Ter Daphne was a year older. She's the eldest of
us four. We used to share a bedroom when we
were children and up to about the age of twelve
thirteen on.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
A small island. A lot of people thought they knew
a big personal little like Daphne, but her sister Corinne
saw a different side.
Speaker 4 (03:47):
The strongest memory I think books and reading writing. She
didn't care for much else, you know, especially at school.
She just loved reading and writing.
Speaker 1 (03:57):
This would be the mid seventies definitely, as a young teenager.
Deafney's son Paul has written a biography of his mother.
It describes her so hungry for reading matter that she
forms her own book club in school, sharing British children's
literature like Enid Blyton Exotic Adventures from afar off Land.
Speaker 4 (04:16):
But the other thing I suppose, rather than books alone,
was that she really loved magazines, and she always said,
you know, if you want to know what's going on,
you ought to keep in touch with the world magazines
well the way I mean it's a spre internet. Of course.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Deafnely was born the same year that Malta stopped being
a British colony nineteen sixty four. Let's say a more traditional.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
Time, such as the time of austerity. In a postcolonial
we couldn't travel much, you know, people didn't at that time.
It just didn't happen. I mean, we grew up in
a neighborhood where you know, my mom had grown up
in the same street. It is a seaside town, so
it is a tourist destination, but when we were children,
tourism wasn't very well developed.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
Back in the seventies and eighties. Who are still a
fairly poor nation and also living under a mild form
of socialism, which made luxuries like foreign travel or teenage
fashion feel exotic and precious. Even Enid Blyton was a
form of escapism. Daphnie's was a family that was fairly
prosperous and successful part of the English speaking educated middle class,
(05:23):
the kind of people sometimes seen as more British than
the British, the kind of people who don't have great
socialist credentials, and that can cause resentment, as we will
hear down.
Speaker 3 (05:34):
With the British Empire and all that. I mean, no
one likes to be associated with all that gasslyl colonial nonsense, right.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
Right, and these things matter. There are deep social and
cultural divides that still run through our whole culture and
through Daphne's story even today.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
The way her sister Koran tells it, even as a teenager,
young Daphne was already looking outside Maulta for inspiration, a
world that was outside her grasp, listening to Adam Ants
and Bob Marley, reading British teenage magazines, and it.
Speaker 4 (06:08):
Was a particular one called Jackie, which was aimed at
teenage girls, you know, dealing with fashion and romance. You know,
the typical problem page you get for teenage girls, that
sort of thing. That was a magazine definitely used to
like very much. I remember that she used to buy
it regularly. My parents used to buy lots of magazines,
you know, Life magazine, Spectator magazine, Newsweek. So there was
(06:31):
that connection, and I do remember this sense of the
wider world.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And the way the country was run at the time
wasn't making things easier for teenagers.
Speaker 4 (06:42):
It wasn't, let's say, a time of opportunity for teenage girls.
That way, education beyond the mandatory first years of education
wasn't greatly encouraged.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
At that time, the socialist government was attempting to force
a Catholic schools to abolish fees, effectively forcing them out
of existence. The authorities saw church schools as religious and elitist,
definitely not part of a socialist Malta the kind of
schools that many middle class families like Dafni's used, and
maybe the notion of a church school makes you think
(07:18):
of xalatory and conservatism, but at that time these schools
were a rare spot of independent thinking that the government
could not control. They felt threatened by that. Forcing church
schools out of business became a mission for a government
that wanted to monopolize education and, as they put it,
to cultivate future generations of socialists. And so while Daphne
(07:42):
is reading Jackie magazine and listening to Damant, her classmates
are beginning to join protest marches to keep their school open.
Speaker 3 (07:49):
So this is an unusual coalition. Teenage rebellion meets the
Catholic church.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
Deafhney was nineteen at this time and not really political yet.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
You know, huge crowds of people marched through the streets.
And there was a time when there was a protest
in our own hometown. For some reason, I hadn't gone
to that one, but I remember definitely had gone there
with her friends out in the street, a few streets
away from our home, and then the police moved in.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Back then, Maltese police were not known for their life
touch and.
Speaker 4 (08:25):
Remember one of them punched deafnely and then she and
her friends were arrested. And then, you know, it's not
like anyone reads you or your rights, and so they knew. Basically,
they knew they could do whatever they liked. Human rights
as a concept didn't exist for many people. Mike was right.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
I can't imagine how frightening that must have been for her,
but also how scared her parents must have been.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Yes, yes, it's a terrifying prospect, both for the person arrested,
but even more terrifying if you were on the outside.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Definitely claimed that she was forced to sign a pre
written confession for assaulting a police officer. When it reached court,
she was acquitted of all charges, and the magistrate presiding
criticized the police involved, calling for their conduct to be
condemned and severely censured.
Speaker 3 (09:15):
That is the kind of experience that scarce you for life,
especially at that age, even if she did make it
out in one piece.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
Yes, when I imagined nineen year old, definitely, this I
think has to be a crossroads in her life. Some
people would have learned the lesson to keep their head
down from then on, but with definitely, it did the opposite.
Speaker 4 (09:35):
I mean, it wouldn't say radicalized her, but it also
brought home in a very personal way, just how fragile
you know fundamental freedoms are, How you know you need
to protect, you need to fight back every day. You
can't take anything for.
Speaker 1 (09:48):
Granted, Malta being a small place. The same young arresting
officer went on to become a major multice politician, this
time quarter of a century later. Definitely was determined to
have her say.
Speaker 2 (10:00):
October seventh, twenty ten. I stand by what I have
said for twenty six years. Angelou Farrugia forced me to
sign a false confession which he wrote himself.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
Naturally, this is Daphne's version of what happened, and it
should also be noted that definnely lost a libel case
related to these claims, although an appeals court held that
she managed to prove some of the facts.
Speaker 1 (10:25):
We should also note that it would have been hard
for Deafney to prove her case thirty years after the fact.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Malta cannot have a prime minister who, in his days
as a police inspector, forced a nineteen year old girl
to sign a false confession which he himself had written,
telling her that if she did not do so, she
would be returned to the pitch black cell with feces
smeared walls and a metal bucket for a lavatory, where
she had been kept for the past twenty seven hours.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
After young Daphney finishes school, she began also followed the
expected path for someone of her background, marriage, starting a family,
but also something more surprising. She becomes a journalist, Malta's
first female opinion columnist.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And that was surprising even for what was by then
in the early nineteen nineties. I remember she started writing
around the time I started reading newspapers, I obviously didn't
realize how unique she was, because to me, everything on
a newspaper was new. But I became a fan early on.
And it wasn't just that Definnely was a female journalist.
It was also that she wrote openly under her own name.
(11:35):
Until then, most columnists preferred to stay anonymous.
Speaker 3 (11:39):
It felt safer, but that wasn't Daphne's style.
Speaker 5 (11:46):
Well, I started out purely out of my own sense
of frustration with the newspaper's local newspaper.
Speaker 1 (11:54):
Definitely spoke about this time. This is a rare recorded
interview with Definitely from the nineteen ninety years before she
started her blog.
Speaker 5 (12:02):
And I also noticed an absence of columns written by
people under their own name, you know, his photograph name,
as I read regularly in foreign newspapers. And that's what
this is very odd. And the reason Giffen was always
that such a column would be impossible in Mortar because
it's such a close, closely knit society, and people are
(12:24):
afraid to offend others are afraid of stepping on other
people's toes, and obviously, if you're going to write a
proper column, you're going to step on people's toes very often.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
Of course, on a small island, stepping on toes and
making enemies can be a risky business. You never know
quite who will hold a grudge, but in a small
place you do know that they will be able to
find you if they want to.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Daphney's writing was a hit. People started to buy the
paper purely to read what definitely had to say, to
watch her stepping on toes.
Speaker 5 (13:00):
Previously, journalists had tended to be men. In fact, the
newspaper I started out with, The Sunday Times, had had
a policy of never employing staff reporters who were women.
It was a very absurd and antiquated policy, and the
test since of course bitter the dust. I mean, it
was totally absurd, but that accounted for a lot of
(13:23):
my effect at the time.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
She's being very modest here. The quality of her writing
and the urgency of it where what really made her
stand out.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
But not surprisingly, the idea of a strongly opinionated female
columnist didn't go down well with everyone, and.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
That became a very difficult time for Defne because she'd
get all these ominous messages which weren't sort of avert
but you get a sense that you know something creepy
going on.
Speaker 1 (13:53):
I know this myself as a writer on news and
politics in Malta. You can't prove where the hostile messages
come from or whether it had anything to do with
any specific piece of reporting, but people know who you are,
and on an island this small, if people want to
find you, they will find you. So there's a reason
why it was normal for a journalists to write anonymously
(14:16):
for their own well being.
Speaker 4 (14:17):
But you know when you hear something on the room,
you know, on the grapevine, or someone says you'd better
be careful because you know x y Z is feeling angry.
That's the kind of thing that she was experiencing where
you'd get these sort of not so subtle hints, And there's.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
A mother dafinitely did her best disguise of pressure she
was coming under.
Speaker 4 (14:37):
After she was skilled, her son said they had to
revise a lot of what they experienced when they were children.
So when they were pulled out of school and taken
for an impromptu holiday to Gozo, which is a neighboring island,
they then realized that that was a time when definitely
possibly was feeling unsafe and thought, you know, getting out
of the house, getting out of their normal environment would
(14:57):
take them out of harm's way. For a while, I never.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
Really thought of my mother as a woman journalist, you know,
I taught of her as my mother and as this
incredible writer.
Speaker 3 (15:15):
Definitely had three boys. Matthew is the oldest, Paul the youngest.
This is Andrew, the middle son.
Speaker 6 (15:21):
I guess what I always found striking was that she
was so different to my friend's parents, to my friend's
mother's you know, in Malta, in my parents' generation, maybe
twenty percent of women worked, maybe thirty percent max. And
the fact that she was the sort of famous journalist
(15:43):
was you know, it made her almost like an alien somehow.
And she was able to live these two lives very effectively,
you know, to be the Maltese mother who was sort
of very you know, like a typical Mediterranean mother who's
very sort of you know, attentive and proud of her
(16:04):
children and just you know, very warm, but then was
able to be this sort of like razor sharp journalist.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
And Daphne's razor sharp journalism had real world consequences for
the family.
Speaker 6 (16:22):
So I remember coming home from school and there was
you know, we had this dog. All our dogs were
mongrels at the time. We used to just adopt whatever
straight dogs would show up, but this one actually was different.
It was a colligue, really beautiful dog called Messalina.
Speaker 3 (16:40):
And on this day when they get home, somethink is
waiting for them on the doorstep.
Speaker 4 (16:46):
Its throat had been slashed, but rather than making a
fuss about it, definitely just walked inside and said, you know,
it must have drunk eaten some poison from the garden
or something of the sort. So she played it down
a lot and dealt with it that way.
Speaker 6 (17:03):
And obviously I believed her because I was, you know,
maybe seven years old, But I remember thinking, Jesus Christ,
I mean, is that what snail poisoned us? To you?
How much poison do you need to kill a snail?
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And yeah, And then things moved beyond even warnings like that.
Speaker 6 (17:22):
And then there was when our front door set on fire.
The explanation was that we left the candle out that night,
so so sort of semi plausible for a child, but
over time, you know, you realize, okay, that that obviously
was not true. The door was completely black and then
(17:42):
obviously as we grew older, we you know, our parents
stopped pretending.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
The family decided they needed more protection, so they built
the first of several walls around the property. Sadly, that
was still no guarantee of safety.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
And there was another ugly incident which came later on.
So they were asleep in their own beds and somebody
crawled across the fields at the back of the house,
piled rubber tires at the back of the house, filled
them with fuel and set them alight. And this was
in the early hours of the morning, so they had
(18:18):
obviously been watching the house and waiting for the lights
to go out, which was a signal everybody was actually
in bed.
Speaker 6 (18:23):
And petrol obviously is explosive, so the idea was that
the petrol would would blast through the glass and the
fire would spread into the house. But luckily my younger
brother came home. So this was about three in the morning.
We were teenagers, were going out all the time. It
was a weekend, and Paul came home maybe ten or
fifteen minutes after the fire was started and saw the
(18:46):
smoke and woke up the family and they were able
to put it out, But otherwise it would have been Yeah,
it would have been completely I mean, my mother was
in no doubt that, yeah, it was an attempted murder.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
There were other measures that could have been taken, but
somehow that would have felt like giving in.
Speaker 6 (19:06):
I would often see these kind of anonymous houses in
Malta covered in security cameras and alarms and things like that.
But in comparison, my parents were on the sort of yeah.
The philosophy was, we need to feel good in our home,
you know, our home. Our home shouldn't be a prison.
(19:27):
You know, if someone wants to kill my mother, they're gonna,
you know, a sort of off the shelf alarm isn't
going to stop them.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
But for all this, Daphne's writing doesn't change. Nothing deters
her from writing difficult troops, whether biting gossip or hard
hitting stories about those with power and money.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
And by this time many of Dephanie's regarding themes had
clearly emerged. One of them is what she sees as
more as deep cultural divisions, our culture war, what definitely
called the Maltas.
Speaker 3 (20:01):
Daphnie is, Molta is fatally divided into two opposing camps,
a country cut in half by education, language, and politics.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
On one side, there are the professional classes with a
preference for the English language, people who have the skills
and resources to maybe work or study in Britain or
elsewhere in Europe. On people with an international outlook, people
who might have marched for the right of private schools
to stay open back in the seventies, people like Dafnie.
And on the other side of the barricades, there is
(20:31):
the other Malta, a more blue collar, working class culture,
people with less interest in the rest of the world.
According to Dafnie, they might be making a lot of
money in today's world, and they might be buying fleshy,
designer cloaths and going on short trips to Sicily in
their boats, but they would be culturally hostile to Daphnie's Malta.
Speaker 5 (20:50):
But start off it, I'd like to say that I
believe the greatest problem and moret is society is that
it's a clash of two cultures, and because it's such
a small population and the territory is so limited, those
cultures on head on confrontation.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
The same interview from nineteen ninety eight, you can see
she doesn't make any effort to hide her view that
her side of the culture war is superior.
Speaker 5 (21:16):
So you have, on the one hand, you have people
who are subjected to I won't call it Western democratic culture,
but I suppose that's what it really is, through exposure
to foreign news media, particularly magazines, newspapers and so on.
So they're continuously reading and absorbing American, British, Italian, French
(21:38):
ideas and they get used to that way of doing things.
Speaker 1 (21:42):
And you can also understand why some people saw heretitudes
to the rest of Malta the other Molta as s petronizing,
almost colonial.
Speaker 5 (21:51):
Then on the other hand you have the other cultural block,
which Perhabs, which is raised in a culture of not
reading but listening to the radio, are watching the television.
Once again, it's part of the conflict of cultures. Basic
Multis culture fundamentally is quite primitive and quite savage, and
with a total lack of concern for other people. All
(22:12):
that counts as the family. No absolutely no civic conscience whatsoever.
It's totally totally alien to Northern European culture. The nearest
comparison I can make is to backwater Sicilian culture. We
see the same problems.
Speaker 1 (22:39):
It's the afternoon of Monday, sixteenth October twenty seventeen, the
end of the long multie summer, two of the hitmen
are back overlooking Daphnese house in Benea.
Speaker 3 (22:51):
As before, we've taken evidence heard in the courtroom and
dramatized what happened, providing color in places without changing any
of the material facts or allegations.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
After the plan to kill Daphanie with a sniper shot
was abandoned, the killers have come up with a plan B,
a new method of murder, and they know they needed
to work this time.
Speaker 3 (23:12):
They're getting pressure from their handler to get the job finished,
so over the last few weeks they've been practicing and
rehearsing intensively, all the while finding off impatiently inquiries from management.
And on this day, everything finally seems to be coming together.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
From a hideout across the shallow valley, Alfred Deban and
Vincent de Kov are watching Daphne's driveway through binoculars or
a telescope. They've already been here nearly eight hours since
before dawn, lying watching and waiting, waiting for the moment
when the compound door might open.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
Alfred's brother, Chinese George, is a few miles away, also waiting.
He's on his own in a small boat that belongs
to him and his brother, waiting somewhere not far from
the letter harbor, close to the shore, close enough to
sue will be within mobile phone coverage. He will be
the trigger man, the one who will activate the murder weapon.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
Inside. Completely unaware, Daphne is at her kitchen table finishing
a blog post about the Prime Minister's chief of staff,
Keach Cambri Husha calls a crook.
Speaker 3 (24:40):
At two thirty five pm. She posts the article. It
will be the last thing she ever publishes.
Speaker 1 (24:50):
A few minutes later, through the binoculars, Vincent Koff sees
a light come on above the outer gate to the
garden as sign that someone is coming out. First to
Alfred that this could be the moment they've been waiting for.
Alfred de Bean calls Chinese George on the boat and
tells him to get ready. The moment has come.
Speaker 3 (25:14):
While Stephane gets in the car, the trap will be sprung.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
But then, at the very last moment, Vincent the cough
and Alfred de Bean watched Stephanie hesitate, turn around and
re enter the house a false alarm.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
And then one minute later she returns she's forgotten her checkbook.
This time, Jephaney does get in the car. She starts
Ignition and begins driving along the short dusty path to
the main road.
Speaker 1 (25:48):
And at that moment, once the car is in motion,
Alfred de Bean calls his brother on the boat again
and tells him that everything is ready. The plan is
back on out at sea.
Speaker 3 (26:00):
Chinese George acknowledges the message and uses a different phone
to send a specially coded text to a SIM card,
a SIM card attached to an explosive device underneath Daphne's
car seat.
Speaker 1 (26:21):
Daphne's eldest son, Matthew, is in the family house when
he hears the bomb. Immediately he runs out in his
bare feet to find out what is going on. Outside,
he sees the burning car in a field by the
road and tries to save his mother, but it is hopeless.
Pieces of Daphne's body are strewn across the bomb site.
(26:45):
Then two cops in a passing patrol car get out,
one of them holding a pitifully small fire extinguisher. Matthew
screams at them to do something, but it's too late.
There is nothing they can do. A neighbor and a
passing cars gets out starts videoing the scene with his
mobile phone. Outrage, Matthew seeses his phone and smashes it
(27:26):
across the valley. Alfred de Bean and Vincent de Cough
are leaving the observation post and making their way as
quickly as possible to a car parked close by, but
Alfred de Bean has blundered. They had a strict rule
on site to put every piece of letter, every cigarette
butt at the observation point in a bottle to be
taken away to avoid leaving any race. But perhaps in
(27:49):
the excitement or just in a moment of carelessness after
all the long hours waiting in the sun, Alfred de
Bean has let a cigarette butt fall.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
The cigarette carries irrefusable DNA evidence of his presence at
the scene of the crime. The killers are making it
so very easy for the investigators, if that is the
authorities choose to investigate.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
And out at sea in his fishing boat, Chinese George
has also made a fatal error. Earlier in the day,
he realized that one of his Berner phones was short
on credit. If he can't make or received calls, the
whole murder plot will fail.
Speaker 3 (28:28):
But he's in a boat out at sea, he can't
get a top.
Speaker 4 (28:32):
Up, so oh I was being smaspituality credit for a
telephone lip.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
Up tamil litop up. That means can you top me up?
He calls friends, a couple of friends until someone agrees
to top up his burner phone account, and he makes
those calls on his personal legit phone.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
But Chinese George doesn't seem too concerned. After he hears
that the car bomb has been successfully detonated, he's in
a relax, celebrate removed. He steers the boat backs through
the quayside, and he sends another TEX on his personal
phone to his Romanian girlfriend.
Speaker 1 (29:09):
Open a bottle of wine for me, baby.
Speaker 3 (29:14):
It's good to let a wine breathe before you drink it.
No point rushing.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
It just in time for the first sip. He reaches
the shore a job well.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Done, or so he thinks. That's next time.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Crooks Everywhere is a production of iHeart Podcasts, Topic Studios
and Vespucci. It's reported and hosted by me Manuel Delia
and John Sweeney. The singer producer is Leo Hornack. The
producer is Maddi Hickish. Krish Denesh Kumar is the assistant producer.
The story editors are Emma Ederill, Matt Willis and Philippa Geering.
(30:10):
The managing producers are Thomas Curry and Rachel Byrne. The
voice of Dafnie Karvana Galizia is played by Ciena Miller,
acting direction by Christopher Houghten, Maltese voices by Mikhail Basmajan
and Pierre Staffrach. The executive producers are Johnny Galvin and
Daniel Turken at Vespucci, Christi Gressman at Topic Studios, Katina
(30:32):
Norvel and Niki Etoor at iHeart Podcasts, and Cienna Miller.
Marketing leader is David Wassermann. Audio recording by Tom Berry
at Wardoor Studios. Audio mix and sound design by Joel Cox.
Special thanks to Andrew Botchcardona, Alessandra di Crespo, Eddie Isles,
and Andrew Krvana Galizia
Hosts And Creators
Manuel Delia
John Sweeney
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