An American posed as a Hollywood director to get $1 million in Italian film credits, then a Rome court gave him life for two murders

For a time, Francis Kaufmann was known in Italy as Rexal Ford, an American filmmaker whose production had secured nearly $1 million in state tax credits for a movie that was never made. On Thursday, a Rome court sentenced the 47-year-old to life in prison for killing his partner and their baby daughter, according to Wanted in Rome.

Rome’s First Assize Court found Kaufmann guilty of murdering 28-year-old Anastasia Trofimova and their 11-month-old daughter, Andromeda, and of concealing their bodies. The judges added three years of daytime isolation to the life sentence and ordered provisional damages of 100,000 euros per victim for the family. They also upheld aggravating circumstances, including petty and abject motives and the victims’ defenselessness.

The bodies of the mother and daughter were found a few meters apart in Rome’s Villa Pamphili park in June 2025. Autopsies established that Kaufmann suffocated Trofimova and later strangled the baby. The California native has consistently maintained his innocence, and the verdict, reached by two career judges and six lay jurors, closes the first stage of the case.

Kaufmann’s lawyer says the defense will decide on an appeal after reading the ruling

Defense lawyer Paolo Foti said the team will decide whether to appeal once the judges publish their reasoning, which they have 90 days to do. Foti pointed to what he described as “gaps” in the case, including the lack of Kaufmann’s fingerprints on the bodies. The trial was paused for about a month at one point, as a psychiatric assessment found him temporarily unfit to continue.

Kaufmann and Trofimova met in Malta in 2023 and later moved to Rome. After losing their accommodation, they reportedly ended up sleeping rough in the park with their daughter. Kaufmann fled to the Greek island of Skiathos after the killings, where he was arrested in June 2025. He was later extradited to Italy and held in Rome’s Rebibbia prison during the trial.

The case also raised questions about the police. Officers had stopped Kaufmann at least three times before the bodies were found, most recently when he was drunk on the street with the baby, and prosecutors said the officers had been “taken in” by him. A 16-year-old who called emergency services eventually helped lead investigators to Kaufmann, and prosecutor Antonio Verdi praised the teen in court.

The film side of the story set off its own scandal. Using the Rexal Ford alias and a company called Tintagel Films, Kaufmann secured a tax credit of about 863,595 euros for Stelle della Notte, a feature that was never shot. However, the fallout reached the top of Italy’s film bureaucracy, as Nicola Borrelli, head of the culture ministry’s film department, resigned once the credit came to light.

Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli later announced stricter oversight of the tax credit system, saying recent reforms should prevent similar abuses. The credit had been granted under older rules that let international productions claim it without handing over any footage from a shoot. Rome prosecutors have also been looking into the payout as part of a wider review of tax credits granted to films.

Violence by a partner against a woman and her child has led to life sentences in the US as well, including the case of a California fire captain who killed his fiancée and her son. Kaufmann’s conviction, however, also exposed how a man using a false name managed to tap into Italy’s film incentive system.

The judges’ written reasoning, due within 90 days, is expected to shape whether Kaufmann’s lawyers file an appeal, which could send the case to a higher court in Rome.