If you’ve been following the story of Ashley Olsen, an American artist who was found dead this weekend in Italy, you know that there are mysterious circumstances surrounding her death. Now, Florence prosecutors identified the murder suspect as Tidiane Cheik Diaw, a 25-year-old Senegalese man who arrived in Italy several months ago illegally.
Prosecutors said witnesses reported seeing Olsen and Diaw leaving a club early Friday morning and go into the victim’s apartment in Florence’s historic center. The details emerged after police revealed they had detained the prime suspect following analysis of DNA found on a condom, a cigarette found in the toilet, and under her fingernails.
Cheik Tidiane Diaw confessed to the crime, telling officers he strangled Olsen with a USB cord after they had sex and she told him he had to leave because her boyfriend was coming back, according to Daily Mail. Her skull was also fractured, but Diaw claims the death was an accident.
Olsen met her accused killer at the Montecarla club, notorious for sex and drugs, and left together at 5:30 a.m. to head to her apartment.
The 35-year-old woman was found dead in her Florence apartment in Florence on Saturday by her boyfriend, Federico Fiorentini. Police found no signs of forced entry in her apartment, no signs of a struggle with her attacker, and tests revealed she’d had sex before her death but hadn’t been sexually assaulted.
When the news of Olsen’s death became international news, there were rumors that she was killed during a “sex game gone wrong” or erotic asphyxiation. These rumors are a possible reference to the 2007 death of Meredith Kercher, who was rumored to have been killed in that manner by American Amanda Knox and boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito in Perugia.
See photos of Diaw below.
