(ANSA) - Turin, April 1 - Prosecutors said Monday that a suspect has confessed to murdering Stefano Leo, a young man who was found stabbed to death on the banks of the River Po in Turin in February, for the sole reason that he wanted to kill someone.

The suspect, Said Machaouat, a 27-year-old Italian with Moroccan roots, turned himself in at the weekend. "I chose to kill that young man because he looked happy. And I couldn't stand his happiness," Machaouat said, according to the prosecutors.

"The motive is spine chilling," Turin prosecutor Paolo Borgna said. Machaouat was quoted as telling prosecutors Ciro Santoriello and Enzo Bucarelli that "I wanted to kill a lad like me, to take away all his prospects, his children, his friends and relatives". The suspect, who showed investigators to where a kitchen knife that is thought to have been the murder weapon was, said he was depressed after splitting up with his ex wife. "The worst thing was knowing that my four-year-old boy was calling a friend of my ex partner daddy," Machaouat was quoted as saying.

