Rome’s Villa Pamphili Park with its ornate flowerbeds, lawns and walkways is the Italian capital’s largest landscaped garden and a place of respite for the local population as temperatures rise in the summer.
The popular jogging, dog-walking and picnicking spot became a crime scene on June 7 when a baby girl’s body was discovered by a hedge, followed by that of a young woman a few hours later in another part of the park.
Mystery swirled around their identities. Some media outlets suggested the woman was a Ukrainian refugee, while others ran reports that she was a hacker, who hailed either from Russia or Ireland.
A week later, a 46-year-old U.S. man, described as a film producer and director called Rexal Ford, was arrested on the Greek island of Skiathos on suspicion of being the killer, in an operation involving cooperation between the Italian and Greek police forces as well as the FBI.
This weekend, the dead woman was confirmed as the man’s partner, 28-year-old Russian national Anastasia Trofimova (who is not the documentarian of the same name), and the child, their 11-month-old daughter Andromeda.
Beyond the alleged crimes, the case has also whipped up media attention in Italy for the way in which Ford’s carefully curated profile as a producer and director has started to unravel.
It has since emerged that Ford’s real name is Francis Charles Kaufmann and that he also used the alias of producer Matteo Capozzi, whose IMBb profile suggests he worked as a production assistant on Ridley Scott’s All The Money In The World (2017) and Clint Eastwood’s The 15.17 To Paris (2018) among other credits.
A representative for director Scott’s Scott Free production house told Deadline that checks of payroll and employee logs showed that Capozzi had “categorically” never been connected to All The Money In The World or the wider company in any shape or from.
Rexal Ford’s credits also crumble under scrutiny.
The IMBb profile reads: “Some people see Life through the desire to conquer it physically, some work on mastering the elements, others figure how they can capture the magic of life via a 35mm lens, Rexal Ford is no stranger to the whole mix, while he is still sorting the basics of life, from a film perspective he’s always delving into the creative process to a point where the magic has been manifested.”
The page lists half a dozen directorial projects Ford is attached to, including ferry disaster tragedy Wahine out of New Zealand, fantasy tale The King of Light – The Order of the Dark Gods, and comedy Food Fight.
The Wahine entry suggested Ford was due to direct as well as produce alongside Philly de Lacey, producer and CEO of Banijay-owned, Auckland-based company Screentime.
Deadline has since learned that de Lacey met Ford via a trusted contact, but talks did not bear fruit. The project remains in development at Screentime, which owns the rights. The entry not created by Screentime and featuring Ford’s involvement disappeared from IMDb shortly after Deadline’s enquiry on the collaboration.
Ford is also cited as an executive producer on a dozen independent, well-travelled festival titles such as Gabriel Abrantes and Daniel Schmidt’s Diamantino (2018), João Pedro Rodrigues’ The Ornithologist (2016) and Sacha Polak’s Zurich (2015) as well as a producer on Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Sparrow.
Deadline emailed the producers on the above films for confirmation of Kaufman/Ford’s involvement. Zurich producer Marleen Slot at Amsterdam-based Viking Film, Sparrows producer Mikkel Jersin at Copenhagen-based Snowglobe and Paris-based Les Films du Bélier, which was involved in Diamantino, all responded that they had no knowledge of Ford.
“This is shocking. I’ve never heard of the man and never worked with him before,” Slot wrote, adding that she would be seeking to get his name removed from the IMDb profile.
Selection of Rexal Ford’s EP credits listed on IMDd as of June 23
Ford is also listed as the head of three film companies: Tintagel Films, which is registered as being based in Canterbury in the UK, but is also reported to have operated out of Malta; Rome-based Portofino Films and CS1 Production in Auckland, New Zealand.
There is a UK cell number for Tintagel Films but it is not live, while the company does not feature in the Companies House register.
Italian tax credits under scrutiny
In a separate Italian revelation, online news site Open uncovered that Kaufmann had secured a €863,595 ($996,112) tax credit from the Italian Ministry of Culture in 2020 for a feature entitled Stelle della Notte, which never got made. Using his Rexal Ford alias and a fake passport, he made the application via Tintagel Films.
Under the rules for accessing the tax credit, Tintagel Films worked in partnership with Italian Rome-based company Coevolutions, which had control of the credit believed to have been released in November 2023.
Rexal did have direct access to the sum, but the uncovering of the award has raised questions about the administering of the tax credit system as well as Coevolutions, following revelations that the company has raised €4M in tax credits for 13 films in recent years, only one of which has come to fruition.
Culture Minister Alessandro Giuli said in a statement to the Italian press that a recent reform of the film tax credits meant such awards would no longer be possible, while Coevolutions co-head Marco Perotti insisted there had been no wrongdoing by his company and that it would be showing its books to the ministry.
Giuli warned there would be repercussions if financial irregularities came to light, saying: “We are intervening with greater determination to reform a regulation in whose folds scammers and perhaps even worse people have enriched themselves.”
Online new site Open later reported that one theory being investigated by the Italian police is that Kaufmann traveled to Rome from his previous base of Malta in a bid to take receipt of some of the monies raised through the tax credit for Stelle della Notte, but to no avail which left him angry and frustrated.
Malta Connection
Italian and Maltese media have also pieced together the period leading up the deaths of Trofimova and her daughter and their arrival in Rome.
The couple met in Malta in 2023 when Trofimova traveled there from Russia on a tourist visa. After embarking on a relationship with Kaufmann, she stayed on illegally following her visa’s expiry. Their daughter was born in Malta in summer 2024 but was not registered due to the lack of papers.
The Times of Malta reported that Kaufmann/Ford had pitched the comedy project Food Fight (to which Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Claire Forlani, and Mara Lane were reportedly attached at one point) to producers on the island but discussions had not advanced.
For the trip to Italy from Malta, Kaufmann reportedly chartered a catamaran, landing in Sicily and then heading to Rome by train.
Talking to the Rai3 show Chi l’ha visto (Who saw it?) from Russia over the weekend, a woman described as Trofimova’s mother said she had last spoken to her daughter in a video call at the end of May. She then received an email on June 2, in which her daughter wrote she was having problems with her partner but hoped to resolve the situation.
In other details, it has emerged that Kaufmann received regular payments from his family in U.S. on the proviso he stayed away due to previous behavior back home.
Adding fuel to the media frenzy in Italy, Kaufmann’s sister Penelope Kaufmann described her brother as “a monster”, “psychopath” and “manipulator” in an interview with Italian daily newspaper La Repubblica on Monday.
“He would be capable of selling you your own clothes. He has always been brilliant, handsome, with thousands of women flocking after him, but he is a sick person. He is violent, especially when he drinks or takes drugs. His brain goes blank, he cannot manage his anger. He becomes a monster,” she said.
The sibling suggested that Kaufmann’s involvement in the film world was not a complete mirage. She said her brother had studied film production, lived in L.A. and even sought to get projects off the ground, such as Food Fight, but it had never come to much.
“I think he was involved in a handful of B-movies,” she told La Repubblica, dismissing his claims of being a director in his own right.
“Charlie was brilliant, he had a way with people. He knew how to empathize immediately. When he lived in Los Angeles he would go to dinner with Hollywood directors, with famous musicians. He knew hundreds of stars of the entertainment world. But they certainly aren’t friends who help you when you don’t know where to sleep with your daughter. They also knew he was a bit of a nut job. At home we called him the ‘Untalented Mr. Ripley.’”
The Italian police have requested Kaufmann be extradited back to Italy from Greece for further questioning on the murders, in a process that is expected to take at least two months.
