Residents of the town five miles south of Walt Disney World woke up Tuesday to the sight of yellow crime-scene tape wrapped around a condo near the Christmas-decorated downtown, where Bing Crosby croons from speakers hidden in the foliage. A 58-year-old neighbor who lived alone with his Chihuahua had been slain over the long Thanksgiving weekend, Osceola County sheriff's deputies said.
The community's famous friendliness is what brought investigators Matteo Giovanditto's body: Neighbors hadn't seen the victim for days, so they filed a missing person's report, then went into his condo a day later and found him.
A few years ago, a resident joked with a reporter that Celebration would feel like real town when a bike was stolen. Now, it has an unsolved killing on its hands.
With 11,000 residents, Celebration is something of anomaly in Central Florida. There's no suburban sprawl — the entire place is reminiscent of a quaint New England village.It's the kind of town where people give Christmas gifts to their favorite Starbucks barista, where welcoming wooden rocking chairs sit lakeside on a sidewalk without being stolen, where neighbors tend to get suspicious if they notice you're not around.And that's what happened with Giovanditto, detectives say.Neighbors hadn't seen Giovanditto, who owned a bottom-floor condo at a building called The Idlewyld, since the day before Thanksgiving. His black Corvette was also missing. A neighbor was supposed to walk Giovanditto's dog, Lucy, over the weekend, but he wasn't responding to her calls.
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