Mystery as 4-year-old boy and his mum are found dead with their bodies 'eaten by animals' in Italy

A boy who has been missing in Italy for 16 days after mysteriously vanishing with his mother has been found dead having been eaten by animals, cops say.

Four-year-old Gioele Mondello’s body was found near a coastal motorway in Sicily after his mum’s “unrecognizable” corpse was found near their abandoned car.

The boy’s mother, Viviana Parisi, 43, who was a DJ from Turin, was last seen on the morning of August 3 climbing over a motorway barrier after a minor collision in a tunnel.

Her body was found five days later in a nearby forest close to Caronia at the foot of a high-voltage pylon.

Italian police said they were only able to identify her by the wedding ring on her hand because of her badly decomposed corpse.