Student Jailed For ‘Ruining Lecturer’s Life’

A student has been jailed for ruining her lecturer’s life after drawing her into a bizarre web of lies.

Elisa Bianco, 22, faked parental abuse and terminal cancer, eventually causing mum-of-four Sally Rettallack, 49, her to lose her marriage, job and home.

Mrs Rettallack was the then-16-year-old Bianco’s personal tutor while she was studying for a health and social care diploma at St Austell College in Cornwall.

Pulling a sickie: Pyjama-clad Bianco at the hospital (SWNS)

After the teenager invented stories of complex illnesses, combined with fake abuse from her ‘alcoholic’ mother and step-father, Rettallack took her into her home in April 2012.

Then, when Bianco announced that she had a kidney tumour and just three months to live, the former lecturer drove her to and from daily hospital appointments, giving up her job to help tick items off her ‘bucket list’.

After driving a wedge between Rettallack and her husband, Bianco invented a recently widowed consultant physician love interest for her former tutor called John – only to kill him off.

Bianco pleaded guilty to stalking, causing serious alarm or distress on Friday and was jailed for two years and eight months.

False alarm: the teenager spent days at a time in the cafe at Royal Cornwall Hospital, Truro (SWNS)

Judge Christopher Harvey Clark QC said: “I can truthfully say it is the most extraordinary case I have had to deal with in a long time.”

Mrs Retallack discovered the truth on August 12, 2013, when staff at the renal ward in Royal Cornwall Hospital said they had no knowledge of the defendant.

On leaving the hospital she saw Bianco sitting in the cafe in her pyjamas and when she asked if she had made it all up she simply answered "yes”.

All smiles: Elisa Bianco received gifts aplenty from her Bucket List (SWNS)

A month later the fraudster was questioned by police and confessed she had lied about her home life and medical conditions, forged letters and created a fake email account.

Mrs Retallack - who has moved to France to start a new life - sobbed in court, saying: “I was an outgoing, positive, career minded individual who loved her job. I had a close, loving home life.

"Now I have no career, no job, no husband, little self-confidence.”

(Top picture: Sally Rettallack, left, with Elisa Bianco, SWNS)