The trial of Ms Patrizia Reggiani, the so-called "Black Widow" and ex-wife of murdered fashion tycoon, Maurizio Gucci, was immediately adjourned at its first hearing in Milan yesterday, after defence lawyers joined a national strike by Italy's legal profession.
The trial will reconvene next Tuesday.
TV cameras, reporters and members of the public jostled one another in vain for a glimpse of the main defendant, Ms Reggiani, but defence lawyers explained that the former Mrs Gucci had declined to attend court because of concern "about her health and because she is frightened of the curiosity of TV cameras and the general public". Ms Reggiani (50) and four alleged accomplices stand charged with having conspired to murder Gucci on March 27th, 1995, and could face prison sentences of up to 30 years if found guilty.
The prosecution alleges that Ms Reggiani conspired with a friend and so-called clairvoyant, Ms Pina Auriemma, to kill her ex-husband. Ms Auriemma allegedly hired the killer, Mr Benedetto Ceraulo, and his getaway driver, Mr Orazio Cicala, through a friend of hers, a hotel night porter called Mr Ivano Savioni. The prosecution further alleges that Ms Reggiani paid her four accomplices £240,000 to commit the murder.
Investigators will argue that Ms Reggiani was obsessed with the idea of killing her husband, partly because of the acrimonious nature of the break-up of their marriage in 1984 and also because she was concerned that her two daughters, Alessandra and Allegra, might never receive their share of the Gucci family fortune. Long after her divorce from Maurizio, she still referred to him as her "husband" rather than "ex-husband".
In a gangland-style shooting, Gucci (45) was killed as he was about to enter his Milan office one March Monday morning. A killer had been lying in wait for him. The hit man opened fire as Gucci neared the building, closing in to stand over the body and deliver the coup de grace to his head. The precision of the shooting, the cold-blooded way in which the gunman also wounded the building janitor (now a key witness) and the unhurried way in which he made his escape in the morning traffic all led police to conclude that the killing had been the work of professionals, perhaps Mafia hit men.
Police investigators followed a number of false leads and their investigation appeared to be going nowhere until one of the alleged murder accomplices, the hotel night porter Mr Savioni, unwittingly revealed details of the murder to an undercover police agent early last year. Apparently resentful about his "cut" of the payment, Mr Savioni unwittingly unburdened himself to a small time thief who, in turn, informed the police. An undercover agent, using the codename "Carlos", then interviewed Mr Savioni, who repeated his account of the killing.
Defence lawyers for Ms Reggiani are expected to argue diminished responsibility on her part, claiming that following an operation for a cancerous brain tumour in 1992 she has been a disturbed person. Critical moments in the trial will include the testimony of Ms Auriemma, likely to undermine the "diminished responsibility" defence of Ms Reggiani's lawyers, and that of the office janitor, Mr Giuseppe Onorato, the man called on to identity the gunman who wounded him after killing Gucci.
The Gucci murder was the climax to 20 years of family feuding which had marked the affairs of the famous Florentine fashion house, founded at the turn of the century by Maurizio's grandfather Guccio Gucci.
