ITALY: TRIAL BEGINS IN ROME OF PATRIZIA REGGIANA AND FOUR ALLEGED ACCOMPLICIES ACCUSED OF KILLING FASHION MOGUL MAURIZIO GUCCI

Record ID: 637113

  • Title: ITALY: TRIAL BEGINS IN ROME OF PATRIZIA REGGIANA AND FOUR ALLEGED ACCOMPLICIES ACCUSED OF KILLING FASHION MOGUL MAURIZIO GUCCI
  • Date: 11th May 1998
  • Summary: (FILE) (RTV ACCESS ALL) VARIOUS OF GUCCI FASHION SHOW (3 SHOTS)
  • Embargoed: 26th May 1998 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: MILAN, ITALY
  • Country: Italy
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVAD2HHOACY3IBG8CG532E36000X
  • Story Text: Three years after fashion mogul Maurizio Gucci was gunned down on the steps of his Milan office, his ex-wife goes on trial accused of plotting his murder.

    Patrizia Reggiani, 50, and four alleged accomplices face up to 30 years behind bars if found guilty of the killing which rocked Italy's glamorous fashion world.

    In a headline-grabbing murder, a gunman shot Gucci in central Milan in March 1995.

    After a two-year investigation, police arrested Reggiani at her luxury flat in Milan, along with her clairvoyant friend, Pina Auriemma, a hotel porter and two alleged hit-men.

    The prosecution says that Reggiani, obsessed with revenge following the acrimonious break-up of her marriage, plotted the murder with Auriemma.

    Patrizia Gucci's lawyer Gaetano Pecorella said "Patrizia's Gucci's defence is that she had an obsession: she wanted her husband dead and she spoke about it to everyone." "So Pina Auriemma took advantage of this obsession and decided to kill Maurizio Gucci and to blackmail Patrizia Gucci." He explained her absense from last week's false start of the trial (due to Italian lawyers being on strike).

    "She didn't come to the first hearing because she has health problems caused by a brain tumour which was removed a few years ago.She will come to future hearings if her health permits." Gucci's ex-wife complained in public that Gucci was everything from impotent to mad and that she wanted him dead after their 12-year marriage collapsed at the beginning of the 1980s.

    The two quarrelled constantly about money and Reggiani denounced her divorce settlement -- reported by Italian press to be a million dollars -- as "little more than a plate of lentils".

    The settlement was all the more insulting when her husband, the last grandson of the fashion empire's founder Guccio Gucci, sold his 50 percent stake in Gucci to Arab backed investment house Investcorp for a reported 150 million United States dollars.

    From behind the bars of Milan's grim San Vittore prison, Auriemma signed a confession in which she admitted that on Reggiani's orders she arranged the killing through the hotel porter Ivano Savioni.

    She added in the confession that Reggiani had tried to bribe her to take full responsibility for the killing in exchange for two billion lire ($1.1 million).

    But Reggiani says the four alleged accomplices took it upon themselves to translate her desire into reality without consulting her.
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