HOUSE OF MURDER
On the morning of March 27, 1995, Maurizio Gucci, heir to the celebrated Italian fashion house, left his apartment on Milan’s elegant Corso Venezia and walked briskly, in a dark suit and tasselled loafers, to his nearby office.
A doorman, Giuseppe Onorato, was sweeping leaves off the marble steps, and the two men exchanged familiar “buongiornos” as Maurizio, 46, arrived at the building. Earlier, Giuseppe, a 52-year-old ex-soldier, had noticed a green Renault car, parked directly across the street, and idly wondered who it might belong to.
As Maurizio entered the doorway, another figure emerged. Striding calmly in the fashion boss’s footsteps, the man, well-dressed in a wide-brimmed Borsalino-style hat and gabardine raincoat, pulled out a handgun. The first bullet hit Maurizio in the left shoulder, the second in the right buttock. Then, as the victim lay writhing on a stretch of freshly-vacuumed carpet, the coup de grâce – a point-blank shot to the head.
So began the most sensational murder case in modern Italian history – one still wreathed, 25 years later, in the stench of jealousy, betrayal and dynastic decay – and still far from resolved.
The black widow
At its centre is the vivacious, violet-eyed figure
