The House of Gucci

by Sara G Forden

  The trial spotlighted the passionate, excessive lives of Maurizio and Patrizia in stark contrast to the gray squalor in which Pina and her three accomplices lived. And like the O. J. Simpson trial, which underscored divisive racial attitudes in American society, the Gucci trial highlighted the chasm separating wealthy from poor in Italy.

  Thus millions of Italians were watching their televisions in fascination a few days earlier as prosecution and defense delivered their opening arguments. Nocerino, the darkly handsome prosecutor, stood on the left-hand side of the courtroom, facing the judge’s podium and the adjacent television camera—which Samek had approved for the opening and the closing of the trial—and painted Patrizia as an obsessed, hate-filled divorcée who coldly and determinedly orchestrated the murder of her husband to gain control of his multimillion-dollar estate.

  “I intend to prove that Patrizia Martinelli Reggiani negotiated the fee she would pay for the organization and execution of the murder of Maurizio Gucci and made the payments in several installments, including a down payment and final balance,” Nocerino said, his voice echoing in the high courtroom.

  Patrizia’s defense attorneys, Pecorella and Dedola, standing on the right-hand side of the courtroom, didn’t deny Patrizia’s obsessive hatred for Maurizio, which they admitted she had broadcast widely. But they painted her as a rich, sick woman who had become the puppet of her long-standing friend, Pina Auriemma. Pina, not Patrizia, they said, arranged the murder and then blackmailed and threatened Patrizia for her silence. The 150 million lire (about $93,000) Patrizia paid out before the murder was a generous loan to a friend in need, the attorneys said. The 450 million lire (about $276,000) she paid afterward had been cruelly extorted from her by that same friend with threats to Patrizia and her daughters. The proof, said Dedola dramatically in his resonant, baritone voice, was a three-line letter Patrizia wrote, signed, and deposited with a Milan notary in 1996 that read: “I have been forced to pay hundreds of millions of lire for the safety of myself and my family. If anything should happen to me, it will be because I know the name of the person who killed my husband: Pina Auriemma.”

  Dedola’s elegant oratory and Patrizia’s apparently desperate letter couldn’t counter the sharp blow her defense received that gray Tuesday morning—a surprise confession by Orazio Cicala, the driver of the getaway car. The defense strategy paled against the bizarre story Cicala told in the simple, ungrammatical speech of an uneducated man in his Sicilian dialect; the story of a vengeful princess, Patrizia, and a pauper, himself.

  The blue-capped prison guards had released Cicala from the cage, allowing him to stand next to his lawyer, a young woman in her early forties. They made an odd pair—the glamorous, accomplished lawyer who captivated the courtroom with her rich voice, dark-haired good looks, and tight suits, and the hunched, gaunt Cicala who had destroyed his family, first with gambling debts and now with a murder charge.

  His toothless mouth gaping at the court, Cicala described the day Savioni had come to him saying he knew about a woman who wanted to kill her husband. “At first I said I wasn’t interested, but the next day he asked me again and that time I said yes, but it was going to be expensive. When he said ‘How much?’ I told him, ‘Half a billion lire!’ [about $310,000]” Cicala said, warming to his task and beginning to enjoy the attention he was getting. “They came back to me and said OK. I said I wanted half up front, half after the fact.”

  Besieged by usurers, Cicala said he happily received 150 million lire ($93,000) from Pina and Savioni in sealed yellow envelopes in several installments during the fall of 1994, but did nothing to organize the murder. When Pina and Savioni began to pressure him, he lied to buy more time, saying that the killers he had hired had been arrested; the car he had stolen for the job had disappeared.

  “When they asked me for the money back, I told them I had already given it to the people and I couldn’t get it back,” Cicala said, his oversized jacket swinging loosely around his emaciated frame as he gestured.

  Patrizia, who had been listening impassively on the last bench of the courtroom, suddenly appeared ill and a white-capped nurse bustled to her side with a small leather bag and a syringe, asking her if she wanted an injection. Patrizia had been taking prescription medicine to control seizures following her brain surgery. Her lawyers had arranged for the nurse to attend Patrizia during the trial in case of a medical emergency, also hoping that the presence of the white-uniformed aide might help sway the court in Patrizia’s favor.

  Patrizia, used to playing the role of the strong woman, refused the injection. “No, no,” whispered Patrizia, leaning over and holding a tissue to her face. “Just some water, please.”

  Cicala also described an encounter with Patrizia herself that shifted the murder plot into overdrive. Up until the end of 1994, Patrizia dealt only with Pina, who in turn, he said, funneled information and money to Savioni and Cicala. But in early 1995, frustrated by the lack of action and concerned that she was being defrauded, Patrizia cut out Pina and took matters into her own hands, Cicala said.

  “One afternoon—it must have been late January, early February, because it was cold—I was at home and the doorbell rang and it was Savioni,” said Cicala. “So I came downstairs with him and he whispered, ‘She’s in the car!’”

  “And did you ask him what she was doing there?” asked Nocerino, sitting in his chair at the front left side of the courtroom.

  “No, I didn’t say anything. I just got into the backseat of Savioni’s car and there was a lady with sunglasses sitting in the front seat who introduced herself as Patrizia Reggiani,” Cicala told the prosecutor, adding that by then he knew she was the one who wanted to kill her ex-husband, Maurizio Gucci. “I got into the backseat and she turned around and asked me how much money I had received, what had happened to the money, and what point I was at,” he said.

  “I told her that I had received 150 million lire [$93,000], that I had found the people but they had been arrested, and I needed more money and more time. At that point she said, ‘If I give you more money, you must guarantee that this thing gets done because time is running out. He is about to leave on a cruise and when he does he’ll be gone for months.’”

  Cicala took a deep breath and asked for water. “And here we come to the main point,” he said, looking around the courtroom for confirmation.

  “Please, please, continue,” said Nocerino with a wave of his hand, leaning back comfortably in his chair.

  “She said that it wasn’t a question of money, but of a job well done,” continued Cicala. “And I asked her, ‘If I do this thing myself and something should happen to me, what is my situation?’ She said, ‘Look, Cicala, if you leave me out of this, and they find out about you, the walls of your cell will be papered with gold,’ and I said, ‘I have five children, five children who I have ruined; I have left them in the middle of the street,’ and she said, ‘There will be enough for you, your children, and your children’s children,’ she told me.”

  Cicala looked up and begged the court, the prosecutor, and his lawyer to excuse him for what he had to say next.

  “I finally saw the chance,” Cicala continued, speaking slowly, “once and for all, to fix things for my family, for my children, who I had ruined. From that moment on I became determined that I was going to do this thing,” he said, opening his hands wide. “I didn’t know how or when, but I was determined I was going to do it!”

  In the following weeks, Pina telephoned him daily with an overwhelming stream of information about Maurizio Gucci’s whereabouts, Cicala said. “Maurizio Gucci became the topic of the day,” he said, rolling his eyes at the memory.

  Not sure that he could carry out the murder himself, Cicala decided to hire a killer, a man he described as a small-time drug dealer he knew. As Samek peered down at him skeptically and Nocerino watched in consternation, Cicala denied the killer was Benedetto Ceraulo—the scowling man in the cage with him—saying he was afraid to pronounce the real gunman’s n
ame because he was still on the loose. Nobody believed him, but there was nothing to be done: in Italy a defendant who takes the stand in his own defense is not obliged to tell the truth, the whole truth, or nothing but the truth.

  The night of Sunday, March 26, Pina, who knew that Maurizio had returned from a business trip to New York, called Cicala with a cryptic message: “Il pacco è arrivato,” “The package has arrived.”

  The next morning, Cicala picked up the killer and they drove together to Via Palestro to wait for Maurizio.

  “We waited about forty-five minutes, and then we saw him cross the street at Corso Venezia and start walking up the sidewalk.” Cicala said he glanced at his watch, which read 8:40 A.M.

  “The killer asked me, ‘Is that the guy?’”

  Cicala recognized the man walking jauntily up the street from the photograph of Maurizio Pina had given him.

  “I said, ‘Yes, it’s him.’

  “At that point, the killer got out of the car and went over to stand by the doorway, pretending to look at the address number. I moved the car and—that’s when it happened,” said Cicala, looking out at the silent courtroom. “I didn’t see anything or hear anything; I was moving the car. Then the killer jumped back in the car and I drove the escape route we had studied that weekend back to Arcore. He said he thought he had killed the portinaio too. I dropped him off and by nine A.M. I was home.”

  When Pina took the stand a few weeks later, she explained in her sardonic, Neapolitan drawl, how Patrizia had asked her to organize Maurizio’s murder.

  “We were like sisters, she told me everything,” said Pina, who had exchanged the tiger-motif sweater for one with large roses. “She wanted to do it herself, but she didn’t have the courage. Because of her super–northern Italian mentality, she assumed that all of us southern Italians must have ties to the camorra,” said Pina, rolling her eyes, referring to the Neapolitan mafia. The only other person Pina knew in Milan was Savioni, the husband of a friend. Pina, who was in Milan helping Patrizia with her manuscript, described the unrelenting pressure Patrizia put on her.

  “Every day that passed for her was a day lost,” Pina said. “She tortured me, day after day, and in turn I tortured Savioni, who in turn tortured Cicala. I couldn’t stand it anymore!”

  Pina said that after Maurizio was killed, she fell apart emotionally, growing depressed, nervous, and paranoid. A few days before Maurizio’s funeral, she gathered her composure and called Patrizia.

  “So, you’ve had good news?” Pina said.

  “Yes, I am fine, ‘Fine’ with a capital ‘F,’” Patrizia said emphatically. “I am finally at peace with myself, I am serene and the girls are serene. This thing has given me tremendous tranquillity and joy.”

  Pina told Patrizia she was so troubled and depressed she was taking tranquilizers and contemplating suicide.

  “Pull yourself together, Pina, don’t exaggerate!” said Patrizia coolly. “It’s all over now, just stay calm, behave yourself, and don’t disappear.” Pina moved to Rome and lived on the three million lire, or about $1,600, a month that Patrizia sent her. At one point, Pina said she broke down and confided in a mutual friend.

  “Patrizia has bought my misery,” she said, as the friend listened, horrified. That phrase became a theme of the trial in the papers and the courtroom alike.

  Pina often grew angry during the trial at Patrizia’s efforts to pin the blame on her—and at one point retaliated, asking to make a spontaneous statement to the court. Samek consented and Pina stood up and accused Patrizia’s mother, Silvana, of knowing about her daughter’s murder plan, adding that months before Maurizio’s murder, Silvana had contacted an Italian named Marcello who had links to the Chinese gangs proliferating in Milan, but that they had disagreed on the price and so nothing happened. In the months after Patrizia’s arrest, Nocerino had also received a memorandum from Patrizia’s stepbrother, Enzo, who had long since moved to Santo Domingo, in which he not only accused Silvana of being an accomplice to Patrizia, he also accused Silvana of having years ago hastened the death of Papà Reggiani to secure his estate. Enzo, who had chronic financial problems, had sued Silvana for a larger share of the Reggiani estate—and lost. Silvana vigorously denied her stepson’s sinister allegations, saying she had kept her late husband alive for months beyond the period of life expectancy predicted by his doctors. As the Italian papers jumped on the “Mother-Daughter Predator Team” story, prosecutors opened a formal investigation into the accusations against Silvana—though nothing ever came of Pina’s charges and Silvana vigorously denied any involvement in both cases.

  Some of the witnesses moved the entire courtroom, which became a small community of lawyers, journalists, legal assistants, and curious onlookers who came back day after day as the trial unfolded. Onorato, the observant doorman displaced from his Sicilian homeland, chilled everyone with his firsthand account of the murder, his own shooting, and incredible survival. Alda Rizzi, the Guccis’ former housekeeper, amazed everyone when she described her anguished call to Patrizia the morning Maurizio was murdered only to hear classical music playing loudly in the background and find Patrizia serene and indifferent on the telephone. Antonietta Cuomo, Maurizio’s psychic, described how she tried to protect him from evil spirits and reassure him in his business plans. Paola Franchi—who had failed in her efforts to get a settlement from Maurizio’s estate—entertained the court with details of their love affair and wedding plans, never once in four hours glancing at Patrizia, who stared at her blankly from her new post at the front bench between her lawyers. During the trial, both Paola and Patrizia referred to Maurizio as their “husband,” although he was married to neither at the moment he died. Tiny diamonds flashed discreetly from Paola’s earlobes and fingers. Dressed in a richly embroidered linen suit, she crossed and uncrossed her long suntanned legs as she spoke, while all the eyes in the courtroom followed the gold ankle bracelet that dangled provocatively from one svelte leg.

  “The best thing that can happen to Patrizia now,” Paola said to journalists outside the courtroom after her testimony, “is for her to sink into total oblivion.”

  As the hearings wore on into the summer, policemen and investigators recreated the crime, the misguided hunt for the killer among Maurizio’s business contacts, and the unexpected breakthrough two years later thanks to Carpanese and Inspector Ninni. Then Patrizia’s gray-suited banker from Monte Carlo described the packets of cash he personally delivered to her Milan apartment, cash Patrizia subsequently said was a loan to her good friend Pina.

  “If the money was a loan, why didn’t you just order a bank transfer?” boomed one of Pina’s two lawyers, Paolo Trofino, a lanky Neapolitan with oily, shoulder-length hair and an open smile.

  “I don’t even know what a bank transfer is,” rebutted Patrizia nonchalantly when she testified afterward, “I do all my banking in cash.”

  Doctors told the story of Patrizia’s illness. Lawyers itemized the terms of her divorce settlements. Friends recounted the vengeful tirades against Maurizio. As the witnesses paraded to the witness chair, Patrizia, in court during much of their testimony, listened silently and gathered her strength.

  In July, hair freshly coiffed and toenails polished at the San Vittore salon, she took the stand in a smart, pistachio green designer suit and delivered a composed, three-day defense, nimbly refuting all the charges against her. She seemed to be almost her old self—proud, cutting, arrogant, and uncompromising. Observed by a court-ordered panel of three psychiatrists—who later declared her perfectly sane—she appeared at times more lucid than Nocerino himself. The psychiatrists subsequently diagnosed her as having a narcissistic personality disorder, saying she was egocentric, was easily offended, and exaggerated her problems with an inflated sense of her own importance. Had she perhaps also washed herself of her guilt? Was she loath to confess the truth to her two daughters: that she had killed their father? Or was she telling the truth? Had Pina taken the situation out of her hands? The psyc
hiatrists quickly made up their minds.

  “We can comprehend her actions,” said one of the psychiatrists, who testified, “but we cannot condone them. Just because someone goes around with her nose out of joint doesn’t mean she can be allowed to kill people!”

  On the stand, Patrizia described the first thirteen years of marriage with Maurizio as perfect bliss—which she said broke down when he became more influenced by a series of business advisors than by his own wife.

  “People said we were the most beautiful couple in the world,” Patrizia recalled. “But after Rodolfo died and Maurizio went from executing his father’s decisions to making them himself, he turned to a series of advisors for support.”

  “He became like a seat cushion that takes the shape of the last person to sit on it!” Patrizia said in disgust.

  She described their separation and divorce agreements, in which he gave her hundreds of millions of lire a month, but no title to the assets she coveted. “He gave me the bones so he didn’t have to give me the chicken,” Patrizia added cuttingly.

  One day, before they were divorced, Patrizia said, she arrived at the Saint Moritz estate with the two girls only to find the doors to the houses closed and the locks changed.

  “I was just a little bit upset, so I called the police,” she told the courtroom. “They let me in and I changed the locks. Then I called Maurizio. ‘What is this all about?’ I asked him. He said, ‘Didn’t you know that when a couple separates, the locks change?’ I said, ‘Well, now I have changed the locks too, so we’ll just have to see who changes them next!’”

  Patrizia acknowledged that over the years, her hatred of Maurizio ballooned into an obsession.

  “Why?” asked Nocerino. “Because he had left you, because he was with another woman?”