House of Gucci: the true story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci
Ridley Scott’s new film with Lady Gaga and Adam Driver is based on a strange and twisted true story.
House of Gucci is Ridley Scott’s new project and it has nothing to do with science fiction. The film stars Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino and Jared Leto , and tells the true story of a murder that left Italy in shock and that happened within one of the most important families in the world of fashion, the Gucci .
The official House of Gucci synopsis says the film tells “the story of how Patrizia Reggiani, Maurizio Gucci’s ex-wife, conspired to kill her husband, the grandson of renowned fashion designer Guccio Gucci, ” and that’s just the story. tip of the iceberg.
Gaga will be in charge of giving life to Patrizia Reggiani, while Adam Driver will become Maurizio Gucci, the man found himself trapped at the center of a murder conspiracy marked by treason, money, and status, which is just one of the tragedies that have happened in the world of fashion (we cannot forget that Gianni Versace was also murdered, but by an obsessed murderer who was later connected to 4 other crimes).
The story is crazy, but it’s not fiction and it all happened just over two decades ago (and we’re surprised Hollywood took so long to bring the case to the movies).
House of Gucci and its true story of murder, lies and betrayal
It all started on March 27, 1995, when Maurizio Gucci , the grandson of the owner of the Italian fashion brand who bears his surname by name, arrived at his office in Via Palestro, in Milan, like every day. Gucci greeted goalkeeper Giuseppe Onorato and started up the stairs, but was stopped by three shots that hit his back and a quarter that hit him in the head and knocked him to the ground.
Onorato thought that it was a practical joke that Maurizio was playing on him, but he himself was shot twice and realized that this was not a game, and that the man he had just greeted a few seconds earlier was dead.
At first, many thought that Gucci’s murder could have been an international conspiracy and, according to reports, several lines of investigation came to wonder if Gucci could be involved with dirty and illegal businesses, or if there was a break within of the family (which was already famous for its internal feuds), but that led nowhere and it was thought that no one could solve the mystery.
Everything changed in 1997, when an anonymous informant asked to speak to Lombardy Police Chief Filippo Ninni. According to Forbes, the whistleblower told Ninni that he had overheard a doorman at his hotel in Milan say he had recruited Gucci’s killer, and that was the clue that led officers to uncover a sinister plan involving a woman who until recently had been part of the family.
A marriage that ended in murder
Maurizio Gucci and Patrizia Reggiani met in their 20s during a party in Milan, where Maurizio allegedly asked a friend who the beautiful red-clad woman was who looked like Elizabeth Taylor.
That meeting ended in a wedding in 1972, despite the fact that Maurizio’s father opposed the union, and they spent more than a decade being one of the most important couples in fashion, until the couple separated in 1985 and began a divorce proceedings and a legal battle that would last almost a decade more. Reggiani said in an interview that Maurizio abandoned her , told her that he would simply take a short trip to Florence, but never returned and she found out what was really going on from the family doctor.
A few years earlier, Maurizio inherited 50% of the company after the death of his father, and that led him to fight with several members of his family for control of the company, and by 1993 he sold his shares for a price between 150 and 200 million dollars, of which Reggiano only received 1 million.
Patrizia was not satisfied, in addition, she learned that Maurizio had found a new partner, Paola Franchi , and it seemed that he was planning to marry her, which was part of what led her to carry out her plan. During the trial, a recorded call was revealed in which Reggiani told Gucci: “You have reached the extreme limit of making yourself look down on your daughters who no longer want to see you in order to forget the trauma. You are a deformed consequence, you are a painful appendage that we all want to forget. Hell is yet to come for you. “
Reggiani started looking for a hitman and is said to have twice asked a cleaner for help to help her get rid of her husband. “I have to admit that for a while, I really wanted to get rid of him. I wanted to do it, so I was asking people to do it. But my intentions ended there, a mere obsession, a mere wish, ”she told Storie Maledette. “What wife has never said, ‘I’d kill that guy’?”
Then Giuseppina (Pina) Auriemma came on the scene , a woman who claimed to be a kind of sorceress or seer, who in 1994 moved in with Patrizia to help her write a book about her relationship with Gucci , and she was part of the plan. In court, Pina said that Reggiani told her about his intention to kill Gucci, while Patrizia said that it was Pina who hired the killer without her knowing, and that she was extorted to force her to pay more than $ 300 million for the murder.
What is clear is that Pina contacted Ivano Savino, who was the doorman of the hotel where she was staying in Milan. Savinio later contacted Orazio Cicala , who agreed to hire the man who would assassinate Maurizio.
It was the anonymous call in 1997 that led the police to discover Savinio, who at the time was looking for a new murderer to threaten Patrizia and force her to give him more money. An undercover policeman pretended to be interested in the position, recorded the conversation, and by January 31 Reggiani, Auriemma, Savioni, Cicala and Benedetto Ceraulo , the hitman accused of carrying out Gucci’s murder, were arrested and charged.
The murder was scandalous and led to one of the most brutal media trials in Italy, where 5 people were convicted for the death of the businessman, including his own ex-wife, Reggiani never admitted to ordering the murder, but the evidence was overwhelming and finally she was sentenced to 29 years in prison, where she had a suicide attempt.
Patrizia Reggiani (who was nicknamed by the press as Lady Gucci or Black Widow) spent 18 years in prison for the crime before being released in 2013, and in a 2002 interview she said that “I do not consider myself innocent, I consider myself innocent. But in the ‘not guilty’ I have to admit that I have made too many mistakes ”.