Patrizia Reggiani served 17 years in prison for hiring a hitman to shoot dead her husband, Maurizio Gucci. Screenshot / Rai TV, YouTube
Patrizia Reggiani served 17 years in prison for hiring a hitman to shoot dead her husband, Maurizio Gucci. Screenshot / Rai TV, YouTube
An Italian socialite nicknamed "the Black Widow" has revealed that she was so desperate to murder her husband, an heir to the Gucci fashion empire, that she "went around asking everyone if they could do it, even the local grocer".
Patrizia Reggiani is out of prison, having served 17 years for hiring a hitman to shoot dead her husband, Maurizio Gucci, on the steps of his office in Milan in 1995.
She was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters.
From left: Roberto, Giorgio and Maurizio Gucci in Paris in 1983. Maurizio Gucci was gunned down as he walked into his office building in Milan, Italy in 1995. Photo / Getty Images
She was also angry over his management of the US$170 million fortune he had accrued after selling the family business in 1993 to an investment group.
The former socialite, who kept a pet ferret in prison, has given a candid interview about ordering her husband's murder and her life behind bars in San Vittore prison in Milan, which she ironically nicknamed "Victor's Residence".
"I was furious with Maurizio. I went around asking everyone, even the local grocer, is there someone who has the courage to murder my husband?" the 72-year-old said in a documentary that was released yesterday.
"I can't aim a gun very well – I couldn't have done it myself."
Academy Award winner Lady Gaga starts filming for Ridley Scott’s ‘Gucci’ Movie in Italy in 2 months. Lady Gaga will portray Patrizia Reggiani, the ex-wife of Maurizio Gucci. pic.twitter.com/5QVA8GUQ63
The hitman, Benedetto Ceraulo, was a debt-ridden pizzeria owner. He drew up in a green Renault Clio to the office block where Gucci worked and shot him four times. He was eventually caught, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.
It took police two years to figure out who had ordered the killing. "I didn't think they'd catch me," Reggiani told the Discovery documentary Lady Gucci.
After a trial that captivated Italy, she was found guilty of commissioning the hit and sentenced to 26 years in prison.
Patrizia Reggiani in 1995. Photo / AP
The trial heard that on the day her ex-husband was gunned down, she wrote in her diary the word paradeisos, Greek for paradise.
Reggiani said in the documentary that she had quite enjoyed incarceration. "I was absolutely fine in prison," she said. "For me they were years of peace. I slept, I worked in the garden."
A decade ago, she was offered the chance of day release on the condition that she would accept menial work.
She refused. "I've never worked in my life and I'm certainly not going to start now," she told a court in Milan. That attitude echoed one of her more famous quotes: "I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle."
In the end, her sentence was cut short for good behaviour and she was released in 2017.
She lives in Milan with a pet parrot and can sometimes be seen walking around the city with the blue and yellow macaw on her shoulder. Her daughters, now grown up, reportedly want nothing to do with her.
