Murder in the House of Gucci

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Speaker 6 Modi Tioguchi, a prominent, larger-than-life member of the world's most famous fashion family, had been assassinated in broad daylight in Milan.

Speaker 6 His family and friends were processing their disbelief and grief.

Speaker 9 He was

Speaker 9 somebody

Speaker 9 special, someone I never thought I would

Speaker 9 have the honor to have known.

Speaker 6 Sherry Loud met Maurizio in 1984 at a sailing regatta.

Speaker 9 He was wearing white jeans and a blue chamois shirt. I'll never forget it as long as I live.
And hit those famous glasses, the aviator glasses.

Speaker 6 Sherry knew Maurizio by reputation as a powerful and wealthy man. But once they got on a boat, she found him to be unassuming and humble.

Speaker 9 We didn't have champagne or wine. We had panini and water and I got soaking wet every day and I was in heaven.
And I really enjoyed being with him because he was so playful.

Speaker 10 I always remember him with a big smile.

Speaker 2 He was always positive, okay?

Speaker 6 Andrea Morantes, who had once been Mauricio's business partner and advisor, couldn't believe the news.

Speaker 10 It was very difficult to understand. It was very difficult to justify.

Speaker 6 So you had no initial suspicions as to who was was behind it?

Speaker 10 No. I didn't even ask myself, you know, who could it be because it was so far-fetched the idea that somebody would do it that you don't even ask yourself, you know, who can do it.

Speaker 6 The man tasked with figuring that out was Carlo Nocherino, an experienced prosecutor who nonetheless had never investigated a high-profile murder.

Speaker 6 As soon as he arrived at the murder scene, he learned that even though the hitman shot the building's doorman, miraculously, the doorman survived.

Speaker 6 The gunman had only shot him in the arm, leaving a potential witness alive.

Speaker 15 Well, the doorman tried to give us a sketch of what he looked like, but obviously, he only saw him for a few seconds, and he was terrified.

Speaker 15 He tried to protect himself, so the porter couldn't focus on the killer's appearance.

Speaker 6 But he did have information about the gun.

Speaker 15 The doorman noticed the length of the gun was unusual.

Speaker 15 The doorman heard the shots, but they were dull shots like he was using a silencer.

Speaker 15 The shots were muted.

Speaker 6 But despite this telltale detail, the prosecutor decided this was not a professional hit.

Speaker 2 No, exactly.

Speaker 15 A professional killer would have killed the doorman because of their proximity to each other.

Speaker 12 The killer would have shot him in the middle of his head.

Speaker 16 They wouldn't have missed him.

Speaker 6 So who was this gunman and why had he killed Maurizio Gucci? Investigators knew when it came to murder, the motive was usually love or money.

Speaker 14 The first thing we thought was to follow two separate leads, family and business.

Speaker 6 But the prosecutor realized very quickly that when your name was Gucci, Family and business were often the same thing.

Speaker 17 Well, the Gucci name

Speaker 17 now is a brand,

Speaker 17 but was born just a very simple name of my great-grandfather Guccio

Speaker 17 that opened in a little shop in Florence in 1923.

Speaker 6 Patrizia Gucci is Maurizio's niece and the author of a memoir about her famous family.

Speaker 6 She played as a child on the floor of the Gucci factory, inhaling the smell of the leather as artisans expertly crafted it into some of the world's hottest accessories.

Speaker 17 We had a lot of love and passion, especially for their job. They put all passion, all creativity, all energy in their life.

Speaker 6 What started as a small factory began to grow, first throughout Italy, then Europe. Before long, Gucci conquered America too.
beguiling the rich, famous, and powerful.

Speaker 6 Patrizia still remembers an envelope her grandfather sent back home from New York.

Speaker 17 With a check inside.

Speaker 17 Signed, John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Speaker 7 So

Speaker 9 my grandfather was so proud of this.

Speaker 6 Maurizio was born into this proud and talented family in 1948. His mother tragically died when he was just five years old.
And he was raised by his father, Rodolfo.

Speaker 6 a former silent film star who had inherited half of the family business.

Speaker 10 It was a relationship always where he was told to do things, that he had to do them in a certain way, that he was a Gucci and therefore he had to adjust to a certain cliché.

Speaker 6 Maurizio did what his father expected of him, but all of that changed at a party in 1970 where Maurizio met a chic, glamorous young woman named Patrizza Reggiani.

Speaker 18 She loved good style.

Speaker 18 She was ambitious and she had been pushed by her mother to not only marry well, but to marry a big name.

Speaker 6 Patrizia's stepfather owned a successful trucking business. So Patricia had money, but she lacked the social status of the Milan nobene, the high-society Milan elite to which the Gucci belonged.

Speaker 6 Lady Gaga, who placed Patrizia in House of Gucci, believes it was tough, perhaps impossible, for Patrizia to win over this elitist family.

Speaker 6 She's never as shiny as the Gucci. She's always an outsider.
She never really fully makes it. Nonetheless, Maurizio fell head over heels for Patrizia and proposed to her on their second date.

Speaker 19 She was incredibly beautiful. She was actually compared to Elizabeth Taylor in looks.
But I think it was actually her personality that made her very dynamic.

Speaker 6 Dan Wakeford is People Magazine's editor-in-chief.

Speaker 19 She was very fun, very funny, and very clever. She knew what she wanted and she went out to get it.
So she wanted to get to that next echelon of society and she met Maurizio and she found her way.

Speaker 6 She found her way, but I mean she found love too, right? I mean theirs was a true love story.

Speaker 19 It felt like a love story and the love story turned very Romeo and Juliet when Rodolfo actually said he didn't approve of Patricia.

Speaker 6 Maurizio's father became even more dramatic when his son told him he had proposed to Patrizia.

Speaker 20 He was very concerned about Patrizia, the way she would spend money and the way view, you know, the way she would want to live her life.

Speaker 6 Domenico de Sole, who was Gucci's CEO in the late 90s, started out in the company as Rodolfo's lawyer and confidante. Did he view her as a gold digger?

Speaker 20 Yeah, you can describe that way, yes.

Speaker 18 And had even gone all the way to the Cardinal of Milan to ask him to prevent the marriage from happening.

Speaker 18 And the cardinal told him, no, you know, if they're in love, there's nothing we can do to stop them from wedding.

Speaker 6 Desperate, Rodolfo gave his son an ultimatum. It's either her or me.

Speaker 6 The choice Maurizio made would be life-changing, but in ways he could not foresee.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 6 What we watch is an outsider grab a hold of Maurizio.

Speaker 9 She reminded me of Joan Collins. She was dripping in jewels and makeup and heels.

Speaker 2 Love or family?

Speaker 22 Which would Maurizio choose?

Speaker 23 When dateline continues.

Speaker 6 It was a battle for the love of Maurizio Gucci. In one corner, Patrizi Reggiani, the up-and-coming socialite who had captured his heart.
In the other, Maurizio's domineering father.

Speaker 6 who believed Patrizio was only in it for the money and the name. Not only did Rodolfo not approve, didn't he give Maurizio an ultimatum?

Speaker 19 Oh yeah, he said it's either me or her. And

Speaker 19 love did prevail for Maurizio. He chose to marry Patricia.

Speaker 6 Rodolfo was furious. He refused to come to the wedding and cut his son off.
In fact, no one from the Gucci family showed up to watch the happy couple walk down the aisle.

Speaker 6 To Lady Gaga, that turn of events showed that Patrizia was not the gold digger the family believed her to be.

Speaker 6 What we watch is an outsider, Patrizia Reggiani, come into the family and grab a hold of Maurizio. But when they got married, his family had turned their back on him.

Speaker 6 So she didn't marry for money, she married for love.

Speaker 6 Finally, about two years after their estrangement, Maurizio's uncle Aldo persuaded Maurizio and his father to reconcile. Then Aldo persuaded Maurizio to come to New York to work for him.

Speaker 18 So Aldo was really the marketing and expansion genius of the family. He opened the first store in Rome, the first store in New York, the first store in Rodeo Drive.

Speaker 18 He had a vision for how Gucci could be an empire. And Aldo used to say, you know, my family is like a train.
I am the engine and they are the caboose.

Speaker 6 In 1975, Maurizio and Patrizia moved to Manhattan, where he worked hard to learn the business from Uncle Aldo.

Speaker 6 While she gave birth to two daughters, Patrizia also began to make an impression on high society.

Speaker 20 She was always perfect, you know, makeup was perfect, and she had beautiful jewelry.

Speaker 25 She's always impeccable.

Speaker 20 I could tell that she was a person that was really used to get away. Certainly, she did get away with Maurita.

Speaker 6 Whatever she wanted, she got?

Speaker 14 Sort of, yes.

Speaker 6 By the early 1980s, Gucci was firmly established as a must-stop for the rich and famous. With 60 luxury boutiques around the world, the company had become an empire.

Speaker 6 As investigators explored Maurizio's rise to the top of Gucci, they learned Maurizio and Fatrizia were both reveling in his success and the riches it brought.

Speaker 18 They had this phenomenal penthouse apartment and the Olympic Towers. They were kind of the Gucci couple around town.
Everybody knew who they were.

Speaker 6 New York's new power couple strutted their stuff at famous celebrity haunts like Studio 54.

Speaker 19 At this point, Patricia is really enjoying life. She loves everything that's going on in New York: celebrities, fun, money, parties.
New York is all about that.

Speaker 6 There was a famous interview that Patricia did, and she talked about her lifestyle.

Speaker 19 Patricia said, I would rather weep in a Rolls voice than be happy on a bicycle, which is just crazy. It just sums her up that she is fascinated by luxury things.

Speaker 6 Maurizio was too.

Speaker 6 He bought a ship called the Creole, then the largest wooden sailing boat in the world. Sherry Loud was an avid sailor who helped him renovate it stern to bow.

Speaker 9 We bought shark skin from Japan for the couches. We traveled for art in mostly Denmark.
He loved the Turkish or the Moroccan tiling.

Speaker 9 We went to Murano to buy all the glassware and design all the dishes.

Speaker 6 The renovation took five years and the cost? $25 million.

Speaker 9 I think he was used to luxury and surrounded himself with as much as he could because he was brought up that way. He lived that life.

Speaker 9 And I don't know if he had any boundaries.

Speaker 9 It didn't occur to him.

Speaker 6 Maricho started sponsoring sailing teams and races all over the world. He brought Patrizia, who didn't quite fit in.

Speaker 9 Mauritio would arrive by helicopter, and often she would accompany him. And she reminded me of Joan Collins.

Speaker 9 She was dripping in jewels and makeup and heels, and it was not appropriate because you're sailing. You're in docksiders or sneakers and jeans.
She seemed above it all and couldn't be bothered by it.

Speaker 6 Patrizia not only strutted her stuff in high society, she did it at Gucci too.

Speaker 9 She tried to make decisions for him as far as who he would work with and tried to steer him in the direction that she thought the company should go in. That's how she was using her marriage.

Speaker 9 She wanted more money. More and more and more and more.

Speaker 6 So Maurizio had described his father as being domineering, but then he marries Patrizia, who turns out she seems to be domineering as well.

Speaker 10 That's for sure.

Speaker 12 I think she was more domineering than Rodolfo.

Speaker 6 When Rodolfo died in 1983 and Maurizio inherited half the company, Batrizia's wish came true. Her husband was finally on top.

Speaker 19 I mean, obviously, Maurizio's upset that his father's died, but he's left him in such a strong position.

Speaker 6 Now, Maurizio had more shares in the company than anyone else, even his uncle and mentor, Aldo. But when Maurizio tried to exert his new power, Aldo slammed on the brakes.

Speaker 19 There was a lot of anger and frustration and jealousy. This was not a friendly family environment at all.

Speaker 6 Investigators wondered, did the ensuing fight for the heart and soul of Gucci lead to murder?

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 22 Inside the Empire. Infighting and intrigue.

Speaker 6 The animosity was so severe that the Italian press would say instead of Gius for Gucci, it was Gius for Guerra.

Speaker 2 War.

Speaker 20 I witnessed that many, many occasions.

Speaker 6 As investigators were searching for clues that would bring them closer to solving Maurizio's murder, they wondered, did his sudden rise to power at Gucci ruffle any feathers, especially those of his preening Uncle Aldo.

Speaker 18 So Aldo was not really ready or willing to give up control because, you know, you have to realize: Aldo, he was Gucci. He was Gucci, and Gucci was him.
He was the engine.

Speaker 18 He had built it with his own hands and the brio of his personality.

Speaker 6 And Andrea Morante, one of Maurizio's financial advisors, said making a rival of Aldo was a dangerous game.

Speaker 14 He could

Speaker 10 transform a caress

Speaker 10 into a scratch.

Speaker 6 In fact, Aldo's entire family had a reputation for ferocious infighting.

Speaker 6 I read the animosity was so severe within the family that the Italian press would say instead of, you know, Gius for Gucci, it was Gius for Guerra, war.

Speaker 20 I witnessed that many, many, many, many occasions.

Speaker 6 On one occasion, DeSole was at a board meeting when Aldo objected to his son Paolo recording the proceedings and watched them come to blows.

Speaker 20 Aldo, who is a very strong man, jumps up, runs on the other side of the table, takes the tape recorder, smashes the tape recorder, and gets into a fist fight with Paolo.

Speaker 20 Maurizio tries to separate the two, okay?

Speaker 12 And

Speaker 20 needless to say, he got punched in the face,

Speaker 20 punched in the face by one of the two contestants.

Speaker 6 So when Maurizio started calling the shots at Gucci, Aldo and his sons predictably threw a punch at him, accusing Maurizio of dodging millions of dollars in taxes, charges that could land him in prison, and even worse for a man like Maurizio, embarrass him.

Speaker 18 These lawsuits were splashed all over the front pages of the papers. And so as soon as these cases went into the courts, they became public.
And so

Speaker 18 the personal family business was in plain sight for everyone to view.

Speaker 6 Police launched an investigation and in a scene straight out of a Bond film, just as authorities were swooping in to arrest him for the alleged tax fraud, Maurizio, with help from his personal driver Luigi, escaped to his Swiss villa.

Speaker 9 When he got to Samaritz, he called me and said, you aren't going to believe what just happened to me. Luigi came running in and said, the police are here.
They're coming for you.

Speaker 9 You have to leave right now. And he left out the back door and got on the motorcycle and he took off.

Speaker 6 From his swanky Swiss lair, Maurizio plotted his revenge as only a Gucci could.

Speaker 6 He partnered with an investment bank and together they identified a weakness in Aldo's family alliance, a son who carried his own grievances against Aldo and was more than willing to sell his share of the company.

Speaker 6 Once he did, there was nothing the remaining family members could do to stop Maurizio from becoming Gucci's top dog.

Speaker 10 I go to all the other cousins one by one, individually, and I tell them, you know, the game is over here.

Speaker 6 With their power gone, it was fairly easy to persuade the rest of the family to cash in and sell their Gucci shares. Was there a sense of betrayal as well, though?

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 10 there was a sense of betrayal. Aldo said one thing that I'll never forget is that,

Speaker 10 you know, I'm not selling you my shares, but I'm selling you my soul.

Speaker 6 Mauritsu was willing to cut out his family so he chose company over family at what cost?

Speaker 10 Tough decisions require also some tough consequences but he was aware of those consequences and he was not afraid of accepting those consequences.

Speaker 6 Aldo never got over his loss of Gucci.

Speaker 6 He died a bitter man in 1990.

Speaker 18 Aldo's funeral was very, very painful. And Maurizio comes down from Milan, but, you know,

Speaker 18 the animosity is so great that they just give him the cold shoulder. The resentment was through the roof.

Speaker 6 Now, five years later, prosecutor Nocherino wondered, were the seeds of murder planted in that vicious family feud?

Speaker 6 Talking to the family members, it was clear there was a lot of... feeling of resentment and betrayal, right?

Speaker 14 Well, I'm not sure about betrayal, but there surely was resentment.

Speaker 6 While investigators wondered about that, they were also pursuing a new lead.

Speaker 6 Nocidino found that almost as soon as Maurizio took control of Gucci, his life of outrageous luxury and conspicuous consumption caught up with him.

Speaker 20 You know, some people that could be very wealthy asset-wise because obviously he owns a share of the company. But there's an issue.
He didn't have the cash to keep this lifestyle.

Speaker 6 In fact, he owed tens of millions of dollars. By 1993, the banks had had enough.
If Maurizio didn't repay his debts, they would seize his shares of Gucci.

Speaker 6 And then, a miracle, Maurizio suddenly came up with the money.

Speaker 6 How did he do it?

Speaker 6 By reaching out to one of Italy's most wanted men, an alleged terrorist and millionaire named Delfo Sorci, who had been accused of helping to plan a bomb that killed 16 people in 1969.

Speaker 6 He fled to Japan before police could arrest him.

Speaker 14 This whole thing was very strange.

Speaker 13 It was strange that Maurizio asked for money.

Speaker 6 Maurizio got a personal loan from Sorcei by promising him the rights to sell Gucci products throughout the Far East. So, how much money did he borrow from Delfo Sorci?

Speaker 27 $40 million.

Speaker 6 That's 40 million reasons to kill someone, perhaps.

Speaker 13 That's why we wanted to understand why and what their agreements were. And above all, if Maurizio Gucci gave Zorci the money back.

Speaker 6 Uncle Aldo said he sold his soul when he let go of Gucci.

Speaker 6 Investigators wondered, had Maurizio sold his to keep it?

Speaker 6 Now possible suspects in the murder were starting to pile up. And soon there would be one more to add to the list.
Someone else Marizo had wronged, who had been threatening to do something about it.

Speaker 6 Loudly.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 9 She was unkind, always put him down.

Speaker 18 He started to feel sort of preyed upon.

Speaker 22 A marriage on the rocks and a new romance on the side.

Speaker 9 He said to me, I am your knight in shining armor.

Speaker 23 When dateline continues.

Speaker 6 Maurizio's finances were a mess, and from the beginning, investigators had wondered if his love life was too.

Speaker 6 In fact, one of the first people Prosecutor Nocherino interrogated after the murder was Patricia Reggiani.

Speaker 14 When I questioned her for the first time, she was calm and confident.

Speaker 16 She was tense because she understood that the questioning was important, but she wasn't crying or trembling or worried.

Speaker 6 And in terms of the evidence, I mean, I imagine the first thing you ask is the alibi.

Speaker 13 Yes, I did ask about her alibi. She had one.

Speaker 13 We could not place her in Villa Palestro that day.

Speaker 6 But now that he knew more about Maurizio, Nocherino wanted to learn about Patricia, too.

Speaker 6 So he went back in time again to when she watched her husband lead the company for the first time.

Speaker 28 She's finally seeing a return on her investment.

Speaker 6 Sofia Percio is an assistant editor at Forbes who reported on Maurizio's murder.

Speaker 28 She feels like she has spent time and care and attention into this relationship and that she, this glimpse of a life that she first saw in that party in Milan in the early 70s, a decade later, there they are.

Speaker 28 They are the Gucci couple, Mr. and Mrs.
Gucci.

Speaker 6 In public, they were fashion's new power couple. But below the surface, Maurizio's and Patrizia's ten-year marriage had begun to crack.

Speaker 6 House of Gucci explores that building tension between Maurizio and Patrizia in a pivotal scene in which Adam Driver as Maurizio looks at some Gucci counterfeits.

Speaker 29 This is serious.

Speaker 6 And you're laughing it off.

Speaker 23 At least it's my name on the mugs, not yours.

Speaker 6 Our name, Sweetie.

Speaker 18 After some time, her pushing started to grate on him, and he started to feel restless and he started to feel

Speaker 18 sort of preyed upon. You could definitely see that he had the beginnings of really wanting to kind of call the shots himself.

Speaker 6 But there was also something else, or rather, someone else.

Speaker 9 He said, do I ever get to talk to you alone?

Speaker 9 And I said, me? You're married.

Speaker 6 Sherry Loud was 25, 10 years younger than Maurizio, when he made his move at a dinner after one of the sailing races they'd watched together.

Speaker 9 He said he never met anybody like me.

Speaker 9 Real, funny, not impressed,

Speaker 9 not bejeweled or bedazzled, and very natural and an American.

Speaker 6 Sherry resisted at first, but Maurizio was used to getting what he wanted. So several months later, there she was, waiting for him at a hotel in Nice, France.

Speaker 9 I had to walk down, I'll never forget it, this huge flight of stairs, and he was at the bottom.

Speaker 6 And I'm not really a nervous person, but I was, I had a lot of butterflies.

Speaker 9 And I got to the bottom, and he said to me,

Speaker 9 I am your knight in shining armor. I just forgot the horse.

Speaker 6 It was the beginning of a passionate affair that would change Sherry's life and Maurizio's. By then, he had been married to Patrizia for 12 years and was desperately looking for a way out.

Speaker 9 She was unkind, always put him down, didn't want to do anything that he wanted to do. He said he didn't love her anymore.
He said he just had enough.

Speaker 6 Maurizio had always shied away from confronting Patrizia.

Speaker 6 So one day in May 1985 he packed his suitcase and left the apartment. he shared with Patrizia and his two daughters.

Speaker 18 He didn't say anything.

Speaker 18 He packed a bag. He said he was going to Florence for business meetings.
He left. And it wasn't until the next day that he sent a friend to tell her that he wasn't coming back.

Speaker 6 Not coming back.

Speaker 6 As in ever.

Speaker 6 Sherry found out about it the next time they met.

Speaker 9 He pulled up in a Ferrari to pick me up from the airport and he said, I moved out.

Speaker 2 I'm done.

Speaker 9 I didn't really know what the future would be for both of us, but I was happy that he felt free.

Speaker 6 Maurizio may have felt liberated, but Patrizia had been blindsided.

Speaker 18 It must have been incomprehensible to her because,

Speaker 18 you know, they had built so much of what they had together in her mind.

Speaker 18 And I think that it was also the fact that he couldn't tell it to her face was also indicative of how far apart they'd already grown.

Speaker 6 Maurizio leaving made something else painfully clear. Patrizia was never really a Gucci.

Speaker 28 She would recall later on that he told her, you fancied yourself president of Gucci, but here there's only one president.

Speaker 6 Patrizia also remembered what Maurizio's father, of all people, told her about her husband.

Speaker 18 Rodolfo warned Patrizia that Maurizio would change. When he got the money and the family wealth, she said, be careful because when Maurizio gets everything that I will bequeath to him, he will change.

Speaker 18 And that's exactly what happened.

Speaker 6 But Patrizia wasn't the kind of woman who would let things like that just happen.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 18 Her anger starts to grow.

Speaker 16 A woman scorned.

Speaker 22 Could she be planning to settle the score?

Speaker 18 For her, it was very personal. She said that she could never forgive what he did to her.

Speaker 6 Freed from his father, freed from his wife, Maurizio was finally his own man.

Speaker 9 He was able to be reborn. He was able to become himself, finally.
He wasn't under anybody's pressure or anybody's constraint, like Rodolfo or Patrizia.

Speaker 6 The man with whom Sherry Loud had fallen in love didn't seem to be constrained by anything anymore.

Speaker 6 Like the time he surprised her in New York with a very expensive delicacy, he sneaked past airport customs.

Speaker 9 He would smuggle in truffle. We love truffle.
He put it in a jar with rice and smuggle big, big, and we'd shave it on everything. Eggs, pasta.
And he was just so excited to do something like that.

Speaker 6 But while Maurizio was feasting on the finer things in life, Patrizio was being devoured by rage.

Speaker 9 We'd go to Samaritz and we'd have to leave because someone would call, she's on her way, and everybody had to clean up and pack and leave.

Speaker 9 We'd just leave because he didn't want to have the confrontation. She's very confrontational.

Speaker 6 Sherry said Patricia was so angry, she prevented Maurizio from seeing his daughters for months at a time. It was all a bit much to handle for a young suburban woman from Connecticut.

Speaker 6 So after five years, Sherry called it quits.

Speaker 9 At the end, I just got tired of traveling back and forth, and I got tired of the drama because it was never ending. I couldn't handle it anymore.
I didn't want to handle it anymore.

Speaker 6 She and Maurizio parted as friends, then gradually lost contact. And perhaps it was just a matter of time before another woman walked into Maurizio's life, Milan interior designer Paola Franchi.

Speaker 6 That relationship was an even greater affront to Patrizia, who was still married to Maurizio, even though they'd been separated for five years.

Speaker 18 Patrizia hated Paola and really saw Paola as the gold digger. And Paula is trying to get her hooks into Maurizio.

Speaker 6 NBC News correspondent Claudio Lavanga says that Patrizia's hate grew when she found out that Maurizio and Paola had moved in together.

Speaker 6 So right there at number 38, that's where Maurizio and Paola lived, right? That's right.

Speaker 30 This is Corso Venezia, which is one of the most exclusive areas of Milan. The fashion district is literally feet away.

Speaker 30 His office is around the corner, and they live just up there on the last floor, a beautiful, enormous apartment. They were remaking, redoing, and probably planning a future together.

Speaker 6 Yeah, the story was that they actually were thinking to get married.

Speaker 30 Well, and that may have been a rumor that Patricia may have heard as well.

Speaker 18 Her anger starts to grow as she realizes that she's really suffering this deep loss.

Speaker 18 And it's really a loss of her own identity, too, because she had come to identify herself with Gucci and as La Señora Gucci.

Speaker 6 In 1991, a year after he met Paola, Maurizio officially filed for divorce. Even worse, the next year, Patrizio was diagnosed with a brain tumor and rushed into surgery.

Speaker 6 In the recovery room, she opened her eyes, hoping that Maurizio would be there. He was not.

Speaker 28 He sends flowers instead with a note that just reads Marizu Gucci,

Speaker 28 which is definitely a cold move in her eyes and the way that she starts to think of him

Speaker 28 really as less of a person,

Speaker 28 someone who's betrayed her and let her down multiple times.

Speaker 6 The tumor turned out to be benign, but by now, Patricia's anger had become malignant. And just when it seemed that her rage could not not rise any higher, it did.

Speaker 6 When in September 1993, Maurizio lost Gucci.

Speaker 20 Maurizio had a strong vision, but Maurizio did not execute, could not execute, and the company was broke. You know, the company was really, it was just, it was a disaster.

Speaker 6 What happened? In his effort to return Gucci to glory, Maurizio focused on high-end luxury items, but he pulled the plug on many of the cheaper products that actually made money for the company.

Speaker 6 Gucci plunged into the red.

Speaker 10 I think we already saw the light of the tunnel, but the financial investor thought that it was in the interest of the company, but also in the interest of the shareholders, to try and change the leadership of the company.

Speaker 6 Now, for the first time in its 70-year history, there wasn't a Gucci leading the company. It was a huge blow to the Gucci family and to Patrizia, who took it personally.

Speaker 18 She said that she could never forgive what he did to her. So for her, it was very personal.
When he lost Gucci, it was a personal attack to her and all that she had tried to do for him.

Speaker 6 Did that despair and disappointment add up to a motive for murder? To make that case, Prosecutor Nocherino would need to find clearer evidence.

Speaker 6 But that would have to wait. The alleged terrorist, who had loaned Maurizio $40 million dollars was ready to talk

Speaker 22 coming up an accused terrorist a betrayed family a bitter ex-wife were any involved in this murder

Speaker 22 investigators uncover a secret tape it was pure hatred when dateline continues

Speaker 29 Some stories never make national headlines, but stories from small towns and coastal communities deserve recognition too.

Speaker 29 I'm Kylie Lowe, host of Dark Down East, a true crime podcast that gives voice to victims through investigative journalism and powerful storytelling.

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Speaker 6 It had been about a year since the murder of Maurizio Gucci, and still no arrests. Prosecutor Nocherino and his team took stock.
Who could have killed him?

Speaker 6 One intriguing person of interest was Delfo Sorci, the alleged terrorist who had loaned Maurizio $40 million to pay his debts.

Speaker 6 Zorci had been living beyond the prosecutor's reach in Japan, but after receiving assurances he would not be extradited to Italy, Zorci agreed to meet with Nocherino in Paris.

Speaker 14 He clearly explained to us that Gucci gave him the money back.

Speaker 6 And you believed him? Did he give you proof?

Speaker 16 Yes, he did.

Speaker 13 Zorzi gave us proof of this payment.

Speaker 6 So when you left that meeting in Paris, you had eliminated Zorzi as a suspect.

Speaker 2 Si, but

Speaker 13 that lead was over.

Speaker 6 Years later, Zorzi would be cleared of the terrorism charge, too.

Speaker 6 And with him out of the picture, Nocherino turned his attention to Aldo's family. Investigators interviewed the entire family, including his granddaughter, Patrizia Gucci.

Speaker 33 We were all called, and I told told them what I knew.

Speaker 6 Did they ever seem to suspect that anyone from the family could have done this?

Speaker 33 No, no one in the family. Actually, there was someone who did this terrible article.
Look for the killer inside of the family. It was something completely made up.

Speaker 17 Maurizio Gucci, mother. That fact, horrible fact, happened.
It's nothing to do with the family members.

Speaker 7 Right.

Speaker 17 So, dunk, square,

Speaker 17 Cut.

Speaker 6 Indeed, Nocherino found that Aldo's sons simply took the cash and ran, leaving their family business, including Maurizio, behind.

Speaker 11 Verifigamo impocote.

Speaker 15 Right away, it was clear that all the family fights were old and all of them had been settled with contractual agreements.

Speaker 27 There weren't any more remaining fights.

Speaker 27 In this murder, the Gucci family is not involved.

Speaker 2 There wasn't any evidence.

Speaker 6 And that left Patrizza Reggiani, Maurizio's ex-wife, who still insisted on calling herself Mrs. Gucci.

Speaker 6 Even though her contentious divorce with Maurizio had been in all the Italian tabloids, here she was at his funeral, appearing as the grieving widow.

Speaker 18 She organized the funeral for Maurizio, and she was in the front row with the girls. And so she was, she at that moment kind of became La Senora Gucci again in a very public way.

Speaker 28 She makes this choice of wearing a black veil, which is so dramatic. And so she almost steps into the role of a black widow.

Speaker 6 It was a description the tabloids could not resist. But investigators soon learned that while most people abide by the old adage, don't speak ill of the dead, this black widow wasn't one of them.

Speaker 18 A friend called and asked her if she'd heard the news, and she said, Maurizio may have died, but I have just begun to live.

Speaker 6 And the more investigators looked, the more bitter Patrizia looked to them, especially after they uncovered a recording of a dramatic rant she sent to Maurizio.

Speaker 6 She said, you reached the ultimate limit by making your own daughters despise you, who don't even want to see you so they can forget their trauma.

Speaker 6 You are a deformed outgrowth, a painful appendix that we all want to forget.

Speaker 18 And, you know, it was was Maurizio, the inferno for you, is yet to come. It was, it was pure hatred.

Speaker 6 Nocharino had no evidence tying Patria to the shooting, but he was sure she had motive and not just jealousy or betrayal. Maurizio had sold his stake in Gucci for $135 million.

Speaker 6 Perhaps Nocharino theorized it was about money after all.

Speaker 18 After he lost control of the company in 1993, he had a finite amount of money. It was a lot, it was 135 million, but he was spending it like water.

Speaker 6 Maurizio and his live-in girlfriend Paola Franchi were completely renovating their Corso Venezia apartment, and they had expensive tastes.

Speaker 6 Add to that, Maurizio's ongoing restoration of his ship Creole, his properties around the world, and some new business ventures, none of them guaranteed to succeed.

Speaker 18 And Patricio grew very concerned that if he kept on at that rate, that pretty soon there would be nothing left.

Speaker 6 And so Patricia, who famously called her generous $1 million a year alimony little more than a plate of lentils, started lambasting Maurizio on TV and in the newspapers.

Speaker 10 She was furious.

Speaker 19 She didn't hide that fury. She spoke straight out to the press, saying, well, he was a bad husband.
He was a bad businessman. He was weak.

Speaker 18 She said

Speaker 18 he's like a seat cushion that keeps the imprint of the last person that has sat on it.

Speaker 6 Patricia's public outbursts and threats scared Paola. She said as much to investigators.

Speaker 19 Paola's very transparent that she thinks that Patricio is a lead suspect here. Her life had been made held by Patricio making these threats and being so angry.

Speaker 6 Paola told police that when Maurizio died, his daughters inherited his apartment, and Patricia didn't waste any time taking possession of it.

Speaker 30 Can you believe that not even 24 hours after the murder, Patricia shows up here with an eviction order for Paola and tells Paola Franci, get out.

Speaker 6 Wow, 24 hours later.

Speaker 30 Well, it gets worse than that. I mean, that letter was drafted by a lawyer hours after the murder, so the body was barely cold.

Speaker 6 And Paola then was tossed to the street.

Speaker 30 Well, not only she, she basically tossed out everything that resembled Maurizio and Paula's lives together.

Speaker 6 That's pretty cold.

Speaker 35 It is cold.

Speaker 6 Paola's eviction was a stunning discovery for Nocherino. It was almost as if Patrizia knew she would take over the apartment before her ex-husband was killed.

Speaker 6 But that was nothing compared to the bombshell Patrizia's lawyer dropped. He told investigators Patrizia may have been looking for a hitman.

Speaker 11 Probio la vocato.

Speaker 14 Patricia Reggiani's lawyer told us that Regiani asked him several times what would happen to her if she paid someone to kill her husband.

Speaker 6 Her own lawyer is raising the red flag and saying it might be Patricia Reggiani.

Speaker 13 Yes, we couldn't officially consider her guilty just on the basis of his testimony.

Speaker 13 We needed something more.

Speaker 6 Turns out the lawyer was hardly the only one Patrizia was talking to about a hitman.

Speaker 13 We discovered there were other people who Reggiani asked to kill Maurizio Gucci.

Speaker 15 For example, housekeepers that she had in the past.

Speaker 12 They said she asked them to find someone.

Speaker 6 But even though she's a suspect, you have no proof, right?

Speaker 2 No, we don't.

Speaker 27 We do not have the smoking gun.

Speaker 16 But all of these people she asked weren't criminals.

Speaker 16 It wasn't concrete evidence.

Speaker 6 But Patrizia seemed wildly indiscreet, and Norcerino thought it was just a matter of time before she said something incriminating. The prosecutor just needed to get it on tape.

Speaker 16 We thought about putting a webcam in her house or bugging her house to see what kind of people she was hanging out with.

Speaker 14 But it was very difficult because her apartment was huge.

Speaker 27 She could have been talking in any room.

Speaker 6 But her phone calls were a different story. So investigators set up a wiretap.
And over one of those calls, Nocherino heard a voice that caught his attention. It belonged to a woman named Pina Oriema.

Speaker 13 Pina Oriema was an ambiguous person,

Speaker 13 a woman from Naples who was part of Reggiani's circle.

Speaker 6 What was a mysterious woman from Naples doing with a high-society woman from Milan?

Speaker 6 The answer he suspected would blow his investigation wide open.

Speaker 22 Coming up, who was this mysterious woman named Pina?

Speaker 12 She'd come to be known as the Black Witch.

Speaker 9 He thought they were doing voodoo and spell casting and all kinds of crazy things. And I said, you gotta be kidding me.
Does this stuff really happen?

Speaker 6 A year and a half into his investigation, Prosecutor Nocherino had eliminated every other person of interest, except for Patrice Reggiani.

Speaker 6 So in an effort to build a circumstantial case against her, his team had set up a surveillance operation and discovered Patrizia's curious friendship with a woman named Pina Auriama.

Speaker 16 Pina Ariama had a role in Reggiani's life.

Speaker 15 This bond was unusual and we had to look at it deeper.

Speaker 6 Pina was a middle-class woman from Naples in the south of Italy. with no social pedigree.
Not the sort of person with whom a high society diva like Patrizia would associate.

Speaker 6 They met on an island vacation and hit it off when they discovered they actually had a lot in common below the surface.

Speaker 18 That relationship kind of, you know, warmed and flourished because they were in sort of, they were both kind of outsiders. Pina became almost like a sister to her.

Speaker 6 Patrizia realized Pina had much to teach her about making her way in the world as a woman.

Speaker 27 Virgini wanted to be mentored by Pina.

Speaker 14 Maybe she saw her like a wise woman,

Speaker 15 a woman who was an expert in life.

Speaker 6 Pina was there when Patricia's second daughter was born, and Pina comforted Patrizia when Maurizio abandoned her.

Speaker 6 Patricia has said in the moments of her deepest depression, Pina was there, that she saved her life.

Speaker 19 It does say, show you how close these two women were.

Speaker 6 But what did Pina get out of this relationship?

Speaker 18 I remember a photo of them at St. Moritz in the sleigh, you know, piled high with furs and going up the mountain probably to have a lunch or something.

Speaker 18 So she had access to this kind of wealth and glamour by virtue of her friendship with Patrizia.

Speaker 6 To investigators, the mere fact that Pina was from Naples was in itself suspicious.

Speaker 28 There is a certain connotation

Speaker 28 and stereotype that Italians of the North have towards Italians of the South, and particularly people from the Naples area because of Naples' association with organized crime.

Speaker 6 But Noccerino found no criminal record or evidence Pina Auriema was anything but a solid citizen. She had coincidentally once even owned a Gucci store in Naples.

Speaker 6 One thing was strange though, Maurizio and Patrizia were known to be a bit superstitious. And in their social circles, Pina was rumored to be some sort of psychic.

Speaker 6 Andrea Morante heard Pina's name when Maurizio wouldn't allow him to go on a business trip because of a premonition she had.

Speaker 26 I had to fly to Hong Kong and he came to me and he said, I'm sorry, you cannot go.

Speaker 34 You cannot go. You cannot go.

Speaker 26 You can't fly to Hong Kong.

Speaker 10 And I said, but why on earth?

Speaker 26 And he said, Pina, Pina said that, you know, maybe there is a problem on the plane.

Speaker 6 Maurizio clearly believed she had powers, perhaps dark powers.

Speaker 6 He told his girlfriend Sherry that Pina was the reason it had taken him years to leave Patrizia, even though he'd fallen out of love with her.

Speaker 9 He didn't want to go because he didn't want to be chased down by Pina.

Speaker 6 Sherry says that after Maurizio finally mustered up the courage to leave, he became convinced Patrizia was going to use Pina's powers to exact revenge on him.

Speaker 6 Like when one of Creole's masts suddenly fell and broke through the ship's floor.

Speaker 9 So he believed that that was part of Patrizia and Pina, and we had the boat exercised. And he thought they were doing voodoo and

Speaker 9 spell casting and all kinds of crazy things. And I thought it was a dramatic Italian.
I said, you gotta be kidding me. Does this stuff really happen?

Speaker 6 Whether it did or not, Maurizio clearly believed that Patrizia had it in for him and claimed she was even using tricks she might have learned from Pina to create havoc in his life.

Speaker 20 Maurizia told me a story that apparently she had a doll and she would stick pins and the doll was supposed to represent Maurizio.

Speaker 6 She was cursing him by poking it with pins.

Speaker 23 Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 6 So if Patrizia was the black widow, could it be that Pina was what the Italians would call La Maganera, the black witch? Nocherino wasn't interested in superstitions.

Speaker 6 He just wanted to know more about her.

Speaker 6 Did you think Pina Uriama was the key to getting evidence that perhaps could tie Patrizia Reggiani to Maurizio's murder?

Speaker 11 Don't you do, basically?

Speaker 16 Yes, I did.

Speaker 27 There's no doubt about that.

Speaker 12 Because Reggiani needed to be in contact with people who were far from her world.

Speaker 16 Ariama was the perfect person from this point of view.

Speaker 6 But investigators still needed a break. Patrizia, Pina, or someone close to them would have to make a mistake, spill a secret, perhaps.

Speaker 6 And then they got what they were hoping for when the phone rang one night at police headquarters. An anonymous voice on the other end of the line.

Speaker 19 Somebody just saying, I know who killed Maurizio Gucci.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 6 A little bit like a spy movie.

Speaker 30 Well, as a matter of fact, it became a bit of a spy.

Speaker 22 A secret informant joins the case and hears a stunning confession.

Speaker 30 The hotel clerk said, I was involved in the murder of Maurizio Gucci.

Speaker 23 When Dateline continues.

Speaker 6 Piazza Esperomonte, on the outskirts of Milan's old city, is just a couple of miles from the fashion district where Maurizio Gucci was killed. But it is actually a world away.

Speaker 6 Here, the poor gritty streets and urban parks harbor shadowy characters hatching shady plots. It's a place where secrets are kept or sometimes unexpectedly revealed.

Speaker 30 It's a seedy part of Milan. It's dotted with one-star hotels and it's in one of these hotels, this one right behind us, that the big break in the investigation took place.

Speaker 6 So what finally was it?

Speaker 30 Well, there was a guest who befriended the hotel clerk and this guest claimed to be a big shot drug dealer from South America and the hotel clerk said oh you think you're a big shot well I was involved in the murder of Maurizio Gucci

Speaker 6 unfortunately for the hotel clerk he was showing off to a man who was lying about who he really was which was a nobody He was just a guy who was broke and he got scared when he heard about the hotel clerk's involvement in the Gucci murder.

Speaker 30 So he decided to call the police and he met with the head of the crime unit right here in this park in Milan in the middle of the night.

Speaker 6 A little bit like a spy movie.

Speaker 30 Well, as a matter of fact, he became a bit of a spy because he agreed to wear a wire so that police could find the evidence that the hotel clerk was involved in the Gucci murder.

Speaker 6 The hotel clerk unwittingly introduced the informant to his alleged accomplices, a retired pizzeria owner and a former mechanic. Hardly the sort of people who commit assassinations.

Speaker 6 Police started surveilling the gang 24-7.

Speaker 6 As investigators listened over the next few days, days, the informants' recordings revealed details of the plot to kill Maurizio. The pizzeria owner had done much of the planning.

Speaker 6 First, he collected information about Maurizio's daily comings and goings. Then, he secured the getaway car and planned the escape route.

Speaker 6 On the day of the murder, the former mechanic joined him. They drove to Villa Palestro number 20 and waited in the car until they saw Maurizio walking toward his office building.

Speaker 6 That's when the former mechanic got out of the car and stood by the building's entrance, pretending to look at the address number.

Speaker 6 When Maurizio passed him, he sneaked up from behind and pumped him full of bullets.

Speaker 14 We were focusing our attention on these characters, and thanks to these wiretaps, we established that they were responsible for the murder of Maurizio Gucci.

Speaker 6 And who put them all up to it? Nocherino heard it loud and clear through the informant's mic. The name he'd been waiting to hear.

Speaker 6 Patrizia Reggiani.

Speaker 6 When you hear that moment in the wire-tapped conversations, was it like, we got it?

Speaker 14 More or less, but without cheering.

Speaker 6 The hotel clerk told the informant Reggiani paid about $90,000 in advance and $276,000 after the murder.

Speaker 6 But when this unlikely gang read in the papers about all the millions Patricia and her daughters inherited, they got greedy and demanded more.

Speaker 19 And so they're very angry and they're tape recorded moaning about this and trying to come up with a plot of how to get this money back from Patricia and blackmail her.

Speaker 6 So police now know who the whole gang is and they have them all under surveillance. They even managed managed to wiretap the hotel clerk's car.

Speaker 30 They did and guess who they caught in that car speak to the hotel clerk about the murder and about asking Patrizia for more money? None other than Pina Auryema, Patrizia's confidant.

Speaker 6 That's right. Patricia's old friend was somehow in cahoots with the hit squad and was now trying to extort her.

Speaker 6 So they're all having these conversations openly about trying to blackmail Patricia for more money.

Speaker 14 Yes, but they didn't speak only about this request.

Speaker 15 They also spoke about what they did.

Speaker 6 And that was enough evidence then. You had plenty of evidence just in those wiretaps.

Speaker 14 Yes, we did.

Speaker 13 We had an abundance of evidence.

Speaker 6 On January 31st, 1997, almost two years after Maurizio's death, police moved in to arrest the the entire Motley crew.

Speaker 6 And what happened when they showed up on Patricia's doorstep was surreal.

Speaker 18 She goes upstairs, she comes back, and she's wearing full makeup, gold jewelry, and a floor-length fur coat.

Speaker 28 She was just gonna put up a face, which was the rich, untouchable woman. That was probably the first place that she went to in her mind.
Say, this can't be happening to me.

Speaker 28 Do you know who I am?

Speaker 6 As Patricia was booked at the police station, her mother persuaded her to change her clothes. By then, the press had gotten word of the arrest and captured every second as she was led away to jail.

Speaker 18 It was, here I am. I am Senora Gucci, and you know, if you're going to take me down, I'm going to go down fighting and with my head held high.

Speaker 6 Prosecutor Nocherino was determined that this untouchable woman feel the full extent of the law. But he also knew the case was far from over.

Speaker 6 The trial would be a media circus.

Speaker 6 And this black widow's fate could come down to the testimony of the black witch.

Speaker 6 Bina Oriyama was about to take the stand.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 18 This was the trial of the century in Milan.

Speaker 22 The prosecutor lays out his case, tape recordings, a revealing diary, and a surprising star witness ready to turn the tables.

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Speaker 6 Wow, so this is the actual courtroom right there.

Speaker 30 The courtroom where the trial took place. And let me show you a couple of things that may be different from an American courtroom, especially during murder trials.
One of them is this.

Speaker 6 The cage.

Speaker 30 Wow. It's a cage.

Speaker 6 This is where defendants in a murder trial watch the trial in this particular case it was the accused killer and the accused getaway driver after a two-year investigation into maurizio gucci's murder prosecutor carlo nocherino was about to try the case of a lifetime this was the trial of the century in milan nocherino came to court armed with wiretap recordings and surveillance footage He also had a slew of star witnesses, including almost all of Patrizia's alleged accomplices.

Speaker 6 Patrizia and the gang were tried together, but the hotel clerk and the pizzeria owner had confessed and agreed to testify for the prosecution.

Speaker 6 The pizzeria owner turned getaway driver told the jury that Patricia met him to make sure he went through with the murder plot.

Speaker 30 He said, well, I'm worried because what if they catch me? And that's when Patrizia said, don't worry about that. I'm going to give you enough money for you, your children, your children's children.

Speaker 30 And if they catch you, I'm going to paper your your cell with gold.

Speaker 6 So that's when he decided to go forward with it. That's it.

Speaker 30 That's when they decided that that was the time to do it.

Speaker 6 So there it was, Patrizia's direct connection to the murder plot. But don't take the pizzeria owner's words for it, the prosecutor told the jury.
Take Patrizia Reggiani's.

Speaker 6 She had incriminated herself. by keeping a detailed record of her thoughts in, of all things, a Cartier diary.

Speaker 28 One of the things that she wrote in her diary is a sentence that would later come to haunt her. There are no crimes that money can buy.

Speaker 6 And to top it off, Notorino turned the diary to the date Maurizio was shot in cold blood. There on the page, a single word, paradise.
That says it all.

Speaker 30 It's practicing an admission of guilt.

Speaker 6 Then the prosecution went for their coup de grace, calling Patrizia's best friend and confidant, Bina Auriama, to the stand.

Speaker 6 She'd been silent for more than a year since her arrest, but shortly before the trial, she told investigators she was ready to talk.

Speaker 6 And of course, the Italian press was falling all over itself to cover the confrontation between the alleged murder mastermind and the reputed psychic, the black widow versus the black witch.

Speaker 38 When I was on the stand, face to face with Patrizia, I wasn't emotional at all. I mean, because in that moment, I was only telling them the truth.

Speaker 38 I didn't lie, and I admitted my faults and my frailties.

Speaker 6 This is Pina. More than two decades after she betrayed the woman who had entrusted her with all of her deepest secrets.
Why do you think she trusted you?

Speaker 38 Because it wasn't like I was part of the wealthy millionaire's world, so I couldn't talk. Who could I tell her secrets to?

Speaker 9 The wall.

Speaker 38 So having a friend in Naples and being able to tell her everything without anyone later knowing was was a big advantage for her.

Speaker 38 This is why she told me everything.

Speaker 6 Bina said that Patrizia first thought of murdering Maurizio when she realized he had fallen in love with Paola Franchi and was thinking of marrying her.

Speaker 38 She was in pain.

Speaker 38 But what I realized was that she was more sad and sorry about losing her name.

Speaker 6 So she didn't cry tears because she lost her husband. It was more she was enraged and mad because she was losing the Gucci name and the power of being a Gucci.

Speaker 18 Of course.

Speaker 38 That was what triggered her.

Speaker 6 And Pina testified that's what led Patrizia to ask her to look for a trigger man.

Speaker 6 And why would you do that for her?

Speaker 38 Listen, it was absolutely not my intention to do such a thing.

Speaker 38 I knew how stubborn she was, so I thought I would introduce her to some people I knew who are not capable of ever killing someone, but who certainly were capable of making money off of her.

Speaker 6 Bina claimed the murder for hire plan she cooked up was just a scam, a double cross designed to take Patrizia's money, not to kill anyone. Bina recruited the hotel clerk for one simple reason.

Speaker 6 He was the only other person she knew in Milan, and someone who would never commit murder.

Speaker 38 He was not a criminal. He wasn't a delinquent.
I mean, he has never seen a gun. His aim was only to trick her.

Speaker 38 We were always hoping that this idea of killing Maurizio would disappear from her mind.

Speaker 6 So the hotel clerk went to the pizzeria owner who needed the money to repay his gambling debts.

Speaker 6 But then the pizzeria owner went to the only small-time criminal he knew, the former mechanic, who got a gun.

Speaker 6 It was at that point, according to Pina, that Patrizia, who was getting impatient, went behind her back to meet the gang. The would-be scam took a horribly wrong turn.

Speaker 38 So she took me totally out of the picture. I do not know what she promised these people to commit this heinous crime.

Speaker 6 And that's how Pina claimed to be completely out of the loop when Maurizio was killed. But after the murder happened,

Speaker 6 then you went to pay them. Is that right?

Speaker 7 Yes, I did.

Speaker 38 I was weak once again with her, like I always was with her. And the people needed to be paid, and she made me give these people their money.
And I did that like an idiot. I was the intermediary.

Speaker 6 Prosecutor Nocherino knew that putting Pina on the stand was a gamble. Her somewhat strange story would give the defense a chance to attack her credibility and blame her for the murder.

Speaker 13 Dijani was the instigator, the one who had to pay. But Odyama never stepped back.

Speaker 13 There wasn't a point where she said, I quit.

Speaker 6 So she probably knew about it. She wasn't sure if they would go through with it, though.

Speaker 16 She knew almost everything.

Speaker 13 She didn't know what the exact moment would be, but she knew that they were going to do it.

Speaker 6 Did Pina know much more than she let on? Was she actually the brains behind the murder? It was the question Faticia's defense team couldn't wait to ask.

Speaker 22 Coming up, the most dramatic moment of the trial. The accused ex-wife takes the stand.

Speaker 6 When you confronted her, did she seem shaken at all?

Speaker 2 Nervous? No.

Speaker 18 Everybody wanted to hear, like, what was she going to say?

Speaker 23 When dateline continues.

Speaker 6 Pina Ariyama had just told the court the strange story of her participation in Maurizio's murder. Now it was the defense's turn to question her, and they wasted no time.

Speaker 6 Pina didn't just know about the murder they charged. She was the brains behind it, not Patrizia.

Speaker 6 Gaetano Pecorella was one of Patrizia's defense lawyers.

Speaker 35 Oriemma was the one who took matters into her hands and organized the murder.

Speaker 35 And then had gone back to Mrs.

Speaker 13 Gucci, saying,

Speaker 35 Now you have to pay because otherwise you'll get into trouble.

Speaker 35 As we did, what you had gone around asking should be done.

Speaker 6 So it seemed for the defense, the strategy was to put the blame squarely on Pina.

Speaker 6 That on the day before the murder, he'd received a call from Pina, who told him that Maurizio had returned to Milan from a business trip.

Speaker 6 The defense argued the call set the stage for the murder the defense also brought up the rumors about pina's psychic abilities and charged she used them to control patrizia

Speaker 35 mrs oriyema was considered a clairvoyant an advisor mrs orema had a relationship of this kind with gucci and she had a very strong friendship with mrs reggiani over whom i believe she exercised a lot of control But on the stand, Pina denied that she controlled Patrizia or that she saw the future.

Speaker 6 After all, if she could see the future, wouldn't she have avoided being put on trial for murder?

Speaker 38 It is absolutely not true. I do not even believe in these kinds of things because they are totally nonsense.

Speaker 38 I would have been a bad card reader because I should have at least predicted our arrest, you know?

Speaker 6 After Pina stepped down, attorney Pecorella continued the defense case with his own strange admission.

Speaker 6 It's true, he said, Patrizia de Giani had been asking people around town to kill Maurizio, but that's only because she wasn't in her right mind at the time.

Speaker 30 Now, you remember the brain tumor Patrizia had? Well, the defense was making a big deal out of that. Why?

Speaker 30 Well, because they said that the brain tumor was clouding her judgment and it kind of affected what she was talking about when she was going around telling everybody she wanted someone to kill her husband.

Speaker 6 So the personality disorder defense. That's right.
So basically saying that she was was going around town saying all of this, but she didn't really mean it.

Speaker 6 The court ordered Patrizia to be evaluated by a panel of psychiatrists.

Speaker 18 And they found that she wasn't crazy at all, but that she had something called a narcissistic personality disorder. And the effect of this was that if anything happened to her, she

Speaker 18 experienced it and interpreted it as a personal attack.

Speaker 6 So it didn't come as a surprise when Patrizia took the stand in her own defense. It was the moment all Milan, all of Italy had waited for.

Speaker 18 Everybody was in the courtroom that day and everybody wanted to hear like what was she, what was she going to say? How was she going to come across?

Speaker 6 Patrizia testified that it was Pina who organized Maurizio's murder behind her back. She said she was afraid to go to police when Pina's blackmailing started.

Speaker 6 After all, the hitmen had assassinated Maurizio on a busy Milan street in broad daylight. What would they do to her, or worse, her daughters, if she didn't cooperate?

Speaker 18 You know, she was very cool.

Speaker 18 She was wearing a lemon-colored suit.

Speaker 18 She looked good considering that she'd been in jail for months and under a tremendous amount of pressure. But she executed her testimony very well.

Speaker 6 Now it was time for Nocherino's cross-examination. Could he rattle Patrizia? When you confronted her with the information that you had gathered, did she seem shaken at all?

Speaker 2 Nervous? No,

Speaker 16 no, she wasn't

Speaker 14 nervous at all. She was very controlled and she answered the questions with confidence.

Speaker 13 Even the more insidious questions, like what she wrote in her diary that day that Gucci was killed.

Speaker 6 How did she explain that diary entry, though? I mean, writing Paradise right after learning that your husband is dead.

Speaker 15 That it was a liberation for her

Speaker 15 because she was constantly thinking about all the bad things that he did to her, about the broken marriage, about the fact that he left the family.

Speaker 6 At the root of it all, Nochirino told the jury in his closing arguments, Maurizio's cold-blooded murder may simply have been the revenge of a woman whose self-image he shattered.

Speaker 27 It was the resentment of a woman with wounded pride.

Speaker 13 So there was a very strong component of resentment which goes beyond money.

Speaker 6 After a five-month trial that captivated the entire country, the prosecution and the defense finally left it up to the jury. Would they believe the black widow or the black witch?

Speaker 6 All of Italy held its breath.

Speaker 21 Coming up.

Speaker 18 Was she left?

Speaker 22 Maybe. The verdicts are rendered, all of them.
Would there be justice for Maurizio Gucci?

Speaker 9 The name, the money, the fame, the drama.

Speaker 9 It's a shame. It's a sad story.

Speaker 6 The courthouse where the trial of Maurizio Gucci's alleged murderers took place isn't far from Milan's medieval House of Justice.

Speaker 6 Judges once stood on this balcony to proclaim their verdicts, their words echoing around the square.

Speaker 6 On November 3rd, 1998, Milan's current judges were about to render a verdict that would echo far beyond the city's walls.

Speaker 6 So, where were you?

Speaker 24 My situation.

Speaker 6 And where was Patrizia Reggiani?

Speaker 24 Patrizia Reggiani was there.

Speaker 6 And then, three and a half years after Maurizio Gucci was assassinated, the gavel came down on Patricia Reggiani.

Speaker 6 She was pronounced guilty of ordering the murder of her ex-husband and sentenced to 29 years.

Speaker 6 Take me back to the moment, the verdict, when you hear guilty. What did you feel?

Speaker 24 For me,

Speaker 24 liberation for me.

Speaker 6 It took a toll.

Speaker 34 Yes. Yes.

Speaker 6 And what about her reaction?

Speaker 30 Nobody reaction.

Speaker 24 Nothing. Nothing emotion.
No emotion. No emotion.

Speaker 7 Wow.

Speaker 6 When he heard about the guilty verdict, Domenico d'Asole, Gucci's former CEO, kept replaying a conversation he had with Patrizia at her apartment just two months before her arrest.

Speaker 20 We talked about Maurizio, talk about Rodolfo, we talked about the family, and she was very clear about what she, in a way, Maurizio's weaknesses and faults. It was very interesting.

Speaker 20 I had no idea at that point that she was the one that murdered Maurizio.

Speaker 6 You said she kept pointing out Maurizio's weaknesses. Why do you think she was doing that?

Speaker 20 Probably to justify in her own mind what she had done.

Speaker 2 Maybe.

Speaker 6 The rest of the crew was found guilty, too. The former mechanic who shot Maurizio was sentenced to life.
The getaway driver got 29 years. The hotel clerk, 26.

Speaker 6 Pina Auriama was sentenced to 25 years behind bars. It was kind of ridiculous the kinds of characters that ended up carrying out what looked like a professional hit job.

Speaker 6 It was almost a comedy of characters.

Speaker 11 Italian comedy.

Speaker 6 Pina and Patrizia served their time in the same prison, but their friendship was over.

Speaker 38 In jail, I studied a lot, I read a lot. I worked there.
Patrizia slept till two or three in the afternoon, then she would wander around a bit, and then in the evening, she would go back to her cell.

Speaker 38 And if we did meet in prison, I ignored her, and she ignored me.

Speaker 12 Sembre.

Speaker 38 Always.

Speaker 38 Maurizio is always on my mind.

Speaker 6 Do you ever think the story is going to go away for you?

Speaker 38 This story will never end.

Speaker 7 Never.

Speaker 38 It will keep coming back.

Speaker 6 Which means that Patrizia Gucci, Maurizio's cousin, will have to keep fighting to reclaim her family's good name.

Speaker 6 She said the Gucci family never gave their approval to the House of Gucci book or the movie.

Speaker 6 She also said said that looking at her family through the lens of Patricia Reggiani's crime only encourages people to associate the Gucci's with dysfunction and murder, rather than with the influential fashions and creative ingenuity for which they should be famous.

Speaker 33 It's my family's story that a lot of things have been told in the wrong way. Always focusing all the attention on all these arguments, on all of these feuds.

Speaker 33 Newspaper articles always saying the feud continues.

Speaker 33 Just stop. It's enough.

Speaker 6 Patrizia says that Reggiani has stolen her name from her and she wants it back.

Speaker 17 My name is Patrizia Gucci.

Speaker 17 Only this name I have.

Speaker 6 You're the only Patrizia Gucci.

Speaker 17 I'm the only Patrizia Gucci, yes.

Speaker 6 But it is very unlikely that Patrizia Reggiani will give up the Gucci name, whether it's hers to keep or not.

Speaker 6 When she was released from prison in 2016, she proceeded to walk down Via Monte Napoleone, Milan's grandest shopping street, with a parrot on her shoulder, apparently cherishing the paparazzi's attention.

Speaker 19 Oh, she would never disappear into oblivion. That is not in her nature.
She feeds off attention. She's a narcissist.
She wants to be the center of her own story.

Speaker 18 I think she was very authentic in her own way. I don't know if I would call her, was she the femme fatale?

Speaker 18 Maybe, but I don't think she started out, you know, with the vision of where she was going to to end up. She gave an interview not too long ago.

Speaker 18 The interviewer asked her, you know, if you could say anything to Maurizio today, what would you say? And she said, forgive me.

Speaker 6 Sherry Loud isn't thinking about forgiveness. She worries more about the man Patrizia had killed being forgotten.

Speaker 6 To her, Maurizio Gucci's sensational murder has come to overshadow the man she knew and loved, a visionary whose loss deprived the world of inspiration and beauty.

Speaker 9 He was a dreamer, and I felt blessed to know a soul like his.

Speaker 9 He was a very special person, regardless of the name, the money, the fame, the drama. He was just pure love.

Speaker 9 It was a shame. It was a sad story.

Speaker 39 That's all for this edition of Dateline. We'll see you again next Friday at 9, 8 Central.
And of course, I'll see you each weeknight for NBC Nightly News.

Speaker 1 I'm Lester Holt for all of us at NBC News.

Speaker 39 Good night.

Speaker 22 Hey, everybody.

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Speaker 2 If you haven't heard, I have a podcast that's called Literally with Rob Lowe.

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