I'm Kate Snow and this is "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
- It's the star-studded film that had everyone talking,
but the real story of the murder of Maurizio Gucci
has more drama than any Hollywood script.
- Maurizio Gucci had been shot in broad daylight.
I was absolutely astonished.
- He was somebody special.
It was so tragic.
How does that happen?
- There's a lot of possible suspects here
when you look at the Gucci family.
- There is so much hatred, resentment, and anger.
It was like warfare.
- She was trying to strong-arm him.
- She wanted the power.
She could never forgive what he did to her.
- They called her the Black Witch.
- Yeah, even called her a sorceress.
- He thought they were doing voodoo
and all kinds of crazy things,
and he was afraid.
The name, the money, the fame, the drama.
- There is no life that doesn't have a price.
**
- Hello and welcome to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
They were the shots heard round the fashion world:
Former Gucci CEO Maurizio Gucci gunned down
in what looked like a professional hit.
Who wanted him dead?
A notorious family feud an a bitter divorce
helped authorities build their suspect list,
but it would take a stranger in the shadows
to expose the rage behind this secret plot.
Here's Natalie Morales with...
- Via Monte Napoleone in the heart of Milan, Italy,
is one of the most prestigious shopping streets in the world.
To step through the heavy glass doors
means crossing the border from the ordinary and mundane
into luxury, privilege, and glamour.
- It really is the world that so many people aspire to live in.
- But once upon a time,
just a few blocks from this fairytale world
of gold-fringed dressed and thousand-dollar handbags,
haute couture gave rise to hatred.
Beauty became betrayal.
- This story makes a Greek tragedy
look like a children's story.
- It happened one morning in March 1995
when a man rich beyond measure, a man in love,
strolled to his office
and greeted his doorman with a smile.
Then his worst fears were realized
as he was assassinated in a hail of bullets.
- He knew that they were plotting against him
to put him out.
- The murder that occurred
on the carpeted steps of this luxury building
was so brazen, so infamous,
another red-carpeted world took notice.
- This is more than "Dynasty."
This is more than "Dallas".
I'm just so surprised
that it's taken more than two decades
for this to arrive on a movie screen.
- Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, and Al Pacino
star in the movie "House of Gucci,"
a murderous saga that takes place
behind the catwalks and luxury stores
of perhaps the most famous fashion brand of them all,
a saga that, at its heart,
has a cunning and vindictive villain
who some say had no heart at all.
What was noteworthy about the killing
was not how it happened but who it happened to.
The victim was 46-year-old Maurizio Gucci,
the former CEO of the sprawling Gucci empire,
a celebrity and third generation scion
of one of fashion's most notable families.
- When the news came out
that Maurizio Gucci had been shot in broad daylight
in downtown Milan, it was absolutely shocking.
- Sara Gay Forden is an editor at Bloomberg
and the author of "House of Gucci,"
the book the movie is based on.
- This was not the kind of thing
that happened ever in Milan.
I mean, it just didn't happen.
It was a very prosperous business and financial center,
and the thing that made it even more sinister
was that it wasn't clear who could have done such a thing,
because Maurizio was such a charming, charismatic,
you know, nice man.
I mean, there was no sense that he had enemies.
- Yeah, so, Maurizio Gucci, that morning on March 27,
as he did every morning, he was just walking to his office.
This is Via Palestro.
- Claudio Lavanga is an NBC News correspondent
based in Italy.
He was born and raised in Milan
and lived in the city when Gucci was murdered.
He says that Maurizio began that fateful day
just like any other workday,
with a polite hello to his doorman.
- They said, "Buongiorno. Buongiorno."
They greeted each other,
and just as Maurizio was walking up the stairs,
a man came in and shot him in cold blood twice in the back.
Maurizio fell on the stairs.
He turned, shot him again,
and then he finished him off with a shot in the head.
- And what about the doorman? Was - was he there?
- Onorato was hiding behind the door.
He saw everything, but he was trying to hide,
and as the killer was coming out,
he saw him at the last minute and he shot him, too.
He didn't want to leave any witnesses.
- It sounds like a professional hit job then.
- More like an execution.
- The murder was shocking, because even to those
unfamiliar with the world of high fashion,
Gucci was a household name.
It was the brand that made the phrase "Made in Italy"
famous around the world,
its fancy handbags and loafers a sign of style and prestige.
- News spread like wildfire.
Everybody around here, within minutes,
knew that Maurizio Gucci had been shot,
so this place became packed
with just people who came here to see what was happening.
- This was a crime scene. - Absolutely.
There were still the bullet markers on the floor,
bullet markers on the staircase.
Here you have cameramen. There you had the photographer.
And then the whole world could see, eventually,
the body of Maurizio Gucci coming out,
being paraded, essentially,
covered in a white sheet on a gurney.
- The investigation into Maurizio Gucci's murder
would thrust his family
and their world of luxury and glamour
into the spotlight for all the wrong reasons,
exposing how Gucci's rise to fashion glory
took a steep and sudden fall into jealousy,
double-crossing, and, ultimately, violence.
- Maurizio was somebody special,
someone I never thought I would have the honor to have known.
- A bold killer in broad daylight.
Who could it be?
- It was very difficult to understand.
It was very difficult to justify.
- So, you had no initial suspicions
as to who was behind it? - No.
It was so far-fetched that you don't even ask yourself,
you know, who can do it?
Maurizio Gucci, a prominent, larger-than-life member
of the world's most famous fashion family,
had been assassinated in broad daylight in Milan.
His family and friends
were processing their disbelief and grief.
- I'm going to cry.
He was somebody special,
someone I never thought I would
have the honor to have known.
- Sheree Loud met Maurizio in 1984 at a sailing regatta.
- He was wearing white jeans and a blue chamois shirt.
I'll never forget it as long as I live.
And those famous glasses, the aviator glasses.
I remember one day asking
one of my American friends "Who is this guy?"
And they said, "Sher, that's Maurizio Gucci."
- Sheree 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.
- 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.
- I-I always remember him with a big smile.
He was always positive. Okay?
- Andrea Moranti, who had once been Mauricio's
business partner and advisor, couldn't believe the news.
- It was very difficult to understand.
It was very difficult to justify.
- So, you had no initial suspicions
as to who was behind it? - 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?
- The man tasked with figuring that out
was Carlo Nocerino, an experienced prosecutor
who nonetheless had never investigated
a high-profile murder.
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.
The gunman had only shot him in the arm,
leaving a potential witness alive.
- 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 and he tried to protect himself.
So, the porter couldn't focus on the killer's appearance.
- But he did have information about the gun.
- The doorman noticed the length of the gun was unusual.
The doorman heard the shots but they were dull shots
like he was using a silencer.
The shots were muted.
- But despite this telltale detail, the prosecutor
decided this was not a professional hit.
- No como Mafia. - No, exactly.
A professional killer would have killed the doorman
because of their proximity to each other.
The killer would have shot him in the middle of his head.
He wouldn't have missed him.
- 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.
- The first thing we thought was to follow
two separate leads, family and business.
- But the prosecutor realized very quickly
that when your name was Gucci,
family and business were often the same thing.
- Patrizia Gucci is Maurizio's niece
and the author of a memoir about her famous family.
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 worlds' hottest accessories.
- 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.
Patrizia still remembers an envelope
her grandfather sent back home from New York.
- 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,
a former silent film star who had inherited
half of the family business.
- 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.
- 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 Patrizia Reggiani.
- She loved good style.
She was ambitious
and she had been pushed by her mother
to not only marry well, but to marry a big name.
- Patrizia's stepfather owned a successful trucking business,
so Patrizia had money, but she lacked
the social status of the Milano bene,
the high society Milan elite to which the Gucci's belonged.
Nonetheless, Maurizio fell head over heels for Patrizia
and proposed to her on their second date.
- 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. - Dan Wakeford
was "People Magazine" editor in chief.
- She was very fun, very funny, and very clever.
She knew what she wanted and she went out to get it.
So, he wanted to get to that next echelon of society.
And she met Maurizio and she found her way.
- She found her way, but, I mean, she--
she found love, too. Right?
I mean, theirs was a true love story.
- It felt like a love story and the love story
turned very "Romeo and Juliet" when Rodolfo
actually said he didn't approve of Patrizia.
- Maurizio's father became even more dramatic
when his son told him he had proposed to Patrizia.
- He was very concerned about Patrizia,
the way she would spend money and the way her view--
you know, the way she wanted to live her life.
- Domenico De Sole, who was Gucci's CEO
in the late 1990s, started out in the company
as Rodolfo's lawyer and confidante.
- Did he view her as a gold digger?
- Yeah, you can-you can describe that way, yes.
- And had even gone all the way to the Cardinal of Milan
to ask him to prevent the marriage from happening.
And the Cardinal told him "No, you know,
"if they're in love, there's nothing we can do
"to stop them from-from wedding."
- Desperate, Rodolfo gave his son an ultimatum.
It's either her or me.
The choice Maurizio made would be life-changing,
but in ways he could not foresee.
- The Gucci family faces off over a woman determined
to claim their name. - Coming up...
- She reminded me of Joan Collins.
She was dripping in jewels and makeup and heels.
- She was a person that was very used to getting her way.
- Love or family? Which would Maurizio choose?
- There was a lot of anger and frustration and jealousy.
This was not a friendly family environment.
It was a battle for the love of Maurizio Gucci.
In one corner, Patrizia Reggiani,
the up-and-coming socialite who had captured his heart.
In the other, Maurizio's domineering father,
who believed Patrizia was only in it
for the money and the name.
- Not only did Rodolfo not approve,
didn't he give Maurizio an ultimatum?
- Oh, yeah. He said it's either me or her.
And, um, love did prevail for Maurizio.
He chose to marry Patrizia.
- 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.
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.
- What you're wearing is Gucci 100%.
- So, Aldo was really the marketing
and expansion genius of-of the family.
He opened the first store in Rome,
the first store in New York,
the first store on Rodeo Drive.
He had a vision for how Gucci could be an empire.
- Aldo used to say, you know, "My family is like a train.
"I am the engine and they are the caboose."
- In 1975, Maurizio and Patrizia moved to Manhattan
where he worked hard to learn the business from Uncle Aldo
while she gave birth to two daughters.
Patrizia also began to make an impression on high society.
- She was always perfect. You know, makeup was perfect
and she had beautiful jewelry. She's always impeccable.
I could tell she was a person
who was very used to getting her way.
Certainly, she did get her way with Maurizio.
Maurizio is really bending over backward
to accommodate whatever she wanted.
- Whatever she wanted, she got? - Yes.
- 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.
As investigators explored Maurizio's rise
to the top of Gucci, they learned Maurizio
and Patrizia were both reveling in his success
and the riches it brought. - They had this phenomenal
penthouse apartment in the Olympic Towers.
They were kind of the Gucci couple around town.
Everybody knew who they were.
- New York's new power couple strutted their stuff
at famous celebrity haunts like Studio 54.
- At this point, Patrizia is really enjoying life.
She loves everything that's going on in New York.
Celebrities, fun, money, parties.
New York is all about that.
- There was a famous interview that Patrizia did
and she talked about her lifestyle.
- She just said "I would rather weep in a Rolls Royce
"than be happy on a bicycle," which is just crazy!
It just sums her up
that she is fascinated by luxury things.
- Maurizio was, too.
He bought a ship called The Creole,
then the largest wooden sailing boat in the world.
Sheree Loud was an avid sailor
who helped him renovate it stern to bow.
- We bought sharkskin from Japan for the couches.
We traveled for art in-in mostly Denmark.
He loved the Turkish or the Moroccan tiling.
We went to Murano to-to buy all the glassware
and design all the dishes.
- The renovation took five years and the cost--
$25 million. - 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.
And I don't know if he had any boundaries.
It-it didn't occur to him.
- Maurizio started sponsoring sailing teams
and races all over the world.
He brought Patrizia, who didn't quite fit in.
- Maurizio would arrive by helicopter
and often she would accompany him.
And she reminded me of Joan Collins.
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.
And she would just sort of stand there
and I don't even know what she was thinking,
but she would not participate in it at all.
She seemed above it all and couldn't be bothered by it.
- Patrizia not only strutted her stuff
in high society, she did it at Gucci, too.
- 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-her marriage.
She wanted more money.
More and more and more and more.
- So, Maurizio had described his father
as being domineering, but then he marries
Patrizia, who turns out-- she seems
to be domineering, as well. - That's for sure.
I think she was more domineering than Rodolfo.
- When Rodolfo died in 1983 and Maurizio inherited
half the company, Patrizia's wish came true.
Her husband was finally on top.
- I mean, obviously, Maurizio is upset
that his father has died, but he's left him
in such a strong position.
- 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.
- There was a lot of anger and frustration and jealousy.
This was not a friendly family environment at all.
- Investigators wondered, did the ensuing fight
for the heart and soul of Gucci
lead to murder?
- Coming up... - He could transform
a caress into a scratch.
- Inside the empire, in-fighting and intrigue.
- The animosity was so severe that the Italian press
would say, instead of G is for Gucci,
G is for Guerra, war.
- I witnessed that many, many occasions.
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Kate Snow.
Authorities investigating the murder of Maurizio Gucci
focused on family.
They quickly learned that in the Gucci empire,
appearances often didn't match reality.
When the young executive's father died,
Maurizio's power seemed cemented,
but a closer look would reveal
that business in this family was a blood sport,
and the backstabbing had just begun.
Here again is Natalie Morales
with "Murder in the House of Gucci."
- 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?
- 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.
He had built it with his own hands
and the brio of his personality.
- And Andrea Morante, one of Maurizio's financial advisors,
said making a rival of Aldo was a dangerous game.
- He could, uh, transform a caress
into a scratch.
- In fact, Aldo's entire family
had a reputation for ferocious infighting.
- I read the animosity was so severe within the family
that the Italian press would say, instead of, you know,
G is for Gucci, it was G is for guerra, war.
- Yeah, correct.
There was a lot of animosity in the family,
and-and it-- toward the end, became almost hatred.
I witnessed that many, many, many, many occasions.
- On one occasion, De Sole was at a board meeting
when Aldo objected to his son, Paolo, recording the proceedings
and watched them come to blows.
- 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 fistfight with Paolo.
Maurizio tries to-to separate
the two, okay?
And needless to say, he got punched in the face--
[laughs]
punched in the face by one of the two contestants.
- 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.
- These lawsuits were splashed all over the front pages of--
of the papers,
and so as soon as these cases went into the courts,
they became public,
and so the-the personal family business was in,
you know, plain sight for everyone to view.
- 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.
- When he got to San Moritz, 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. You have to leave right now."
And he left out the back door and got on a motorcycle,
and he took off.
- From his swanky Swiss lair, Maurizio plotted his revenge,
as only a Gucci could.
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.
Once he did, there was nothing
the remaining family members could do
to stop Maurizio from becoming Gucci's top dog.
- I go to all the other cousins one by one,
individually, and I tell them,
you know, the game is over here.
- 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?
- Yeah. There was-- there was a sense of betrayal.
Aldo said-- One thing that I'll never forget is that, uh,
that, you know, I'm not selling you my shares,
but I'm-I'm selling you my soul.
- Maurizio was willing to cut out his family,
so he chose company over family. At what cost?
- I think that his mission
was to try and save
the company.
In order to save the company,
you have to make certain sacrifices.
So tough decisions require
also some tough consequences,
but he was aware of those consequences,
and he was not afraid
of accepting those consequences.
- Aldo never got over his loss of Gucci.
He died a bitter man in 1990.
- Aldo's funeral was very, very painful.
And Maurizio comes down from Milan
but, uh, you know, the-the animosity is so great
that they just give him the cold shoulder.
The resentment was through the roof.
- Now, five years later, Prosecutor Nocerino wondered,
were the seeds of murder
planted in that vicious family feud?
- Talking to the family members,
it was clear there was a lot of feeling of resentment
and betrayal, right?
- Well, I'm not sure about betrayal,
but there surely was resentment.
- While investigators wondered about that,
they were also pursuing a new lead.
Nocerino found that almost as soon as Maurizio
took control of Gucci, his life of outrageous luxury
and conspicuous consumption caught up with him.
- You know, some people,
they could be very wealthy asset-wise,
because, obviously, he owns a share of the company.
But this initial-- He didn't have the cash to--
to keep this lifestyle.
- 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,
and then, a miracle.
Maurizio suddenly came up with the money.
How did he do it?
By reaching out to one of Italy's most wanted men,
an alleged terrorist and millionaire
named Delfo Zorzi
who had been accused of helping to plant a bomb
that killed 16 people in 1969.
He fled to Japan before police could arrest him.
- This whole thing was very strange.
It was strange that Maurizio asked for money.
- Maurizio got a personal loan from Zorzi
by promising him the rights to sell Gucci products
throughout the Far East.
- So how much money did he borrow from Delfo Zorzi?
- $40 million.
- That's 40 million reasons to kill someone, perhaps.
- That's why we wanted to understand why
and what their agreements were, and, above all,
if Maurizio Gucci gave Zorzi the money back.
- Uncle Aldo said he sold his soul
when he let go of Gucci.
Investigators wondered,
had Maurizio sold his to keep it?
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 Maurizio had wronged
who had been threatening to do something about it, loudly.
- She was unkind, always put him down.
- He started to feel sort of preyed upon.
- A marriage on the rocks. - He packed a bag.
He said he was going to Florence for business meetings.
- And a new romance on the side.
- And I had to walk down, I'll never forget it,
this huge flight of stairs.
And I got to the bottom, and he said to me,
"I am your knight in shining armor."
**
Maurizio's finances were a mess,
and from the beginning, investigators had wondered
if his love life was too.
In fact, one of the first people Prosecutor Nocerino
interrogated after the murder
was Patrizia Reggiani.
- When I questioned her for the first time,
she was calm and confident.
She was tense, because she understood
that the questioning was important,
but she wasn't crying or trembling or worried.
- And in terms of the evidence, I mean,
I imagine the first thing you ask is the alibi.
- Yes, I did ask about her alibi.
She had one.
We could not place her in Via Palestro that day.
- But now that he knew more about Maurizio,
Nocerino wanted to learn about Patrizia, too.
So, he went back in time again
to when she watched her husband
lead the company for the first time.
- She's finally seeing a return on her investment.
- Sofia Persio was an assistant editor at "Forbes"
who reported on Maurizio's murder.
- She feels that she has spent time and care
and attention into this relationship and, uh, that she--
this glimpse of a life that she first saw
in that park in Milan in the early 1970s,
a decade later, there they are.
They are the Gucci couple, Mr. and Mrs. Gucci.
- In public, they were fashion's new power couple,
but below the surface,
Maurizio's and Patrizia's 10-year marriage
had begun to crack.
- After some time,
her pushing started to grate on him,
and he started to feel restless,
and he started to feel, um, sort of preyed upon.
You could definitely see that he had the beginnings
of really wanting to kind of call the shots himself.
- But there was also something else,
or rather someone else.
- He said, "Do I ever get to talk to you alone?"
And I said, "Me? You're married."
- Sheree Loud was 25,
ten years younger than Maurizio,
when he made his move at a dinner
after one of the sailing races they'd watched together.
- He said he never met anybody like me--
real, funny, not impressed...
not-not bejeweled or bedazzled,
and-and very natural and an American.
- Sheree 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.
- I had to walk down-- I'll never forget it--
this huge flight of stairs, and he was at the bottom,
and I'm not really a nervous person, but I was--
I had a lot of butterflies, and I got to the bottom,
and he said to me,
"I am your knight in shining armor.
"I just forgot the horse."
- It was the beginning of a passionate affair
that would change Sheree's life and Maurizio's.
By then, he had been married to Patrizia for 12 years
and was desperately looking for a way out.
- 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'd just had enough.
- Maurizio had always shied away from confronting Patrizia,
so one day in May 1985,
he packed his suitcase and left the apartment
he shared with Patrizia and his two daughters.
- When Maurizio left--
and I think this may speak a little bit
to his insecurity and lack of confidence.
You know, he didn't say, "Patrizia,
we need to talk. Things aren't working."
He didn't say anything.
He-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.
- Not coming back, as in ever.
Sheree found out about it the next time they met.
- He pulled up in a Ferrari
to pick me up from the airport,
and he said, "I moved out. I'm done."
I didn't really know what the future
would be for both of us,
but I was happy that he felt free.
- Maurizio may have felt liberated,
but Patrizia had been blindsided.
- It must have been incomprehensible to her
because, um, you know, they had built so much of--
of what they had together, in her mind,
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.
- Maurizio leaving made something else painfully clear.
Patrizia was never really a Gucci.
- She would recall later on that he told her,
"You fancied yourself president of Gucci,
"but here, there's only one president."
- Patrizia also remembered what Maurizio's father,
of all people, told her about her husband.
- Rodolfo warned Patrizia that Maurizio would change
when he, you know, got the money and the family wealth.
He said, "Be careful, because when Maurizio gets
"everything that I will bequeath to him,
"he will change,"
and that's exactly what happened.
- But Patrizia wasn't the kind of woman
who would let things like that just happen.
- Her anger starts to grow as she realizes
that she's really suffering this-this deep loss.
- A woman scorned.
Could she be planning to settle the score?
- For her, it was very personal.
She said that she could never forgive what he did to her.
- And a dynasty unraveling.
- Maurizio had a strong vision,
but the company was broke.
It was-- it was a disaster.
**
Freed from his father, freed from his wife,
Maurizio was finally his own man.
- 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.
- The man with whom Sheree Loud had fallen in love
didn't seem to be constrained by anything anymore,
like the time he surprised her in New York
with a very expensive delicacy
he sneaked past airport customs.
- He would smuggle in truffle.
We loved truffle.
He put it in a jar with rice and smuggled big, big--
And we'd shave it on everything, eggs, pasta,
and he was just so excited to do something like that.
- But while Maurizio was feasting
on the finer things in life,
Patrizia was being devoured by rage.
- We'd go to San Moritz, 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,
just leave because he didn't want to have the confrontation.
She was very confrontational.
- Sheree said Patrizia 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,
so after five years, Sheree called it quits.
- 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.
- 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.
That relationship was an even greater affront to Patrizia,
who was still married to Maurizio,
even though they had been separated for five years.
- Patrizia hated Paola,
and really saw Paola as the gold digger,
and Paola trying to get her hooks into Maurizio.
- NBC new correspondent Claudio Lavanga
says that Patrizia's hate grew
when she found out that Maurizio and Paola
had moved in together.
- That's where Maurizio and Paola lived, right?
- That's right. This is Corso Venezia,
which is one of the most exclusive areas of Milan.
The fashion district is literally feet away.
His office is around the corner,
and they lived just up there on the last floor,
a beautiful, enormous apartment they were remaking--
redoing, and probably planning a future together.
- Yeah, the story was that they actually
were thinking to get married.
- Well, and that may have been a rumor
that Patrizia may have heard, as well.
- Her anger starts to grow
as she realizes that she's really suffering this--
this deep loss,
and it's really a loss of her own identity, too,
because she had come to identify herself with Gucci
and as La Senora Gucci.
- In 1991, a year after he met Paola,
Maurizio officially filed for divorce.
Even worse, the next year,
Patrizia was diagnosed with a brain tumor
and rushed into surgery.
In the recovery room, she opened her eyes,
hoping that Maurizio would be there.
He was not.
- He sends flowers instead
with a note that just reads "Maurizio Gucci,"
which is definitely
a cold move in her eyes.
The fact that he doesn't show up
when she is in hospital needing him the most
does-does add up to her frustration,
and the way that she starts
to think of him
really as less of a person,
someone who has betrayed her
and let her down multiple times,
someone who she loved very much
and had done this to her, so the resentment
grows particularly strong after that.
- The tumor turned out to be benign,
but by now Patrizia's anger had become malignant,
and just when it seemed
that her rage could not rise any higher,
it did, when, in September 1993,
Maurizio lost Gucci.
- 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.
- 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.
Gucci plunged into the red.
- I think we already saw the light at 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Did that despair and disappointment
add up to a motive for murder?
To make that case, Prosecutor Nocerino
would need to find clearer evidence,
but that would have to wait.
The alleged terrorist who had loaned Maurizio
$40 million was ready to talk.
An accused terrorist, a betrayed family,
a bitter ex-wife.
Were any involved in this murder?
Investigators uncover a secret tape.
- It was pure hatred.
- Hatred that goes public.
- She spoke straight out to the press,
saying he was a bad husband, he was a bad businessman,
he was weak.
Welcome back to "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered."
I'm Kate Snow.
Maurizio Gucci was executed in broad daylight,
and the list of potential suspects was long.
He'd run the family business into the red,
leaving a trail of battered egos in his wake,
but investigators would learn one person's anger
burned hotter than the rest,
someone whose whispers weren't so quiet
about wanting Maurizio dead.
Back to Natalie Morales
with "Murder in the House of Gucci."
- It had been about a year
since the murder of Mauricio Gucci,
and still no arrest.
Prosecutor Nocerino and his team took stock.
Who could have killed him?
One intriguing person of interest was Delfo Zorzi,
the alleged terrorist who had loaned Maurizio
$40 million to pay his debts.
Zorzi had been living beyond the prosecutor's reach in Japan,
but after receiving assurances
he would not be extradited to Italy,
Zorzi agreed to meet with Nocerino in Paris.
- He clearly explained to us
that Gucci gave him the money back.
- And you believed him? Did he give you proof?
- Yes, he did.
Zorzi gave us proof of this payment.
- So when you left that meeting in Paris,
you had eliminated Zorzi as a suspect?
- Yes, I did. That lead was over.
- Years later, Zorzi would be cleared
of the terrorism charge, too,
and with him out of the picture,
Nocerino turned his attention to Aldo's family.
Investigators interviewed the entire family,
including his granddaughter, Patrizia Gucci.
- We were all called, and I told them what I knew.
- Did they ever seem to suspect
that anyone from the family could have done this?
- 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.
- Right.
- Indeed, Nocerino found that
Aldo's sons simply took the cash and ran,
leaving their family business, including Maurizio, behind.
- Right away, it was clear
that all the family fights were old,
and all of them had been settled with contractual agreements.
There weren't any more remaining fights.
In this murder, the Gucci family is not involved.
There wasn't any evidence.
- And that left Patricia Reggiani, Mauricio's ex-wife,
who still insisted on calling herself "Mrs. Gucci."
Even though her contentious divorce with Mauricio
had been in all the Italian tabloids,
here she was at his funeral,
appearing as the grieving widow.
- 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.
- She makes this choice of wearing a black veil,
which is so dramatic,
and so she almost steps into the role of the--
of a black widow.
- 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.
- A friend called and-and asked if she'd heard the news,
and she said, "Maurizio may have died,"
"but I have just begun to live."
- And the more investigators looked,
the more bitter Patricia looked to them,
especially after they uncovered a recording
of a dramatic rant she sent to Maurizio.
- [speaking Italian]
- 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.
"You are a deformed outgrowth,
"a painful appendix that we all want to forget."
- And, you know, it was,
"Maurizio, the inferno for you is-is yet to come."
It was--
it was pure hatred.
- Nocerino had no evidence tying Patrizia 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.
Perhaps, Nocerino theorized,
it was about money after all.
- After he lost control of the company in 1993,
he had a finite, you know, amount of money.
It was a lot. It was $135 million,
but he was spending it like water.
- Maurizio and his live-in girlfriend, Paola Franchi,
were completely renovating their Corso Venezia apartment
and they had expensive tastes.
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.
- And Patrizia grew very concerned
that-that if he kept on at that rate
that pretty soon, there would be nothing left.
- And so, Patrizia,
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.
- She was furious. She didn't hide that fury.
She spoke straight out to the press,
saying he was a bad husband,
he was a bad businessman, he was weak.
- She said he's like a--
he's like a seat cushion that keeps the imprint
of the last person that has sat on it.
- Patrizia's public outbursts and threats scared Paola.
She said as much to investigators.
- Paola was very transparent
that she thinks that Patrizia is a lead suspect here.
Her life had been made hell
by Patrizia making these threats
and being so angry.
- Paola told police that when Maurizio died,
his daughters inherited his apartment,
and Patrizia didn't waste any time
taking possession of it.
- Can you believe that not even 24 hours after the murder,
Patrizia shows up here with an eviction order for Paola
and tells Paola Franchi "get out"?
- Wow, 24-hours later! - Oh, it gets worse than that.
I mean, that letter was drafted by a lawyer
hours after the murder, so the body was barely cold.
- And Paola then was tossed to the street?
- Well, not only she.
She basically tossed out everything
that resembled Maurizio and Paola's lives together.
- That's pretty cold. - It is cold.
- Paola's eviction was a stunning discovery for Nocerino.
It was almost as if Patrizia knew
she would take over the apartment
before her ex-husband was killed.
But that was nothing
compared to the bombshell Patrizia's lawyer dropped.
He told investigators
Patrizia may have been looking for a hitman.
- Patrizia Reggiani's lawyer told us
that Reggiani asked him several times what would happen to her
if she paid someone to kill her husband.
- Her own lawyer is raising the red flag
and saying it might be Patrizia Reggiani?
- Yes, we couldn't officially consider her guilty
just on the basis of his testimony.
We needed something more.
- It turns out the lawyer was hardly the only one
Patrizia was talking to about a hitman.
- We discovered there were other people
who Reggiani asked to kill Maurizio Gucci,
for example, housekeepers that she had in the past.
They said she asked them to find someone.
- But even though she's a suspect,
you have no proof, right?
- No, we don't.
We do not have the smoking gun,
but all of these people she asked weren't criminals.
It wasn't concrete evidence.
- But Patrizia seemed wildly indiscreet,
and Nocerino thought it was just a matter of time
before she said something incriminating.
The prosecutor just needed to get it on tape.
- We thought about putting a webcam in her house
or bugging her house
to see what kind of people she was hanging out with,
but it was very difficult because her apartment was huge.
She could have been talking in any room.
- But her phone calls were a different story,
so investigators set up a wiretap,
and over one of those calls,
Nocerino heard a voice that caught his attention.
It belonged to a woman named Pina Auriemma.
- Pina Auriemma was an ambiguous person,
a woman from Naples who was part of Reggiani's circle.
- What was a mysterious woman from Naples
doing with a high society woman from Milan?
The answer, he suspected,
would blow his investigation wide open.
- Who was this mysterious woman named Pina?
She'd come to be known as the Black Witch.
- He thought they were doing voodoo and spellcasting
and all kinds of crazy things,
and I said, "You've gotta be kidding me.
"Does this stuff really happen?"
**
A year and a half into his investigation,
Prosecutor Nocerino had eliminated
every other person of interest
except for Patrizia Reggiani,
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 Auriemma.
- Pina Auriemma had a role in Reggiani's life.
This bond was unusual, and we had to look at it deeper.
- Pina was a middleclass 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.
They met on an island vacation and hit it off
when they discovered they actually had a lot in common
below the surface.
- 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.
- Patrizia realized Pina had much to teach her
about making her way in the world as a woman.
- Reggiani wanted to be mentored by Pina.
Maybe she saw her like a wise woman,
a woman who was an expert in life.
- Pina was there when Patrizia's second daughter was born,
and Pina comforted Patrizia when Maurizio abandoned her.
Patrizia said in the moments of her deepest depression,
Pina was there, that she saved her life.
- It does say-- show you how close these two women were.
- But what did Pina get out of this relationship?
- I remember a photo of them at St. Maritz in the sleigh,
you know, piled high with furs and going up the mountain,
probably to have a-- a lunch or something,
so she had access to this kind of wealth and glamour
by virtue of her-her friendship with Patrizia.
- To investigators, the mere fact that Pina was from Naples
was in itself suspicious.
- There is a certain connotation and stereotype
that Italians of the North have
towards Italians of the South,
and particularly with people from the Naples area,
because of Naples' association with organized crime.
- But Nocerino found no criminal record or evidence
Pina Auriemma was anything but a solid citizen.
She had, coincidentally,
once even owned a Gucci store in Naples.
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.
Andrea Morante heard Pina's name
when Maurizio wouldn't allow him to go on a business trip
because of a premonition she had.
- I had to fly to Hong Kong and he came to me and he said,
"I'm sorry. You cannot go.
"You cannot go. You cannot go. You can't fly to Hong Kong."
And I said, "But why? Why on Earth?"
And he said, "Pina-Pina said that, you know,
"maybe there is a problem on the plane."
- Maurizio clearly believed she had powers,
perhaps dark powers.
He told his girlfriend, Sheree, that Pina was the reason
it had taken him years to leave Patrizia,
even though he'd fallen out of love with her.
- He didn't want to go,
because he didn't want to be chased down by Pina.
- Sheree 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,
like when one of "Creole's" masts suddenly fell
and broke through the ship's floor.
- So he believed that
that was part of Patrizia and Pina,
and we had the boat exorcised,
and he thought they were doing voodoo and-and...
spellcasting, and all kinds of crazy things,
and I thought it was a dramatic Italian.
I said, "You've gotta be kidding me.
"Does this stuff really happen?"
- Whether it did or not,
Maurizio clearly believed that Patrizia had it in for him
and claims she was even using tricks
she might have learned from Pina
to create havoc in his life.
- Maurizio told me a story that apparently she had a doll,
and she would stick pins,
and the doll was supposed to represent Maurizio.
- She was cursing him by poking it with pins.
- Yes, exactly. Exactly.
- So if Patrizia was the Black Widow,
could it be that Pina was what the Italians would call
La Magia Negra, the Black Witch?
Nocerino wasn't interested in superstitions.
He just wanted to know more about her.
- Did you think Pina Auriemma was the key
to getting evidence that, perhaps,
could tie Patrizia Reggiani to Maurizio's murder?
- Yes, I did.
There's no doubt about that,
because Reggiani needed to be in contact
with people who were far from her world.
Auriemma was the perfect person from this point of view.
- But investigators still needed a break.
Patrizia, Pina, or someone close to them
would have to make a mistake, spill a secret, perhaps.
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.
- Somebody just saying,
"I know who killed Maurizio Gucci."
- The investigation takes a dramatic turn
as a cast of unlikely murder suspects comes into focus.
- A little bit like a spy movie.
- Well, as a matter of fact, he became a bit of a spy.
- A secret informant joins the case.
- 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.
- And he hears a stunning confession.
- The hotel clerk said,
"I was involved in the murder of Maurizio Gucci."
**
Piazza Aspromonte, 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.
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.
- It's a seedy part of Milan. - Um-hmm.
- It's dotted with one-star hotels,
and it's in one of these hotels,
this one right behind us,
that a big break in the investigation took place.
- So what finally was it?
- Well, there was a guest, uh,
who befriended the hotel clerk,
and this guest claimed to be a bigshot drug dealer
from South America. - Hmm.
- And the hotel clerk said, "Oh, you think you're a bigshot?
"Well, I was involved in the murder of Maurizio Gucci."
- 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,
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.
- A little bit like a spy movie.
- Well, as a matter of fact, he became a bit of a spy,
because he agreed to wear a wire
so the police could find the evidence
that the hotel clerk was involved in the Gucci murder.
- 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.
Police started surveilling the gang 24/7.
As investigators listened over the next few days,
the informants' recordings revealed
details of the plot to kill Maurizio.
The pizzeria owner had done much of the planning.
First, he collected information
about Maurizio's daily comings and goings.
Then he secured the getaway car
and planned the escape route.
On the day of the murder,
the former mechanic joined him.
They drove to Via Palestro and waited in the car
until they saw Maurizio walking toward his office building.
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.
When Maurizio passed him, he sneaked up from behind
and pumped him full of bullets.
- 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.
- And who put them all up to it?
Nocerino heard it loud and clear
through the informant's mic,
the name he'd been waiting to hear:
Patrizia Reggiani.
- When you hear that moment in the wiretapped conversations,
was it like, we've got it!
- More or less, but without cheering.
- The hotel clerk told the informant
Reggiani paid about $90,000 in advance,
and $276,000 after the murder,
but when this unlikely gang read in the papers
about all the millions Patrizia and her daughters inherited,
they got greedy and demanded more.
- 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 Patrizia
and blackmail her.
- So police now know who the whole gang is,
and they have them all under surveillance.
They even managed to wiretap the hotel clerk's car.
- They did, and guess who they caught in that car
speaking to the hotel clerk about the murder
and about asking Patrizia for more money?
None other than Pina Auriemma,
Patrizia's confidant.
- That's right. Patrizia's old friend
was somehow in cahoots with the hit squad
and was now trying to extort her.
So they're all having these conversations openly
about trying to blackmail Patrizia for more money.
- Yes, but they didn't speak only about this request.
They also spoke about what they did.
- And that was enough evidence then.
You had plenty of evidence just in those wiretaps.
- Yes, we did.
We had an abundance of evidence.
- On January 31, 1997,
almost two years after Maurizio's death,
police moved in to arrest the entire motley crew...
and what happened when
they showed up on Patrizia's doorstep was surreal.
- She goes upstairs.
She comes back, and she's wearing full makeup,
gold jewelry, and a floor-length fur coat.
- She was just going to put up a face,
which was the rich, untouchable woman.
That was probably the first place
that she went to in her mind, saying,
"This can't be happening to me.
"Do you know who I am?"
- As Patrizia 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.
- It was, "Here I am.
"I'm Senora Gucci and-and, you know,
"if you're going to take me down,
"I'm going to go down fighting and with my head held high."
- Prosecutor Nocerino was determined
that this untouchable woman
feel the full extent of the law,
but he also knew the case was far from over.
The trial would be a media circus,
and this Black Widow's fate
could come down to the testimony of the Black Witch.
Pina Auriemma was about to take the stand.
- This was the trial of the century in Milan.
The prosecutor lays out his case, the tape recordings,
a revealing diary, and a surprising star witness
ready to turn the tables.
**
Welcome back.
Patrizia Gucci was headed to trial
for the murder of her ex-husband, Maurizio.
With the help of a secret informant,
investigators identified the gang Patrizia allegedly
hired to assassinate Maurizio,
including the shadowy figure known as the Black Witch.
Once Patrizia's closest confidant,
she was about to testify for the prosecution
and weave a mesmerizing tale
of a ruthless woman scorned.
Here again is Natalie Morales
with "Murder in the House of Gucci".
- Wow, so this is the actual courtroom right here.
- This is it, 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.
- The cage? Wow! - It's the cage.
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.
There's another thing that may be different
that you may notice something missing, maybe?
- The jury. Where do they sit? - That's right.
So there's-- During murder trials here in Italy,
there's two judges and six jurors.
They sit just right here, and they decide together.
- As equals, all together. - As equals. As equals.
- That's so interesting.
After a two-year investigation into Maurizio Gucci's murder,
Prosecutor Carlo Nocerino
was about to try the case of a lifetime.
- This was the trial of the century in Milan.
- Nocerino 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.
Patrizia and the gang were tried together,
but the hotel clerk and the pizzeria owner had confessed
and agreed to testify for the prosecution.
The pizzeria owner turned getaway driver
told the jury that Patrizia met him
to make sure he went through with the murder plot.
- 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,
"and if they catch you,
"I'm going to pay for your cell with gold.
- So that's when he decided to go forward with it.
- That's it. That's when he decided that
that was the time to do it. - 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.
She had incriminated herself
by keeping a detailed record of her thoughts
in, of all things, a Cartier diary.
- 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't buy."
- And to top it off, Nocerino turned the diary
to the date Maurizio was shot in cold blood.
There on the page, a single word: Paradise.
- That says it all.
- It's practically an admission of guilt.
- Then the prosecution went for the coup de grâce,
calling Patrizia's best friend and confidante, Pina Auriemma,
to the stand.
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,
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.
- 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.
I didn't lie, and I admitted my faults and my frailties.
- 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?
- 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? The wall?
So having a friend in Naples,
and being able to tell her everything
without anyone later knowing was a big advantage for her.
This is why she told me everything.
- Pina 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.
- She was in pain, but what I realized
was that she was more sad and sorry about losing her name.
- 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?
- Of course. That was what triggered her.
- And Pina testified that's what led Patrizia to ask her
to look for a trigger man.
- And why would you do that for her?
- Listen, it was absolutely not my intention
to do such a thing.
I knew how stubborn she was,
so I thought I would introduce her to some people I knew
who were not capable of ever killing someone
but who certainly were capable of making money off of her.
- Pina 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.
Pina recruited the hotel clerk for one simple reason:
he was the only other person she knew in Milan,
and someone who would never commit murder.
- 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.
We were always hoping that this idea of killing Maurizio
would disappear from her mind.
- So the hotel clerk went to the pizzeria owner
who needed the money to repay his gambling debts.
But then the pizzeria owner
went to the only small-time criminal he knew,
the former mechanic, who got a gun.
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.
- So she took me totally out of the picture.
I do not know what she promised these people
to commit this heinous crime.
- And that's how Pina claimed
to be completely out of the loop
when Maurizio was killed.
- But after the murder happened,
then you went to pay them. Is that right?
- Yes, I did.
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.
- Prosecutor Nocerino 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.
- Reggiani was the instigator, the one who had to pay,
but Auriemma never stepped back.
There wasn't a point where she said, "I quit."
- So she probably knew about it.
She wasn't sure if they would go through with it, though.
- She knew almost everything.
She didn't know what the exact moment would be,
but she knew that they were going to do it.
- Did Pina know much more than she let on?
Was she actually the brains behind the murder?
It was the question Patrizia's defense team
couldn't wait to ask.
- The most dramatic moment of the trial:
The accused ex-wife takes the stand.
- When you confronted her, did she seem shaken at all?
Nervous? - No.
- Everybody wanted to hear.
Like, what was she gonna say?
Pina Auriemma 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.
Pina didn't just know about the murder, they charged,
she was the brains behind it, not Patrizia.
Gaetano Pecorella was one of Patrizia's defense lawyers.
- Auriemma was the one who took matters into her hands
and organized the murder,
and then had gone back to Mrs. Gucci saying,
"Now you have to pay, because otherwise,
"you'll get into trouble,
"as we did what you had gone around asking should be done."
- So it seemed, for the defense,
the strategy was to put the blame squarely on Pina.
- Now that's right. In fact, during the trial,
they presented a letter written by Patrizia
before she got arrested in which she wrote,
"If you're looking for who murdered Maurizio,
"it was Pina Auriemma, and then she blackmailed me."
- In fact, the pizzeria owner supported that idea
when he testified 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.
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.
- Mrs. Auriemma was considered a clairvoyant, and advisor.
Mrs. Auriemma 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.
After all, if she could see the future,
wouldn't she have avoided being put on trial for murder?
- It is absolutely not true.
I do not even believe in these kinds of things,
because they are totally nonsense.
I would have been a bad card reader,
because I should have at least predicted our arrest, no?
- After Pina stepped down,
Attorney Pecorella continued the defense case
with his own strange admission.
It's true, he said,
Patrizia Reggiani had been asking people around town
to kill Maurizio,
but that's only because she wasn't in her right mind
at the time.
- Now you remember the brain tumor Patrizia had?
Well, the defense was making a big deal out of that.
- Why? - Well, because they said
that the brain tumor was clouding her judgement
and kind of affected the-- what she was talking about
when she was going around telling everybody
she wanted someone to kill her husband.
- So the personality disorder defense.
- That's right. - So basically saying
that she was going around town saying all of this,
but she didn't really mean it.
- The court ordered Patrizia to be evaluated
by a panel of psychiatrists.
- 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 experienced it and interpreted it
as a personal attack.
- 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.
- Everybody was in-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?
- 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.
After all, the hitman 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?
- You know, she was very cool.
She was wearing a-a lemon-colored suit.
She looked-- she looked good,
considering that she had been in jail for months
and under a tremendous amount of pressure,
but she executed her testimony very well.
- Now it was time for Nocerino's cross examination.
Could he rattle Patrizia?
- When you confronted her with the information
that you had gathered, did she seem shaken at all?
Nervous? - No.
She wasn't nervous at all.
She was very controlled,
and she answered the questions with confidence,
even the more insidious questions,
like what she wrote in her diary
that day that Gucci was killed.
- How did she explain that diary entry, though?
I mean, writing "paradise"
right after learning that your husband is dead?
- That it was a liberation for her,
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.
- At the root of it all,
Nocerino told the jury in his closing arguments,
Mauricio's cold-blooded murder may simply have been
the revenge of a woman whose self-image he shattered.
- It was the resentment of a woman with wounded pride,
so there was a very strong component of resentment
which goes beyond money.
- 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?
All of Italy held its breath.
- Was she the femme fatale? Maybe.
- The verdicts are rendered, all of them.
Would there be justice for Maurizio Gucci?
- The name, the money, the fame, the drama.
It was a shame. It's a sad story.
The courthouse where the trial
of Maurizio Gucci's alleged murderers took place
isn't far from Milan's medieval House of Justice.
Judges once stood on this balcony
to proclaim their verdicts,
their words echoing around the square.
On November 3, 1998,
Milan's current judges were about to render a verdict
that would echo far beyond the city's walls.
- So, where were you? - My seat was here.
- And-and where was Patrizia Reggiani?
- Patrizia Reggiani was there.
- And then 3 1/2 years after Maurizio Gucci was assassinated,
the gavel came down on Patrizia Reggiani.
She was pronounced guilty
of ordering the murder of her ex-husband
and sentenced to 29 years.
- Take me back to the moment, the verdict.
When you hear "guilty," what did you feel?
- For me? Liberation for me.
- It took a toll. - Yes.
- Yes. And what about her reaction?
- Um, not really a reaction. - Nothing.
- Nothing emotion. - No emotion. Really?
- No emotion. - Wow.
When he heard about the guilty verdict,
Domenico De Sole, Gucci's former CEO,
kept replaying a conversation he had with Patrizia
at her apartment just two months before her arrest.
- We talked about Mauricio. We talked about Rodolfo.
We talked about the family,
and she was very clear about where she-- the way--
Maurizio's weaknesses and faults.
It was very interesting. I had no idea, at that point,
that she was the one that murdered Maurizio.
- You said she kept pointing out Maurizio's weaknesses.
Why do you think she was doing that?
- Probably to justify in her own mind
what she had done, maybe.
- 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.
Pina Auriemma 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.
- Incredible. Incredible.
- It was almost a comedy of characters.
- Italian comedy.
- Pina and Patrizia served their time in the same prison,
but their friendship was over.
- In jail, I studied a lot.
I read a lot. I worked there.
Patrizia slept until 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,
and if we did meet in prison,
I ignored her, and she ignored me.
- Pina got out in 2010
and is trying to live a quiet and private life,
but she says that doesn't mean
she'll ever be able to escape what she's done.
- How much does this continue to haunt you?
- Sempre.
- Always.
- Sempre. - Always.
Maurizio is always on my mind.
- Do you ever think the story is going to go away for you?
- The story will never end. Never.
It will keep coming back.
- Which means that Patrizia Gucci, Maurizio's cousin,
will have to keep fighting
to reclaim her family's good name.
She said the Gucci family never gave their approval
to "The House of Gucci" book or the movie.
She also said that looking at her family
through the lens of Patrizia Reggiani's crime
only encourages people to associate the Guccis
with dysfunction and murder
rather than with the influential fashions
and creative ingenuity for which they should be famous.
- 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,
newspaper articles always saying the feud continues.
Just stop. It's enough.
- Patrizia says that Reggiani has stolen her name from her,
and she wants it back.
- My name is Patrizia Gucci. Only this name I have.
- You're the only Patrizia Gucci.
- I'm the only Patrizia Gucci, yes.
- But it is very unlikely that Patricia Reggiani
will give up the Gucci name,
whether it's hers to keep or not.
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.
- 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.
- I think she was very authentic in her own way.
I don't know if I would call her--
Was she the femme fatale?
Maybe, but I don't think she started out, you know,
with the vision of where she was going to end up.
She gave an interview not too long ago.
The interviewer asked her, you know,
"If you could say anything to Maurizio today,
"what would you say?"
And she said, "Forgive me."
- Sheree Loud isn't thinking about forgiveness.
She worries more about the man Patrizia had killed
being forgotten.
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.
- He was a dreamer, and I felt blessed
to know a soul like his.
He was a very special person regardless of the name,
the money, the fame, the drama.
He was just a pure love.
It was a shame. It's a sad story.
- That's all for this edition of "Dateline: Secrets Uncovered".
I'm Kate Snow. Thank you for watching.