FURY OF THE BLACK WIDOW
IT WAS a perfect spring morning, just after 8.30am, when Maurizio Gucci, the handsome heir of the famed fashion house, stepped out of his Milan apartment to make the short walk to his office on Via Palestro, just a stone’s throw away from the city’s fashion district.
Clutching a handful of magazines and impeccably attired in a suit, tie and – what else? – Gucci loafers, he strode past the public gardens and headed up the short flight of steps on the way to his office.
Unbeknown to him, however, another man had fallen in step behind him and, before Maurizio could head inside the building to commence another day’s work at the helm of the Gucci empire, the gunman had pumped three shots into his back. As he collapsed on to the red marble floor, the coup de grace was delivered with a final shot to the head.
This shocking act of savagery, in March 1995, soon became one of the most notorious murders in Italy’s modern history, yet for two years investigators struggled to point the finger not only at the assassin, but at
