In early morning in early spring, 1995, Patrizia Reggiani’s telephone rang with word of the news that would change her life forever: Her ex-husband, the luxury-goods scion and former fashion mogul Maurizio Gucci,had been killed at his office in Milan.
A gunman, stylishly dressed and armed with a 7.65-mm pistol, first fired on the 46-year-old Gucci from behind before shooting him in the face as he fell to the foyer’s red marble floor.
Reggiani learned of the slaying not long after.
“I was very happy because all my problems were gone,” she says onPeople Magazine Investigates: Crimes of Fashion, which premieres Monday night on Investigation Discovery. “And then I started feeling very lost.”
Within two years,she would also be behind bars, suspected as the mastermind of the murder plot that ended with Gucci’s death.
Her motive? “There’s some of everything,” prosecutor Carlo Nocerino said at the time. “Jealousy. Even economic reasons. She never made a mystery of the rancor she felt for her husband.”
• WatchPeople Magazine Investigates: Crimes of Fashionpremiering on Monday at 9 p.m. ET on Investigation Discovery.
Maurizio Gucci and his then-wife Patrizia Reggiani.Del Puppo/Fotogramma/Ropi/Zuma
Gucci’s ruthlessness in business left him with no shortage of enemies — including those in his own family, with whom he had run their eponymous brand — but his personal life could be turbulent as well.
He married Reggiani in 1972 when they were both 24 and they quickly became one of Italy’s prominent power couples, living a lavish, jet-setting lifestyle with homes in both New York and Milan. Then, in the spring of 1985, Gucci told Reggiani that he was going on a short business trip and never returned home, instead moving in with a younger woman.
The couple finally divorced in 1994 after a protracted legal battle. Left to raise their two daughters, Alessandra and Allegra, Reggiani says she was was heartbroken and then bitter.
• For more on the greed, lust and secrets in Maurizio Gucci’s family,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands now.
“Maurizio always loved me, he wanted me to have the best,” she says onCrimes of Fashion, exclusively previewed above. “But he changed completely.”
Reggiani’s five-month murder trial beganin May 1998, more than a year after her arrest, ending that November with her conviction along with four accomplices.
LaPresse/OLYCOM
”Evidently, they didn’t believe me,” Regianni said upon the guilty verdict,according to theNew York Times. ”Truth is the daughter of time.”
She served 18 years in prison and was released in 2016, but she still contends she was wrongfully convicted.
Now 69 and speaking out onCrimes of Fashion, Regianni says: “I am not guilty, but I am not innocent. All the things that happened were a misunderstanding.”
Not that she has shown much sorrow over it.
People Magazine Investigates: Crimes of Fashion, The Assassination of Maurizio Gucciairs Monday (9 p.m. ET) on Investigation Discovery.
source: people.com
