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The Bellentani case
MURDERER: Pia Bellentani
VICTIM: Carlo Sacchi
PLACE AND DATE: Villa D’Este on Lake Como,
15 September 1948
MATERIAL EVIDENCE: Fegyverzyar automatic pistol, mod. 37, cal. 9 mm
On the evening of 15 September 1948, during a high-society dinner party at Villa D’Este on Lake Como, Countess Pia Bellentani, wife of the Milanese industrialist Count Bellentani and mother of two little girls, killed her lover Carlo Sacchi, also married with two young daughters, with whom she had been having a stormy affair for eight years.
During the evening Sacchi had behaved in a cynical, arrogant way towards the Countess.
Worn down by his behaviour, Pia Bellentani took the gun that her husband had left in the wardrobe, approached Sacchi and shot him at point-blank range.
The court accepted her plea of insanity, and sentenced her to ten years – later reduced to seven years – in a criminal asylum. She was taken to the asylum in Aversa, where she was subjected to psychiatric tests by Professor Filippo Saporito.
Professor Saporito worked for two years on the Countess’s psychiatric report, the last in his brilliant career (which had begun with the case of Musolino the bandit), and he concluded that the woman was the victim of a hereditary condition that had already caused fainting fits and blackouts when she was a young girl. Saporito had studied every detail of her life, and had read her letters and school exercise books.
She had always been drawn to suicide, and by killing her lover had, perhaps, symbolically killed herself.
Her arrival at the criminal asylum was followed by the press with the same keen interest they had shown in the various stages of the trial.
She was received with great kindness and courtesy. After a while she was allowed to have her grand piano, which she would sometimes play for the other patients.
When she left the asylum, a group of photographers were waiting at the entrance.
As elegant and as haughty as ever, and accompanied by her lawyer, she hardly acknowledged them, merely raising her hand, before getting into the black limousine that was waiting to whisk her away to Abruzzo, where she was finally reunited with her mother and her daughters.
