Click on the image then:
A=zoom in Z=zoom
out ESC=default
The Trigorna-Paternò case
MURDERER: Vincenzo Paternò
VICTIM: Countess Giulia Trigona di Sant’Elia
PLACE AND DATE: Rome, 2 March 1912
MATERIAL EVIDENCE: hunting knife, lock of hair and hairpins belonging to the victim, bloodstained rag, box of matches
PROVENANCE: Rome, Institute of Forensic Medicine, 1934
Late in the morning of 2 March 1911, Countess Giulia Trigona di Sant’Elia, 29, the wife of Count Romualdo Trigona di Sant’Elia, the mother of two little girls, and lady-in-waiting to Queen Elena, was murdered by her lover, cavalry lieutenant Baron Vincenzo Paternò, in a room in the modest Rebecchino Hotel in Rome.
Their relationship had begun on 11 August 1909, but after two years of passion, secret meetings and gossip, the scandal was about to rock their families. For this reason Giulia Trigona decided to break off the relationship, against her lover’s wishes.
On the morning of 2 March, as he was about to leave for Naples to rejoin his regiment, Paternò asked Giulia to meet him for one last time. Reluctantly, she agreed. The meeting was fixed for 12 noon at the Rebecchino Hotel, the usual place for their secret trysts. On the way to the hotel, Paternò bought a large hunting knife. At 12 on the dot, he entered the hotel and asked for a double room, where he was joined shortly afterwards by Giulia. About fifteen minutes later, drawn by the muffled screams coming from Room 8, a chambermaid, who happened to be in the corridor, looked through the keyhole and witnessed a horrendous scene: a man brandishing a knife stabbing a woman repeatedly, and then taking a gun and shooting himself in the side of the head. When the police arrived, they were met by the following scene: on the blood-soaked bed lay the lifeless body of the woman, close by lay the man, his face disfigured. The revolver was on the floor.
Vincenzo Paternò was still alive, and eventually survived. When he was charged with first-degree murder, his defence lawyer decided that he should plead insanity, and asked that his client should be subjected to psychiatric tests. On 24 October 1911 Vincenzo Paternò was sent for observation to the criminal asylum in Aversa, where he was examined by Professor Filippo Saporito. The tests confuted the defence plea, however, and Paternò was described by Professor Saporito as a brazen fake. Certified as sane, he was taken to Regina Coeli Prison in Rome. The trial began on 17 May 1912 at the Court of Assizes in Rome. The victim’s daughters brought the action against Paternò. Unconvinced by his attempted suicide, the court sentenced him to life imprisonment. The verdict was read on the evening of 28 June 1912. In 1942, at the age of 62, Paternò was pardoned. After his release he married and had a son. He died in 1949.
