Italy's 'Black Widow' speaks candidly of hiring hitman to murder her Gucci heir husband

An Italian socialite nicknamed “the Black Widow” has revealed that she was so desperate to murder her husband, an heir to the Gucci fashion empire, that she “went around asking everyone if they could do it, even the local grocer”.

Patrizia Reggiani is out of prison, having served 17 years for hiring a hitman to shoot dead her husband, Maurizio Gucci, on the steps of his office in Milan in 1995.

She was furious that after 13 years of marriage he had abandoned her for another woman, leaving her to bring up their two young daughters.

She was also angry over his management of the $170 million fortune he had accrued after selling the family business in 1993 to an investment group.

The former socialite, who kept a pet ferret in prison, has given a candid interview about ordering her husband’s murder and her life behind bars in San Vittore prison in Milan, which she ironically nicknamed “Victor's Residence”.

“I was furious with Maurizio. I went around asking everyone, even the local grocer, is there someone who has the courage to murder my husband?” the 72-year-old said in a documentary that was released on Monday. “I can’t aim a gun very well – I couldn’t have done it myself.”

With the help of a friend who was a psychic and fortune-teller, she eventually found someone willing to carry out the murder.

The hitman, Benedetto Ceraulo, was a debt-ridden pizzeria owner. He drew up in a green Renault Clio to the office block where Mr Gucci worked and shot him four times. He was eventually caught, convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

It took police two years to figure out who had ordered the killing. "I didn't think they'd catch me," Ms Reggiani, wearing an elegant pink trouser suit, told the Discovery documentary.

After a trial that captivated Italy, she was found guilty of commissioning the hit and sentenced to 26 years in prison.

The trial heard that on the day her ex-husband was gunned down, she wrote in her diary the word – paradeisos, Greek for paradise.

Ms Reggiani said in the documentary that she had quite enjoyed incarceration. “I was absolutely fine in prison,” she said. “For me they were years of peace. I slept, I worked in the garden.”

A decade ago, she was offered the chance of day release on the condition that she would accept menial work.

She refused. “I've never worked in my life and I'm certainly not going to start now,” she told a court in Milan. That attitude echoed one of her more famous quotes: “I would rather weep in a Rolls-Royce than be happy on a bicycle.”

In the end, her sentence was cut short for good behaviour and she was released in 2017.

She lives in Milan with a pet parrot and can sometimes be seen walking around the city with the blue and yellow macaw on her shoulder. Her daughters, now grown-up, reportedly want nothing to do with her.