On the morning of March 27, 1995, Maurizo was shot four times on his way into his office at Via Palestro 20 in Milan. Maurizio wasn't able to turn the financially strapped Gucci Group's fortunes around, however, and he sold off the rest of his shares to Investcorp in 1993 for a reported $170 million. But his shares were sequestered by the Italian government while he was being sued by Aldo and two of his sons, who accused him of forging Rodolfo's signature in his bid to seize control. By June 1988, Bahraini firm Investcorp had bought up 47.8 percent of various family members' shares for a total of $135 million, leaving Maurizio, who succeeded Aldo as chairman, the largest shareholder with 50 percent. Though they didn't divorce until 1991, their union effectively ended when Maurizio literally walked out in 1985, telling Patrizia he was going on a short business trip and then just never coming home.Ī grandson of Gucci founder Guccio Gucci, Maurizio inherited his father Rodolfo Gucci's entire stake in the family business when Rodolfo died in 1983 and set about pushing his uncle Aldo Gucci out. Maurizio and Patrizia were the definition of a jet-setting power couple during their marriage, which produced daughters Alessandra and Allegra.
Getty Images, Shutterstock Adam Driver as Maurizio Gucci All the things that happened were a misunderstanding." "But he changed completely." She also said, cryptically, "I am not guilty, but I am not innocent.
"Maurizio always loved me, he wanted me to have the best," Patrizia said on People Magazine Investigates: Crimes of Fashion in 2018.
In 2017, according to Britain's Telegraph, a court ruled that she was legally entitled to an annual allowance of $1.2 million from Maurizio's estate, plus back payments from the 17 years she was in prison, per the terms of an agreement he signed two years before he was killed. They separated in 1985.įirst sentenced to 29 years in prison for paying $375,000 to have Maurizio killed, an appeals court reduced her term to 26 years and she was released in October 2016. Reggiani persuaded Maurizio to be more ambitious in his role at Gucci, and it was during their marriage that he became head of the company. "As a younger man, he'd looked to Patrizia to support him and give him the strength to stand up to his own father, but as he gained power, he felt oppressed by her criticism," Forden told the New York Post. To which his son replied, "Papá, I can't leave her. I am told she is vulgar and ambitious, a social climber who has nothing in mind but money. "I have received information about the girl. "Be careful, Maurizio," Rodolfo told him, per Forden's 2000 book House of Gucci.
Reggiani and four accomplices were convicted of murder after a five-month-long trial in 1998.īorn in the northern city of Vignola in humble circumstances, she and Maurizio Gucci were both 24 years old when they married in 1973-despite his father Rodolfo Gucci's concerns. And she admitted to being happy after he was dead, thinking all her problems were finally gone.īut she maintained her innocence in the murder-for-hire plot, telling writer Sara Gay Forden in correspondence from jail, "Maurizio was a man that I had loved most, despite all of his mistakes.'" Shutterstock Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggianiĭubbed "the Black Widow" by the Italian tabloids but known as "Lady Gucci" in more genteel circles, Reggiani admitted to wanting her ex-husband dead, livid over his impending marriage to a much younger woman and his $170 million windfall from the sale of his Gucci stock in 1993, two years after their divorce was finalized.