It has been a trial whose ingredients look more like the creation of an over-inventive, underemployed Hollywood scriptwriter - a divorced wife consumed with manic jealousy, a dynastic feud, a so-called clairvoyant, low-life ambition and greed, all set against the background of an undercover investigation into the murder of a fashion tycoon.
This week, the Milan state prosecutor, Carlo Nocerino, has been summing up in the so-called "Gucci trial" in which Patrizia Reggiani Gucci stands accused, along with four accomplices, of the murder of her divorced husband, Maurizio Gucci, grandson of Guccio Gucci, the man who in 1904 founded the legendary Florentine fashion dynasty. The state prosecutor has asked for life sentences (30 years) for all five accused.
Maurizio Gucci was killed at the entrance to his Milan offices at about 8.30 a.m. on March 27th, 1995 by a professional hit-man who fired three bullets at him as he arrived for work. The precision of the killing, the cold-blooded way in which the killer turned to fire at and seriously wound the building janitor who had come running to help and the calm manner in which the killer and a driver got into a nearby Renault Clio before disappearing into the traffic confused police investigators.
They felt that the killing was the work of an experienced professional, probably a Mafia hit-man. Initial investigations concentrated on the then recent sale of Gucci's holdings in the family business. (Maurizio Gucci ended the Gucci family connection with the famous brand when selling out to an Anglo-Arab company, InvestCorp, for a reported $190 million in 1993.)
That investigation and a parallel one into Maurizio Gucci's plans to start a gambling casino in Switzerland, however, proved fruitless, and the case seemed destined for the "unsolved" file until one January evening last year.
That was when Gabriele Carpanese, a small-time crook, rang a Milan police station to recount an "interesting little story". At first, Carpanese had difficulty getting anyone to listen. Eventually, an undercover agent was sent to check out his story.
Following the informant's lead and calling himself "Carlos", the agent booked himself into a cheap central Milan hotel, the Audry. Here, he became acquainted with the night porter, Ivano Savioni. Speaking only Spanish, the agent passed himself off as a drug trafficker working on behalf of the Medellin cartel in Colombia. He soon found that in Savioni he had a very interested interlocutor. Savioni, apparently anxious to establish his criminal credentials in order to link up with the men from Medellin, let the policeman know that he had been involved in "something big" not long ago. Bit by bit, the story emerged.
Savioni had been contacted by his friend, the Neapolitan clairvoyant Giuseppina Auriemma, with a view to organising the killing of Maurizio Gucci, at a fee of around $250,000. Ms Auriemma was allegedly acting on behalf of Patrizia Gucci, with whom she had become friendly following Patrizia's divorce from Maurizio in 1984.
Savioni, according to the prosecution, did as asked and organised both a killer, Benedetto Ceraulo, and a driver, Orazio Cicala.
Patrizia Gucci's alleged motives for the killing were obvious enough. She had spent much of the decade following her divorce making no secret of her loathing both for the Gucci family and for Paola Franchi, the woman with whom Maurizio Gucci was living at the time of his death and whom he intended to marry (thus putting at risk the inheritance due to Patrizia's daughters). During the trial this summer, she admitted that she had not only asked people to kill her ex-husband but had even inquired as to the cost of a hitman.
Ms Gucci, however, has pleaded mental instability, arguing that she has been "framed" by the clairvoyant, Giuseppina Auriemma.
Court-appointed experts last week ruled that Ms Gucci was still fit enough to stand trial. Ms Auriemma, on the other hand, has admitted to having hired the killers but insists that she was acting on Patrizia Gucci's behalf.
As the trial comes to its conclusion, one is left to reflect on the real protagonist, the Gucci family. For much of the last 20 years, the Gucci heirs have squabbled publicly, on occasions taking one another to court and on other occasions limiting their exchanges to fierce family rows in which tempers were lost and objects flew. The Patrizia Gucci murder trial is perhaps their last public squabble, the last feud among these latter-day Montagues and Capulets.