INDECENT SECRETS

Crime among the rich and famous has always fascinated—witness the mass addiction to the O.J. Simpson trial in 1994. This intriguing saga proves that the Italians of the early 1900s were no different.

The “Murri Murder Affair” captivated Italy and much of Europe for nearly three years, from the night of Aug. 28, 1902, when 33-year-old Count Francesco Bonmartini was brutally stabbed to death in his Bologna apartment, until Aug. 11, 1905, when the jury returned verdicts on the five defendants charged with the crime. Those included Bonmartini's wife, Linda, accused of fomenting the fatal conspiracy, and her brother Tullio, charged with fatally stabbing Bonmartini. Other defendants were Carlo Secchi, a physician and Linda's lover; Rosa Bonetti, Linda's wardrobe maid and Tullio's lover; and Pio Naldi, a lowlife gambler allegedly recruited by Tullio in the murder plot. None of the principals are particularly sympathetic, save for the portly, gullible Bonmartini, who leaves his profitable villa in Padua for an unattractive, self-centered wife who abandons his bed within a few years. His new in-laws are just as cold. For no apparent reason other than his perceived social awkwardness, Bonmartini soon finds himself completely isolated—trapped in a sexless marriage to his high-strung, hypochondriac wife and despised by her family, particularly Linda's celebrated physician father Augusto Murri and her radical socialist brother Tullio. By the night of his murder, Bonmartini had picked out his coffin and begun carrying a revolver. The buildup to the killing is interesting enough, but the story slows perceptively once we enter Italy's Byzantine legal system. There, trials are wont to resemble The Jerry Springer Show, with witnesses often allowed to debate each other, the judge and their prosecutors. This six-month proceeding was heavy on histrionics, as Vella (Intimate Enemies, 1997) paints a courtroom overflowing with sobbing, screaming, fainting and other operatic touches.

Unfortunately, none of the suspects—each of whom change their stories numerous times—are compelling enough to sustain our interest through all the legal wrangling, and Vella's curious tale is eventually undone by her over-attention to detail.