Retrial of Gucci's 'black widow' begins in Venice

An Italian court began fresh hearings into the 1995 murder of fashion heir Maurizio Gucci yesterday, after his two daughters successfully bid for a retrial of their mother, charged with ordering the killing.

Patrizia Reggiani - dubbed the "black widow" by the Italian press - was sentenced to 26 years in jail in 1998 for hiring a hitman to kill her estranged husband outside his Milan office.

Lawyers have said the retrial, requested by her daughters Allegra and Alessandra, will not question whether Reggiani ordered the murder, but whether she was sane after having a brain tumour removed in 1992.

"We are satisfied in part but worried, because our mother is not well," Alessandra Gucci told reporters after the hearing. "We just want justice and we hope that the truth will come out."

A Venice court agreed a request from Reggiani's lawyer for experts to study medical tests excluded from the original case and to re-examine Reggiani's mental health at the time of the murder. But the court refused a request for 32 new witnesses to be heard.

The tests include brain scans and details of radiotherapy Reggiani had after her 1992 operation, her lawyer Danilo Buongiorno said.

Reggiani, who was not in court yesterday, tried to hang herself with sheets in her Milan prison cell in 2000.

The prosecution has said she ordered Maurizio's murder after their 12-year marriage ended and he moved in with a younger woman. She has always denied the charge.

Her first trial was the stuff of Hollywood drama, featuring family feuds, clairvoyants and rumours that "cursed" evidence gave court officials skin rashes.

The family no longer has ties to the Florentine fashion house, now a listed company.