Summary
21 October 2011
A few hours of work seems a small price to pay for a taste of liberty. But one of Italy's most infamous inmates, known as the Black Widow, has rejected an offer of work in exchange for limited freedom. She was jailed for 29 years in 1998.
Reporter:
Mark Duff
Patrizia Reggiani is serving a jail sentence for murder
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Report
Patrizia Reggiani once said she'd rather cry in a Rolls than be happy on a bicycle. She doesn't seem to have changed her mind.
Dubbed the Black Widow after she was jailed for ordering the murder of her ex-husband, the heir to the Gucci family fortune, Ms Reggiani has spent most of the past 13 years at San Vittore prison in Milan.
Judges had offered her the chance of day release, if she agreed to take a job outside the prison walls. But Ms Reggiani, who's 63, was having none of it. She'd never worked in her life, she told the judges, and she didn't intend to start now.
Her trial in 1998 attracted worldwide interest. It had everything: a woman betrayed by the man she'd loved and the low-life murder of the heir to a multi-million dollar fashion fortune.
For now, though, Patrizia Reggiani, who once complained that her allowance of more than US$630,000 a year wasn't enough to live on, will return to the comfort of her pet ferret and her plants in her cell at San Vittore.
Mark Duff, ´óÏó´«Ã½ News, Milan
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Vocabulary
- she'd rather
she would prefer
- dubbed
given a name, usually by the media
- day release
scheme that allows her to leave prison during daytime
- having none of it
not accepting any of the terms offered
- intend
plan
- betrayed by
deceived by
- low-life
not high-class
- complained
expressed unhappiness about
- allowance
amount of money received regularly from the person who financially supported her
- ferret
long-bodied furry mammal
