The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed
By Sara Gay Forden

The crime:

Maurizio Gucci, former head of the luxury fashion and accessories company that his grandfather founded, was killed on the morning of March 27, 1995. His ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani, had put the hit out on him, a crime for which she spent 18 years in prison.

The book:

This was a widely celebrated book even before Ridley Scott’s (overrated) 2021 movie, which had Lady Gaga playing Patrizia and Adam Driver as Maurizio. But while I thought it was readable, mainly due to its inherently interesting subject matter, I didn’t much care for it.

More than a true crime book, it’s mainly a history of the Gucci company, though that’s a history that involved a fair bit of shady dealings, mostly involving tax evasion schemes. (In a charming aside, Forden talks about how some of the financial maneuverings that were illegal at the time would be permissible today because of the “liberalization” of Italy’s laws. I’m not sure, but I think she registers this as some kind of progress.) I admit I have little interest in the world of fashion, but as a business story it works. Plus the family in-fighting is fabulously Italian, in a tradition running from the Borgias to the Corleones.

I had a couple of difficulties with Forden’s writing though.

In the first place, she has an annoying habit of skipping around instead of sticking to a strict through chronology. I got confused at figures like Paolo Gucci dying and then coming back to life, or Silvio Berlusconi being described as a “former Italian prime minister” in what I think is 1993 (Berlusconi first came to power in 1994, and would serve as prime minister off-and-on up until 2011). I assume this was a typo, of the same sort that has Paolo referred to as Aldo Gucci’s “youngest son,” but that were a lot of moments like this that had me mentally scrambling trying to get dates in order. Yes there are different threads being followed, but anyone who writes narrative history has to try to keep them straight. For example, it’s painful to read an account of the landmark YSL fashion show in March 2001 and then be jerked back with what had been happening a week earlier on the legal front. As a reader you start to get whiplash.

The other problem I had was with Forden’s attempt to make the events seem more dramatic by presenting them novelistically. Again, this is something every historian has to deal with in some way: how do you describe a particular historical actor’s thoughts and feelings at a certain time? In her section of Bibliographical Notes Forden explains her approach:

References to what a person was thinking are based on extensive research into the situation and the person’s frame of mind at the time according to people close to him or her or other reliable accounts. In dramatizing contemporary conversations, I have based dialogue on conversations with one or more of the participants.

That sounds fair, but vague, with a lot of wiggle room. What it results in though is passages like this, describing Maurizio at his uncle Aldo’s funeral service:

As Maurizio stood by himself in the chilly church, he looked down at his clasped hands in front of him and let the rise and fall of the priest’s voice float through his mind. He pictured Aldo scaling the stairs of his Via Condotti office two at a time, barking orders to his salesclerks right and left, or holding court in the New York store, signing Christmas packages. His mind’s ear heard Aldo’s voice repeating his old adage about the dynamics of the family – “My family is the train, I am the engine. Without the train, the engine is nothing. Without the engine, well, the train doesn’t move.” Maurizio smiled. As the mourners around him shifted their feet and dabbed their eyes with soggy tissues, Maurizio unclasped his hands, then clenched and unclenched his fists as though for warmth.

Reading stuff like this in a work of non-fiction gets my back up. How do we know what was floating through Maurizio’s mind at this exact moment, or what he was hearing in his “mind’s ear”? Perhaps there’s a source, but I doubt it’s this specific. And there’s quite a bit of this sort of thing here. At one point we even follow Maurizio into the confessional. I remember commenting on an even more egregious moment like this in Erik Larson’s The Devil in the White City years ago. If you don’t know how something happened, or even if it happened, then you shouldn’t pretend as though you do.

Noted in passing:

In explaining his reasons for giving Patrizia a twenty-nine year sentence instead of life (which is what the trigger man got), the judge at her trial gave her diagnosis of having narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) as a mitigating factor. This really turned my head around. While not a legal defence, the fact that one is a pathologically entitled asshole can actually reduce one’s sentence? This would mean that narcissists are actually victims of their “condition.” What sense does that make?

The edition I read was published as a tie-in to the movie, with the familiar banner on the cover about how it was “soon to be a major motion picture.” This made me wonder when a “motion picture” has ever not been “major.” I don’t think I’ve ever seen a book with a blurb like this on a cover say it’s soon to be or now is just “a movie.” It’s always a motion picture. And a major motion picture at that. It’s almost like those exact words are some kind of legal requirement.

Takeaways:

Family businesses rarely work out in the long run because money is more important than blood. That may seem unnatural, but we live in an unnatural world. Meanwhile, not being a publicly-traded company means that a family business is, at least to some extent, free to operate above or beyond the law. Hence the timelessness of these bloody dynastic struggles.

True Crime Files

The Great Pearl Heist: London’s Greatest Thief and Scotland Yard’s Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Necklace
By Molly Caldwell Crosby

The crime:

On July 16, 1913 the most expensive necklace in the world was stolen out of the mail. Converting figures into today’s dollars is not an exact science, but by Molly Caldwell Crosby’s calculations the necklace, which was a string of sixty-one pearls, may have been worth anywhere from $18 million to $120 million. She also pegs its value as twice that of the Hope Diamond.

Only a few months later, four members of a gang of London jewel thieves were tried at the Old Bailey and convicted of the theft. All but one of the pearls was finally accounted for.

The book:

I thought this was a great read, telling the story of a fascinating historical crime that I knew nothing about. I’m not sure why the case was subsequently, in Crosby’s words, “all but lost to history,” as at the time it was huge, with the trial built up by the press as yet another “trial of the century.” (As an aside: how many trials of the century were there in the twentieth century? The Lindbergh kidnapping trial and the O.J. Simpson trial have both received that billing, and I think arguments could be made for either.)

Crosby suggests that the outbreak of the First World War pushed a lot of the big news items of the pre-War years, or Belle Époque, not just off the headlines but out of public memory. I think this is probably right, as I was often thinking while reading this book of the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911, which was also a big story at the time but which has mostly been forgotten about today (though there were a couple of books that came out about it in 2009: The Crimes of Paris by Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler and Vanished Smile by R. A. Scotti). The two cases had a similar cachet, which was recognized by contemporary observers, as the New York Times called the necklace “the Mona Lisa of pearls.” And by coincidence the trial of the pearl thieves ended the same week as the Mona Lisa case was resolved.

But as much as I liked it, I have tocall The Great Pearl Heist out on a few counts.

In the first place, it gets failing grades on the visual materials. The photo section has a bunch of pictures, but some of them are of no relevance to anything in the book. The Ten Bells Pub is shown because it “was a favorite haunt for Ripper victims.” What has that to do with anything? Meanwhile, the only picture of any of the thieves is a small, poorly-reproduced shot taken from a newspaper story where they are all shown in profile standing in the dock. The only picture of the lead detective is an even smaller picture, also cropped from a newspaper page and also a group photo, where you can barely make him out. A picture section like this is arguably no better than no picture section at all, which is something I could also say for the single map provided. A good map of the Hatton Garden area showing the location of the different shops would have been nice. But the only map is a crowded one showing a good chunk of London. What’s worse is it looks like a contemporary map, which means it’s almost impossible to read. I didn’t bother referring to it once, recognizing right away that it would be useless.

A second point has to do with the way Crosby fashions the story into a contest between “London’s greatest thief,” the gang leader Joseph Grizzard, and Scotland Yard’s top detective at the time, Alfred Ward. This is the usual formula of cops and robbers, but it doesn’t fit the facts of this case that well. The theft was unraveled only because a pair of continental jewel traders sold the gang out in hopes of getting the reward being offered for the necklace’s return. Ward then had to properly land Grizzard and his accomplices in a sting operation, which was well done but isn’t great detective stuff.

Finally, Crosby says there was a “lengthy legal battle” to determine who got the reward in the end, but doesn’t say how it worked out.

Noted in passing:

When looking at Grizzard’s motives for adopting a life of crime, Crosby quotes a snippet from a letter written by the poet William Blake:

Want of money and the distress of a thief can never be alleged as the cause of his thieving, for many honest people endure greater hardships with fortitude. We must therefore seek the cause elsewhere than in want of money, for that is the miser’s passion, not the thief’s.

This is an interesting take on criminal psychology. After the theft, the New York Times would suggest something a little grander than money as a motivating force: “the theft was committed just for the ‘glory’ of the thing and . . . the purloiner ranked among the great criminal artists.”

Personally, I’ve thought most thieves, at least of the common break-and-entry variety, not so much greedy or artistic as lazy. They think having a real job is too much work and would rather just grab money when they need it in the quickest way possible. Though for someone like Grizzard, and a few other frauds and swindlers that I’ve known, stealing isn’t always easy. Indeed, I’ve often wondered about burglars who put as much effort, and run far greater risks, to steal money that they could have made more of in a much easier, and legal, way.

Grizzard would fall back into his criminal ways after his release from prison, perhaps because it was the only thing he knew how to do. Or perhaps there’s something to the realization Walter White comes to at the end of Breaking Bad: that some people just take to a life of crime when they find out they’re good at it.

I’d also like to note all the wonderful names in this story. Grizzard is a great name for a master of crime, and it’s fitting that he should have been undone by a seedy underling named Lesir Gutwirth. Meanwhile, the jewel agents fishing for the reward were Samuel Brandstatter and Myer Quadratstein. I stumbled over the latter every time I read it. But the winner in the great-name lottery is Nicholas If-Jesus-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Hadst-Been-Damned Barbon. I think Crosby just wanted to drop his name into the mix for the sound of it, since he was a seventeenth-century economist who doesn’t have any connection to the rest of the story.

Takeaways:

Any criminal conspiracy is only as strong as its weakest link. This one was undone by the aforementioned Lesir Gutwirth. Just because.

True Crime Files

Kiss of Death: True Cases of Fatal Attraction
By Jean Ritchie

The crimes:

“The Giggling Blonde”: after being arrested for trying to kill her third husband with a baseball bat and a carving knife, Dena Thompson is convicted of killing her second by poisoning.

“Smiley Kylie”: Kylie Labouchardiere is murdered by Paul Wilkinson.

“One Go Was Not Enough”: Jill Cahill barely survives a first attempt on her life by her husband Jeff, who then sneaks into the hospital she is recovering in and finishes the job with cyanide.

“Lover in the Wardrobe”: Martha Freeman has a man living in her wardrobe for a month before her husband finds out (he hears him snoring). The two lovers then strangle the husband.

“All for a Life in the Sun”: Tina Strauss can’t handle moving from a Jamaican estate to the north of England and so threatens to leave the man she dumped her wealthy husband for. He kills her and buries her in the backyard.

“The Royal Aide Who Couldn’t Take Rejection”: Jane Andrews worked as a personal assistant to Sarah, Duchess of York. She didn’t like it when men rejected her, and kills Tom Cresswell (with a cricket bat and a knife) when he wouldn’t marry her.

“Left in a Car Boot to Die”: Joe Korp talks his mistress into killing his wife. She does a horrible job of it, with Maria Korp’s case becoming a controversial one in Australia when she was taken off life support in hospital.

“Not One Dead Wife, but Two”: Drew Peterson kills his third wife and disappears his fourth.

“If I Can’t Have You”: Bombay-born doctor “Buck Ruxton” kills his wife and housemaid and cuts their bodies into little pieces.

“Did She or Didn’t She?”: Carolyn Warmus falls for a married man and is convicted of killing his wife. She continues to maintain her innocence.

“A Fit of Conscience”: Lovers Colin Howell and Hazel Stewart conspire to kill their spouses and stage it as a double suicide. Their plan works, but twenty years later Colin confesses and they both go to prison.

“Body in the Fridge”: Laren Sims and gal pal Sarah Dutra kill Laren’s husband, storing his body in a fridge for a while before burying it in a California vineyard.

“Kinky Cottage”: Max Garvie lived a swinging lifestyle in the northeast of Scotland, but is killed by his wife and his wife’s lover.

“Killed by a ‘Bag for Life’”: apparently a “bag for life” is made of particularly strong plastic. Pharmacist Mitesh Patel uses one to suffocate/strangle his wife.

“The Go-Go Dancer and the Cat”: John Perry travels to the Philippines for some sex tourism and picks up a wife. He expects a submissive helpmeet, so when she starts showing signs of independence, including having an affair with a neighbour, Perry kills her. He has trouble getting rid of her body though.

“Desperate Measures”: Mary Pearcey kills her lover’s wife in Victorian London.

“The Exotic Dancer with Two Boyfriends”: Catherine Woods goes to NYC in the hopes of becoming a dancer. She’s killed by a jealous boyfriend.

“The Parachute ‘Accidents’”: two otherwise unrelated cases involving a woman sabotaging a rival’s parachute to get rid of her and a man doing the same to his wife. The wife actually survives.

“Killed by the Dog She Loved”: Dolly Kaplan is killed by a pet pit bull terrier that her boyfriend turned on her.

“The Army Wife”: Christina Dryland runs over her husband’s mistress in her Saab.

“Kinky Sex and a Brutal Murder”: a lesbian couple who are also professional dominatrices have a falling out and the one arranges the other’s murder.

“So Much for Rehabilitation”: John Tanner kills his girlfriend, an Oxford student, and is sent to prison, which does not lead to his reform.

“A Vengeful Suicide”: Paul Dunn is charged with killing his wife with a shotgun, but at trial he is acquitted because it may have been suicide.

The book:

A good selection of cases that stick close to the theme of fatal attractions. In fact, at least one of them, the Warmus case, was dubbed by the press “the Fatal Attraction killing.” Each crime is described in 10-15 pages, so the writing is pretty basic sketchwork. At the same time, since they tell such a familiar, and in many instances repetitive, story there’s little need to go into detail.

Most of the cases aren’t that well known. I suppose everyone will have heard of Drew Peterson, but aside from him the others are pretty obscure. Some were notorious at the time but have since faded from public memory, while some played more in local media. Still others, though tragic, don’t stand out as noteworthy at all.

As noted by Ritchie in her Introduction, you’re more likely to be killed by someone you know intimately than by a stranger. And the domestic killers we meet here fall into easily identifiable gender stereotypes. The men tend to be violent and controlling. They are looking for partners who are submissive and loyal, with John Perry being only the most blatant example: “What John wanted from a woman was the house kept clean, meals on the table and unquestioning obedience. He wanted to be lord of his own home, and he had been unable to find a woman who would treat him with the deference he felt he deserved.” There’s a lot of that here. Meanwhile, many of the women are chasing status and lifestyle, or are threatened by the loss of the same when their husbands go wandering.

Nobody gets what they want, so they take their frustrations out in violent ways.

Sticking with the book’s theme, I found myself wondering to what extent these could truly be called crimes of passion. A lot of the killers here, male and female, had hyperactive sex drives, but they were indiscriminate as well as insatiable and they didn’t kill for kicks. Another point is that the killings were frequently just a way of getting rid of a spouse or lover who had become a drag. It’s rarely the case that each man kills the thing he loves. People are more likely to kill someone they’ve stopped caring about at all.

Noted in passing:

Several firsts are included in the line-up. The body parts discovered in the Buck Ruxton, or “Jigsaw Killer,” case had maggots growing in them, which allowed an entomologist to date when they’d been tossed away. Apparently those maggots “are now preserved in the insect archives of the Natural History Museum because this was the first time insects had been used in forensic investigation.” Then the pit bull killing Dolly Kaplan is said by one of the investigating detectives to be “the first case in the history of the world where somebody was charged with using an animal as a murder weapon and successfully prosecuted.”

The “first” I found most interesting though was more recent. This was the use of the iPhone health app to track Mitesh Patel’s suspicious movements within his house on the day he murdered his wife. This could be done on a granular level because motion processors not only monitored the number of steps he was taking but the difference in going up stairs. I know tracking locations by way of phones had been used before in cases, but I didn’t know it could be used this precisely (yet). Patel’s trial was in 2018 and apparently it was the first time such evidence had appeared in a UK case.

Takeaways:

When considering so many case studies of relationships gone bad it’s natural to look for any warning signs – the proverbial red flags – that were missed. I think there are clear patterns that stand out.

Some of these are so obvious they seem barely worth drawing attention to. Men who seem overly controlling or who show any proclivity at all toward violence should be avoided at all costs. If you find out people regularly lie or cheat (to the point of even adopting various aliases) you should also take that as a danger sign.

Perhaps less obvious, especially in an age where serial monogamy is now an established norm, is that someone (man or woman) who has been married and divorced two or three times before they’re forty, and has kids from at least a couple of those marriages, is probably a bad bet. Anyone can be given a mulligan for having one committed relationship going down the tubes, but if there’s a pattern you should take it as fair warning and pay heed to Samuel Johnson’s adage about second marriages being the triumph of hope over experience.

True Crime Files