Casati Stampa murders

The Casati Stampa murders refer to the 1970 murders, in Rome, Italy, committed by Camillo II Casati Stampa di Soncino, Marquis of Casate, of his wife Anna Fallarino and her lover Massimo Minorenti, followed by the suicide of the murderer, a crime that, at the time, "shocked Italy."

Background
Casati Stampa, born in 1927, was descendant of one of the oldest Milanese families of Italian nobility, which had risen to prominence since the 15th century. His father was for a time married to heiress and patroness of the arts Luisa Adele Rosa Maria Amman. Stampa married young actress Letizia Izzo and they had a daughter, the marquise Annamaria. Anna Fallarino, born in 1929, grew up in Amorosi of the Benevento province in Campania. At the age of 12, as her niece Mariateresa Fiumanò later revealed in a book, Fallarino was sexually abused by the local parish-priest. Fallarino tried for a career in cinema, making only a short appearance in the comedy Totò Tarzan. She married engineer Giuseppe "Peppino" Drommi and they had no children.

In 1955, Stampa and Fallarino first met, by some accounts in Cannes, or by others at an event at the Palazzo Barberini, in Rome. They became lovers and, after succeeding in the annulment of their respective marriages by the Tribunale della Rota Romana (the Apostolic Tribunal of the Roman Rota), the highest appellate tribunal of the Catholic Church, they got married in a civil ceremony in 1959, and, in 1961, in a religious one.

From the early days of their marriage, Casati Stampa was inviting men to have sex with his wife while he was watching and often taking pictures, while he also kept a diary of these events. The couple, during summertime, were mostly staying in the "rugged" island of Zannone, located off the coast between Rome and Naples, in a villa situated on the summit of the island, in which they were throwing nightly "wild parties" that involved "heavy drinking" and group sex and lasted until morning.

The crime
Among the men who were sexual partners of Casati Stampa's wife was Massimo Minorenti, a young Italian involved in far-right circles who, after briefly appearing in porn films, worked as an escort of "older rich women." Fallarino started seeing Minorenti without her husband being present and Casati Stampa, learning of this, became jealous. On 30 August 1970, he stormed in a "distraught" condition their home on Via Puccini 9 and asked the servants not to disturb him. He entered the living room where his wife and Minorenti were sitting waiting for him and fired three shots with his 12-gauge Browning at Fallarino who was killed instantly and then two shots at Minorenti who had tried in vain to protect himself behind a small table. He then turned the weapon on his head and fired. The servants, upon hearing the shots, called the police.

Aftermath
The marquis' will had bequeathed everything to his wife. Following their deaths, a legal battle began between the two respective families for the inheritance. The autopsy having determined that Fallarino had expired before her husband, the fortune of Camillo II Casati Stampa of more than 2.4 billion lire (at the time worth about $3.9mln and in 2020 about $26mln ) was awarded to his heir, daughter Annamaria from his wedding to Letizia Izzo. Among the fortune's assets was the Villa San Martino, in Arcore, which Annamaria sold to Silvio Berlusconi in 1972.

More than a thousand photographs taken by Casati Stampa, and showing his wife in various "compromising" settings, found their way into newspapers and magazines some time after the crime.

In 2020, author Maria Pia Selvaggio published her book, Il delitto di via Puccini (The crime of Puccini street), offering a "fictionalized" account of the crime. The same year, director Umberto Rinaldi announced the production of a film based on the book, but the project did not materialize. Also in 2020, L'affaire Casati Stampa was published, in which its author Davide Amante claimed that "in reality, there was a great love story behind [the crime] but of a non-conformist love."

By 2020, organizers of tours to crime scenes in Rome had started including visits to the address where the Casati Stampa murders were committed.

On Zannone island, by the 2020s, no buildings remained except for a lighthouse and the deserted villa's remains. The island is the habitat of mouflon wild sheep, now a protected species.