A will signed with a shaking hand and uncertain and another unsigned due to “difficulty and serious weakness of the limbs”. They are the acts with which Maria Basso of Asiagothe rich retired Farnesina official died in Catania on 16 December 2022he left all his people possessions (an estate of one million) first to her Sicilian cousin and then to the latter’s daughterPaola Pepe, now under house arrest and awaiting the preliminary hearing which will be held on 8 July in Catania. The Etna prosecutor’s office investigated Pepe for circumvention of an incompetent person and aggravated murderthe woman is suspected of having caused the death of the elderly Maria, who died at the age of 80 after eating ano plate of spaghetti with the Sicilian relatives who had taken her from the Asiago retirement home two weeks earlier.
The relatives of Sicily
Maria Basso she was a single woman who had traveled the world for work, accumulating enormous wealth. She had chosen to live the last placid years of his life in Giovanna Maria Bonomo retirement home, in Asiago, where some of his closest relatives also reside. After his eightieth birthday party in September 2022 some Sicilian relatives reappeared in his life. In three months, relationships become so close that relatives from Catania they decide to move the old woman to Sicily: on December 2nd they took her from the hospice in the mountains and took her by car to Catania without notifying any of the Vicenza relatives nor the retirement home. Quickly, two days after moving to the south, the Sicilian relatives showed up at the notary Giuseppe Balestrazzi with the elderly woman and a will is drawn up in which the beneficiary is Paola Pepe’s mother. Maria Basso signs this document with a shaky and uncertain handwriting. Four days later, no one knows why, her relatives went to the same notary to have her sign a new will, which this time included Paola Pepe as its sole recipient. But in his report the notary notes that Maria Basso is not even in a position to pick up a pen.
It was December 9, 2022 and already in the days preceding the signing of the two wills, when the elderly woman was taken away from Asiago, the Vicenza prosecutor’s office had received the report of the disappearance of the woman, therefore deciding to open a case for circumvention of an incompetent person following a report from the engineer Mario Basso, defended by the lawyer Roberto Rigoni. After the death of Maria Basso, the Catania prosecutor’s office also launched an investigation. The forensic medical assessment shows that Maria died from ingesting spaghetti which had ended up in her lungs, causing a fatal infection. Who knew the old woman well, he knew that for years now she had only eaten baby food, and that a plate of solid food could have been fatal. The two investigations were joined in Catania, the prosecutor’s office also orders the seizure of the woman’s assets. This is where it emerges the “mystery” of the two wills: one signed with a trembling hand, and the other not.
