The notorious hitman who killed fashion mogul Maurizio Gucci at the behest of the revered businessman’s ex-wife apparently tried to take his own life on Tuesday after shooting his son in the face.
Benedetto Ceraulo, 63, allegedly shot his son, Gaetano, 37, during a family dispute then turned the pistol on himself in the front yard of his rented home in Santa Maria a Monte – just outside of Pisa, Italian media reports.
Despite the injury to his face, Gaetano never lost consciousness and ‘with blood everywhere… dragged himself out to his car,’ according to Il Tirreno.
He then reportedly drove himself to a bar in a town in the nearby province of Valdinievole, where he was picked up by first responders and rushed to a local hospital.
Gaetano is now in stable condition, after receiving treatment at Felice Lotti Hospital.
But Benedetto was left in critical condition, and remains at Cisanello Hospital in Pisa Tuesday night.
Meanwhile, police are continuing to investigate what exactly transpired at the home Benedetto has been living at for the past two years – following his lengthy prison sentence for Gucci’s death.
Benedetto was an indebted restaurant owner at the time, when he took Patrizia Reggiani’s – Gucci’s ex-wife’s – offer of 600 million lire to have him killed, according to La Stampa.
He then worked with two other men to pull off the assassination on March 27, 1995, when Gucci, 46, was arriving for work at his Milan office.
Benedetto was ultimately sentenced to 28 years in prison for the murder, but was granted work release in 2017 and participated in a wine-producing project on the prison island of Gorgona, The Times reports.
‘You have the chance of learning, I feel lucky,’ he said at the time.
‘Closed in your cell, deprived even of your privacy, people become worse.’
Reggiani, meanwhile, served 17 years in prison for contracting the murder.
She, too, was offered the opportunity of work release in 2011 – but turned it down, saying: ‘I’ve never worked in my life and I don’t intend to start now.’
The headline-grabbing crime was recently sensationalized in the film House of Gucci, which family members claimed violated their privacy.
‘We are truly disappointed. I speak on behalf of the family,’ one of Maurizio’s second cousins, Patrizia Gucci, said ahead of the film’s release.
‘They are stealing the identity of a family to make a profit, to increase the income of the Hollywood system,’ she claimed.
‘Our family has an identity, privacy. We can talk about everything. But there is a borderline that cannot be crossed.’
Her ancestor, Guccio Gucci, founded the luxury fashion house that bears his name nearly a century ago in Florence.
But the family has not been involved with the fashion house since 1993, when Maurizio sold his remaining stake to the Bahrain-based company, Investcorp.
It was later bought by the French group PPR, which is now Kering.