“Era a reserved couple: never a fight, they were always together. They seemed united, what happened is really absurd. As far as I’m concerned, I haven’t heard any shots. “There is disbelief among the inhabitants of Via Mascagni in the residential Trieste district, one of the most elegant in the capital. Yet it is here among elegant buildings, flower-filled balconies, manicured gardens and boutiques that happened yet another femicide. One more woman killed. Another crime that extends that long list of names that have now become the list of a silent massacre. Deaths almost always occurred at the hands of those who were supposed to love them. And protect them.
Yesterday Roma it was the scene of the latest act of violence. Caterina D’Andrea, 72, was shot and killed by her husband, Pietro Bergantini, 76. The murder dates back to Sunday – as the man seems to have confessed to the police – that he is trying to reconstruct what happened. The couple’s daughter, who rushed to the scene, felt ill and was rescued.
Bergantini, a former official of an insurance company, for reasons yet to be ascertained and clarified killed Catherine, also a former insurance company, with a gunshot, is assumed at the height of a dispute. Then, perhaps, after a whole night spent watching over the corpse in the apartment they had shared all their lives – on the third floor of a refined building – she decided to tell all about her to her lawyer. The defender then contacted the police and accompanied his client to the police station where the former official stood by telling the investigators that he had killed his wife with one of the guns he legally held.
There are still many obscure points to clarify on the dynamics of this incomprehensible and unexpected tragedy. The mobile squad of the capital and the investigators of the Vescovio police station are listening to several people close to the couple, in an attempt to shed light on the incident: relatives, friends, neighbors. “I still can’t believe it, I’m in shock”, an acquaintance vents in tears. The forensics surveys are still underway in the apartment in via Mascagni, to establish the exact moment of death.
And above all the reasons behind a gesture whose motivations, at the moment, are still incomprehensible. Another one tragedy took place yesterday morning, a Filottrano in the province of Ancona where a worker, 52-year-old of Moldovan origin, hit his wife with a hammer in the head at the height of a dispute. Then believing her dead he committed suicide.
The woman, wounded and bleeding, after getting up, found the strength to ask for help and alert the police. She was transported by air ambulance to the Torrette hospital in Ancona, where she is hospitalized in serious condition.
The Moldovan would have used his car to reach a cottage, a few kilometers from the house in Via Santa Maria, where the carabinieri found him lifeless and with a rope around his neck.
The investigators of the Marche capital are now collecting every detail to try to reconstruct the reasons for the gesture. From a first reconstruction it would seem that he had never accepted the idea of separating from his wife, as she would have liked instead. The woman had contacted a lawyer to separate from her husband and she had communicated her decision to him.