Palermo, 4 May. (beraking latest news) – They all defined them as a “close-knit couple”. Even if every now and then there were small disagreements “as is normal to happen in any couple”. She, Laura Lupo, 62 years old, an esteemed municipal police officer who had been serving at the Palermo Judge’s Office for some years. She is a “mild, sunny, discreet and decent” woman. He, Pietro Delia, 68 years old, a well-known accountant, with a studio in the center of Palermo. He is also esteemed. At dawn today the tragedy that shocked everyone. She takes the police pistol and shoots her husband at least five times, maybe even six, and hits him in the chest and stomach. And then she shoots herself in the head. The first shot grazes her on the temple, she remains alive. Very lucid, she tries again, the second shot hits her center and kills her instantly. The alarm was raised by the couple’s daughter, also an accountant, who lives in the same building, in via Notarbartolo, next to the building where a well-known magistrate lives. This morning she was supposed to meet with her father to reach the studio in via Gallo, near the Politeama Theater. But after waiting in vain, she went up and no one opened the door. She tried to open the door but failed.
So she turned to the firefighters who opened the armored door. Upon their entry the terrible discovery. The bodies of Laura Lupo and her husband, Pietro Delia, were lying on the floor in the kitchen. The house was perfectly tidy. The woman still had in her hand the weapon with which she had shortly before killed her husband and then taken her own life. “It’s a very bad story, we were all taken by surprise. No one could have imagined such a dramatic epilogue. Our colleague was a person characterized by great calmness and elegance in her features and behaviour. She was very prepared and professional”, said the Commander of the Palermo municipal police Angelo Colucciello, who arrived in via Notarbartolo where the couple’s murder-suicide took place. And he adds: “If we had had the slightest suspicion of lack of serenity we would have intervened, as the protocols on the matter provide.”
The Carabinieri, who are investigating the tragedy, heard from the neighbors. But no one heard them arguing or raising their voices between last night and this morning. The tragedy occurred around 6.30am. And not even the financiers who keep watch in front of the house of the magistrate, who lives in the building next door. Nothing at all. Not even those six gunshots. Neighbors and friends are shocked. “We never expected this,” they say softly. “They were so close.” However, someone lets it slip that the woman, especially recently, was “very jealous”. It seems that he confided to her about some disagreements with her husband, some discussions due precisely to the woman’s jealousy. “But we would never have imagined this epilogue…”, they say. Colleagues and friends arrive one by one. They cry, they hug each other. They despair. The couple’s daughter is interviewed by the Carabinieri. She does nothing but cry.
The most credible lead is murder-suicide, also because no signs of forced entry were noticed in the house. Autopsies on the two bodies will be held next week, ordered by the prosecutor’s office coordinating the investigation. The bodies were transferred to the Institute of Forensic Medicine of the Polyclinic. From the CGIL public service of the municipal police comes a message of condolence for the tragedy for the family of the dead officer. “We had already raised various problems relating to the handling of weapons by workers in the sector for some time”, say the unitary union representative Gianfabio Monacó, the company manager Luigi D’Antona and Saverio Cipriano, for the FP Cgil Palermo secretariat. “We reiterate – they add – that today’s events could be included among the so-called ‘announced tragedies’. The CGIL will present a detailed and documented complaint to the Public Prosecutor’s Office so that the possible responsibilities of all the subjects who may have failed to apply the law and who could have averted today’s tragedy.”