The Gucci Murder Plot Had a Hitman, a Fortune Teller—and a Dad Too

On the morning of March 27, 1995, a man walked up the steps of a Milan office building, pulled a revolver, and shot Maurizio Gucci three times in the head and neck. He collapsed in the marble foyer of his own company's headquarters. The shooter, a pizzeria owner turned hired gun named Benedetto Ceraulo, had been recruited for the job by someone who knew Maurizio better than almost anyone alive: his ex-wife, Patrizia Reggiani.

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That murder became the ending everyone remembers, thanks in part to Ridley Scott's 2021 film House of Gucci with Lady Gaga playing Reggiani. But the killing wasn't the first time a Gucci turned on a Gucci to save the family business — it was the last chapter in a decades-long pattern where blood ties kept losing to boardroom power.

The Founder's Sons Split the Company Into Warring Camps

Guccio Gucci started the company as a leather goods shop in Florence in 1921. By the time his sons Aldo and Rodolfo were running it, the House of Gucci wasn't one company so much as two rival fiefdoms sharing a logo. Aldo built the American expansion — the Fifth Avenue store, the global licensing deals that put the double-G on everything from perfume to luggage. Rodolfo held the Italian side and, crucially, guarded his own son's future stake.

That son was Maurizio, Rodolfo's only child, a quiet, book-loving heir who grew up sheltered from the family's business brawls — right up until he wasn't.

A Son Turned in His Own Father to the IRS

Aldo's American branch was minting money, and so was Aldo, some of it through a tax scheme that skimmed profits off the top. The person who blew it up wasn't a rival — it was his own son, Paolo Gucci.

Paolo had been fired from the company in 1980 after he tried launching his own line under the Gucci name without permission, infuriating both Aldo and Rodolfo. Furious and shut out, Paolo sued the company, and in the process of that lawsuit he handed U.S. investigators the paper trail. Aldo Gucci was convicted of evading roughly $7 million in taxes and, in 1986, sentenced to a year and a day in federal prison. He served it at age 71.

It gets messier: Paolo had help engineering his own father's downfall from his cousin Maurizio, who by then had inherited Rodolfo's shares and wanted Aldo out of the way entirely. One family, three generations, all suing and reporting on each other — and Maurizio was the one left holding the most stock when the dust settled.

Maurizio's Turn to Run the Company Into the Ground

Maurizio Gucci finally got what generations of infighting had been fought over: control. He became chairman in the late 1980s with a vision of turning Gucci into a leaner, more prestigious luxury house. The vision wasn't wrong — later executives like Tom Ford would prove the brand could be reinvented — but Maurizio's execution reportedly burned through cash at a pace the business couldn't sustain, and by 1993 he'd sold his remaining stake to the investment firm Investcorp, exiting the company his family had built entirely.

He kept the lifestyle. He didn't keep the marriage. Maurizio had already left Patrizia Reggiani, the woman he'd married in 1972 against his father's wishes, for another partner. Reggiani — a working-class social climber the tabloids nicknamed "Lady Gucci" — reportedly never accepted the divorce or the loss of the fortune and status that came with the Gucci name.

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The Plot: A Hitman, a Getaway Driver, and a Fortune Teller

This is where the story tips from corporate drama into something out of a crime novel. According to Italian prosecutors, Reggiani spent months assembling a small crew to kill her ex-husband: Ceraulo as the shooter, plus a doorman and a getaway driver. She also allegedly consulted a psychic, Giuseppina "Pina" Auriemma, who was later convicted alongside her as a co-conspirator — reportedly for help finding a hitman, not for any mystical foresight.

Maurizio was shot dead on the steps of his Milan office in March 1995. The case went unsolved for nearly two years until Ceraulo's crew unraveled and investigators traced the money back to Reggiani. She was convicted of orchestrating the murder in 1998 and sentenced to 29 years; she served 18 before her release in 2016. Ceraulo, the shooter, received a life sentence.

Reggiani has never fully expressed remorse. In interviews since her release, she's said she doesn't regret the outcome — only, as she's put it, that she didn't pull the trigger herself.

Even After the Family Was Gone, the Company Kept Getting Fought Over

By the time Maurizio died, no Gucci actually owned Gucci anymore — but the fighting over the name didn't stop. In January 1999, Bernard Arnault's LVMH quietly built up a 34.4% stake in the Gucci Group, an aggressive move that CEO Domenico De Sole and designer Tom Ford saw as a hostile takeover threat to the brand they'd spent years rebuilding. Gucci's board fought back by issuing 37 million new shares, diluting LVMH's position, and brought in French tycoon François Pinault's PPR as a "white knight" investor. The battle dragged through Dutch courts for two years before Pinault finally bought out LVMH's stake in 2001 for $806 million, folding Gucci into what's now known as Kering. It's a corporate echo of the same dynamic covered in The Secret 23% Stake LVMH Built in Hermès—Then Lost Anyway: Arnault circling a storied European fashion house, and once again coming away without the prize.

Why This Story Still Gets Retold

The Gucci saga keeps resurfacing — a bestselling book, a Ridley Scott film, endless docuseries pitches — because it's rare to find a company where literally every generational conflict (father vs. son, brother vs. brother, wife vs. husband) played out in public court filings and, eventually, a murder trial. It's the same instinct that makes stories like The Brothers Who Split a Shoe Empire Over an Air-Raid Insult endure: a single house divided against itself, decade after decade, until the name outlives every person who built it.

If you're curious just how far the drama went on screen, it's worth watching how closely the film sticks to the court record versus where it leans into legend — the real case files are public, and the gap between the two is its own kind of entertaining.