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The Deadly Aperitif

A jilted lover took a murderous revenge – by post

By David Cocksedge

ON FRIDAY 24 August 1973 a registered parcel arrived at the home of Tranquillo Allevi near San Remo on the north coast of Italy . As he was out at the time, his wife Renata signed for it and took it into the house. She placed it on his desk, and when he returned, Tranquillo opened it to reveal a bottle of aperitif. It was made by a well-known firm of Italian liquor manufacturers and the accompanying letter invited him to become their local representative in a new sales campaign.

Allevi was a prosperous dairy farmer and such invitations were not uncommon. The 50-year-old dairyman took the bottle to his workplace where he placed it in his refrigerator. It was a welcome gift, whether he took up the sales offer or not. He then forgot about it as he went about the day's business.

The bottle remained in the fridge that night and the whole of the following day. It was a Saturday, when he would usually take his wife out to dine at The Casino restaurant in San Remo . They had a pleasant meal together, and Allevi went to his office after driving his wife home. He was met there by a salesman and a friend and as it was a warm evening, the three men relaxed by taking off their jackets. Allevi then remembered the aperitif, and removed it from the fridge.

He produced three glasses and poured out the chilled appetizer into each one. Raising his glass in a toast, he tossed back the contents in one swallow. His two companions only sipped their drinks – which was lucky for them. Seconds later, Allevi cried out in pain and crumbled to the office floor. He was racked with spasms and gasping for breath as his alarmed companions rushed to his side. One called the police and the three men were taken to hospital. Allevi's friends were purged with emetics and recovered from the poison in the bottle. Allevi, however had taken down too much of the fluid and died painfully two hours later.

Doctors were quick to diagnose death by poisoning, and in due course it was determined that the aperitif contained enough strychnine to kill about 500 people. Who had tampered with the sample bottle? Police enquiries at the manufacturers revealed that although company employees had sent out over 100 bottles with invitations, Allevi was not on the mailing list. The unsigned letter that he had received followed the customary formula, but it had been typed on a plain sheet of paper, not the company's headed notepaper.

Allevi had no special business rivals or enemies. He was generally well-liked around San Remo and considered a popular man. Suspicion now fell on Renata, Allevi's grieving widow. She was an attractive woman, aged 38, twelve years younger than her husband. And she was not exactly a paragon of virtue: discreet enquiries revealed that she had three lovers that she often met for extramarital sex. One was her husband's book-keeper, one was an Army officer and the third man was a veterinary surgeon who treated the dairy herds owned by Allevi.

Renata had been visibly distressed at the news of her husband's death and responded to all questioning with every appearance of being truthful. Far from trying to dissociate herself from the sample bottle, she herself informed police that she had signed for the parcel and taken it into the house. She also stated, unprompted, that it had been her idea that the aperitif should be taken to her husband's office and cooled in the refrigerator there.

As the murder investigation proceeded, the police checked on the movements of Renata's three lovers on the fateful day that the parcel had been posted. It had been sent from Milan on 23 August 1973. This seemed to let off two of the suspects. The book-keeper could prove that he had been in San Remo all that day, and the Army officer was away on maneuvers in Tuscany at the time. That left the veterinary surgeon, Doctor Renzo Ferrari.

A suave professional man, Ferrari had indeed been in Milan on the 23 rd. He had gone there to renew his veterinarian's license, he said. Moreover, the police discovered that two days earlier (21st. ) he had bought six grams of strychnine from a chemist near his place of work. This in itself was not suspicious – the doctor often bought the substance there and used it to treat sick cattle.

But there was stronger evidence against him. Checking up on typewriters that he had access to, detectives closely examined a machine at the town hall in Barengo. The typeface on this machine was an exact match to the typed letters on the invitation posted to Allevi along with the deadly bottle. Dr Ferrari was a local government officer and he used the town hall facilities regularly in his work.

On 1 September 1973 Dr Ferrari was charged with the murder of Tranquillo Allevi and the trial the next year caused a sensation in Italy . This was a cold, calculated killing by poison and certainly no hot-blooded Latin-style crime of passion. International press also covered the story. After all, this case had everything: a prosperous husband cut down in his prime; his beautiful but promiscuous wife and her trio of lovers; the suave, handsome defendant loudly proclaiming his innocence. This was not just excellent tabloid fodder, this cast of characters was worthy of Italian opera! All it required was a Rossini or a Puccini to supply the music.

Defense counsel fiercely challenged the forensic evidence, and there were problems surrounding the precise motive. Dr Ferrari had only recently become engaged to the daughter of a wealthy family. Why would he jeopardize his future by sending a poisoned bottle of aperitif to the home of his former lover? The doctor claimed that his relationship with Renata was purely sexual, and that he had been happy to break off the liaison when he met his fiancée.

Still dressed in widow's black, Renata told a different story in the witness box the next day. She testified that it was she who had broken off the affair when her husband had discovered that she was meeting Dr Ferrari for occasional afternoon trysts in local hotels. Though she often sought pleasure in the arms of other men, Renata still loved her husband deeply and would never leave him, she said. When defense counsel cynically suggested in cross-examination that she would also never leave her Mercedes sports car, her extensive wardrobe and other baubles of wealth, prosecuting counsel immediately objected. The objection was sustained, and she did not answer.

Ferrari had refused to accept the breach. She had weakened at first, but then came to a final decision. “I will not return to you,” she had told him.

She stated that Ferrari had replied, “We will see about that.”

Experts told the court that the strychnine had been inserted by a syringe through the cork of the intact bottle. But the final, damning piece of evidence was supplied by a representative of the drinks company. He stated under oath that although no sample had been sent to Mr Allevi; one had been dispatched, with an invitation on company notepaper, to Dr Renzo Ferrari.

A panel of judges found the defendant guilty of murder with premeditation on 15 May 1974. The sentence amounted to 30 years, including consecutive terms for the attempted murder of Allevi's two drinking companions.

A year later, Renata cast off her widow's weeds and married her dashing Army officer soon after inheriting all her husband's wealth. Of course, she held her head up high and feigned indifference when old ladies frowned and gossiped behind their hands whenever she drove into San Remo to shop and dine at the Casino restaurant.

Doctor Ferrari, meantime, was languishing in jail. He had devised and then sent a liquid time bomb through the mail. Although it was addressed to Allevi, anyone, including Renata, could have sampled the deadly aperitif. The doctor had literally bottled up his rage and sent it through the post.

(Research: ‘The World's Worst Murders', Chancellor Press, 1999).

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