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Indecent Secrets. The Infamous Murri Murder Affair
On a hot summer day in Italy in 1902, the brutally stabbed body of Count Francesco Bonmartini was discovered, by means of its decomposing stench, inside his locked apartment. He was a typical Italian provincial aristocrat in all but one he had married into a prominent but deeply troubled family. His father-in-law was one of the nation's most famous doctors. His wife, Linda, a young freethinker, was the apple of her father's eye. Linda's brother dabbled in anarchism. Linda's lover was her father's top assistant. Her relations with them were illicit, incestuous -- and murderous.The scandal that erupted was a top news story in Europe and America for three consecutive years. Investigators uncovered successive layers of a conspiracy that constantly twisted and changed its shape. The suspects included all these men as well as their servants and lovers. There was a diverse array of murder weapons, including knives, heavy pellets, and poison. There were rumors of missing accomplices. Intimate relations among many suspects were uncovered through sensational letters and testimonials. Witnesses died mysteriously. A suspect tried to kill himself. One question lingered throughout and still haunts researchers what role did Bonmartini's widow, Linda, known as "The Enchantress," play? Was she the spider at the center of the vast web, or did the plot originate with the key men who loved her so desperately?Scholar and writer Christina Vella combines meticulous research with a novelist's eye for a great story. As she unspools the tight, tense drama, she offers a fascinating picture of Italian society in the early 20th century, with a historian's insights into life at both the top and thebottom. From sexual dysfunctions, to prison conditions, to the patronage systems that permeated medicine, law, and politics, the Bonmartini murder provides a window into a rich world. The result is an unforgettable story and an invaluable introduction to an Italy that is still recognizable today.
395 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2005
2 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Christina Vella
5 books5 followersChristina Vella was a writer, historian of modern Europe, and adjunct professor at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Her first book, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, was entered for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1997 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and The Times-Picayune. It chronicles the life and career of Micaela Almonester, the woman responsible for building the Embassy of the United States in Paris and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. In 2003, Intimate Enemies was adapted by Thea Musgrave as the opera Pontalba, which premiered in New Orleans in October of that year.
Vella's later books include The Hitler Kiss: A Memoir of the Czech Resistance (2002), co-authored with Radomir Luza, and Indecent Secrets - The Infamous Murri Murder Affair (2006), a history of the Murri murder trial which took place in Bologna, Italy in 1905.
Vella received her Ph.D. in European and U.S. history from Tulane University in New Orleans. A professor of history for over twenty years, she now devotes most of her time to writing and lecturing. She frequently serves as a consultant and writer for the U.S. Department of State.
She is the recipient of the 2010 Preservation Award from the Foundation for Historical Louisiana.
(from Wikipedia)
Her first book, Intimate Enemies: The Two Worlds of the Baroness de Pontalba, was entered for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award. It was published by Louisiana State University Press in 1997 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by the New York Times Book Review, Publishers Weekly, and The Times-Picayune. It chronicles the life and career of Micaela Almonester, the woman responsible for building the Embassy of the United States in Paris and the Pontalba Buildings in New Orleans. In 2003, Intimate Enemies was adapted by Thea Musgrave as the opera Pontalba, which premiered in New Orleans in October of that year.
Vella's later books include The Hitler Kiss: A Memoir of the Czech Resistance (2002), co-authored with Radomir Luza, and Indecent Secrets - The Infamous Murri Murder Affair (2006), a history of the Murri murder trial which took place in Bologna, Italy in 1905.
Vella received her Ph.D. in European and U.S. history from Tulane University in New Orleans. A professor of history for over twenty years, she now devotes most of her time to writing and lecturing. She frequently serves as a consultant and writer for the U.S. Department of State.
She is the recipient of the 2010 Preservation Award from the Foundation for Historical Louisiana.
(from Wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 17, 2008
Picked it up to see if these events had anything at all to do with my Mom's side of the family... it doesn't... I'm really happy to say.
I didn't finish it... I may pick it up again, because it seems like a compelling story.
I didn't finish it... I may pick it up again, because it seems like a compelling story.
December 4, 2019
The research done for this TRUE crime book must have been staggering! What a twisted maze of events & equally twisted people. Well done, Ms. Vella! Warning: this is *not* a quick-read book.
February 7, 2020
A good read, I am surprised it took me so long to finish it.
I don’t want to spoil it for anyone but Linda, one of the key people, sounds like a psychopath.
I don’t want to spoil it for anyone but Linda, one of the key people, sounds like a psychopath.
March 29, 2012
I wish I had enjoyed this book more. I have trouble putting my finger on exactly why it just never clicked for me.
The book is about an infamous trial in Italy. Infamous at that time, that is. Francesco; known as "Cesco" Bonmartini, is the victim of a brutal murder in Bologna in 1905. He suffered at least 13 stab wounds which; from the evidence, happened just after he had entered his own apartment. The apartment should have been empty, as his family was in another town at the time.
The first thought that the police had was that the murderer was either his wife, or her lover. Simple enough. But it quickly becomes apparent to the police that this is a far more complicated case: could her brother be involved? Or her father, a prominent doctor? Or the doctor's protege, who wanted to ingratiate himself with the doctor? Perhaps the doctor hired an assassin from outside? And some of the servants are acting suspicious as well.
Already we have many of the elements of what could have been an interesting crime story for me. A historical crime; committed in Europe, with a complicated cast of characters, and many unanswered questions.
So why such a poor rating?
Well, setting up the characters and the emotional climate which lead up to the crime takes some time. In most books I would enjoy this. In this book the more I learned about these people; the more empty their lives seemed, and the more shallow their personalities. Again and again, they seemed to try and summon the notion of grand opera from lives that were not particularly interesting and certainly not grand, no matter what drama they chose to ascribe to them.
The bulk of the book is taken up by the trial, which can be the portion which begins to deepen a case, as one usually gains insight of the motivations of the participants. And this is where the insight into the criminal mind often takes off.
Again, this book disappoints. The trial lumbers along year after year, sometimes exciting according to the sensibilities of the time: Adulterous wife! Devoted husband! Incestuous Father! Along with servants who are also lovers, ambitious students fallen on hard times, devotion by people of low station, and duplicity and callousness from the comfortably situated, on and on.
And that's the problem, like the trial it just goes on and on. There are confessions, and retractions, and contradictions, and soliloquies by the attorneys, in the best melodramatic form. But I think part of the problem was the sheer volume of the material the author had to deal with. The trail lasted three years, after all. Perhaps in trying to by faithful to all the twists and turns, and the ever-shifting relationships and loyalties, the author lost sight of the necessity of condensing the material so that the reader doesn't feel as though they lived through every day of the trial, the high moments and the numbingly tedious ones as well. It didn't feel quite like three years, but it did go on for was far too long.
I don't know that I could write anything better, because the material itself is flawed by the grinding banality of people who are not only hollow at the core, but insipid. At the end of the day the story is not enigmatic from all the unanswered questions, but empty because each of the people involved was incomplete as a human being. It was all just a waste.
The book is about an infamous trial in Italy. Infamous at that time, that is. Francesco; known as "Cesco" Bonmartini, is the victim of a brutal murder in Bologna in 1905. He suffered at least 13 stab wounds which; from the evidence, happened just after he had entered his own apartment. The apartment should have been empty, as his family was in another town at the time.
The first thought that the police had was that the murderer was either his wife, or her lover. Simple enough. But it quickly becomes apparent to the police that this is a far more complicated case: could her brother be involved? Or her father, a prominent doctor? Or the doctor's protege, who wanted to ingratiate himself with the doctor? Perhaps the doctor hired an assassin from outside? And some of the servants are acting suspicious as well.
Already we have many of the elements of what could have been an interesting crime story for me. A historical crime; committed in Europe, with a complicated cast of characters, and many unanswered questions.
So why such a poor rating?
Well, setting up the characters and the emotional climate which lead up to the crime takes some time. In most books I would enjoy this. In this book the more I learned about these people; the more empty their lives seemed, and the more shallow their personalities. Again and again, they seemed to try and summon the notion of grand opera from lives that were not particularly interesting and certainly not grand, no matter what drama they chose to ascribe to them.
The bulk of the book is taken up by the trial, which can be the portion which begins to deepen a case, as one usually gains insight of the motivations of the participants. And this is where the insight into the criminal mind often takes off.
Again, this book disappoints. The trial lumbers along year after year, sometimes exciting according to the sensibilities of the time: Adulterous wife! Devoted husband! Incestuous Father! Along with servants who are also lovers, ambitious students fallen on hard times, devotion by people of low station, and duplicity and callousness from the comfortably situated, on and on.
And that's the problem, like the trial it just goes on and on. There are confessions, and retractions, and contradictions, and soliloquies by the attorneys, in the best melodramatic form. But I think part of the problem was the sheer volume of the material the author had to deal with. The trail lasted three years, after all. Perhaps in trying to by faithful to all the twists and turns, and the ever-shifting relationships and loyalties, the author lost sight of the necessity of condensing the material so that the reader doesn't feel as though they lived through every day of the trial, the high moments and the numbingly tedious ones as well. It didn't feel quite like three years, but it did go on for was far too long.
I don't know that I could write anything better, because the material itself is flawed by the grinding banality of people who are not only hollow at the core, but insipid. At the end of the day the story is not enigmatic from all the unanswered questions, but empty because each of the people involved was incomplete as a human being. It was all just a waste.
April 4, 2016
A family member murdered? Or a family of murders? The story of 20th Century Italy’s greatest trial.
Opening with the particularly gruesome discovery of the decaying corpse of the Count Francesco Bonmatini in the hot summer of 1902, author Christina Vella offers an exhaustive, investigator’s history of Italy’s crime of century – the infamous Murri Murder Affair. Was the count killed by own family, murdered to make way for his wife’s secret paramour? The case, which unfolded like a twisted piece of salacious origami, captivated the Italian public for years and fueled a boom of yellow journalism as the court (and more importantly the press) devoured reams of letters, coded telegrams, and private diaries rife with scandalous sexual implications.
Vella is meticulous in her research and carefully unfolds the story of Bonmartini’s murder player-by-player, layer-by-layer. Though more than 100-years have passed since the count’s death, the time gap does little to diminish the drama of the story, with its many twists, turns, and surprise witnesses, and Vella capably capitalizes on that drama with quite a few of those twists (and final verdict) being just as jaw-dropping to the modern reader as they must have been to their Italian contemporaries. Just as critically, Vella offers a rather satisfying coda to the whole affair, giving us the denouement on all the major characters, and offering a pretty satisfying theory on the whodunit?
Indecent Secrets is good history – perhaps at times a bit dense – but a thorough telling of a case that once captured the attention of the world. Now, fading almost into obscurity – search the Internet for Bonmartini’s notorious wife Linda Murri and many of your hits will be (bizarrely enough) for an award winning wedding photographer of the same name -- it’s a memorable touchstone to our own similar and seemingly irresistible fixations with more modern criminal infamies … the cases of Jon Benet Ramsey, O.J. Simpson and Casey Anthony (to name a few).
November 30, 2011
I had never heard of this murder trial which appears to have been a cause celebre in Italy at the turn of the 20th century. Involving individuals who were well known at the time, it caught the attention of the public and the press and the trial extended over several years. There is so much extraneous and minute detail in this book that it slowed it down to a crawl in many places.....it was more than I needed to know. I felt detached and uninterested in the trial and in the individuals involved. It is a dry tale of not very nice people doing not very nice things.
January 21, 2009
I only made it halfway through the book. A highly interesting affair/murder - practically a soap opera. However, it's nonfiction and rather dry. I was hoping things would pick up, but I decided to quit it after all.
June 20, 2014
Started out interesting but drags on forever..I lost interest and never picked it back up..
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews