Life sentence for former Virtus doctor: killed wife and mother-in-law for purely selfish reasons

He wanted to live his life with a younger woman and maintain the inheritance. A double murder 'dictated exclusively by selfish motives, which define a personality trait devoid of humanly or ethically comprehensible profiles'. The Bologna Court of Appeal thus confirmed the life sentence for Giampaolo Amato, former Virtus doctor, for the 'repeated' murder of his wife Isabella Linsalata and mother-in-law Giulia Tateo. In a 331-page judgement, the Bologna appeal panel of judges (president Pasquale Stigliano, extensor Enrico Saracini) gave a 331-page judgement confirming the end of the sentence and denying general extenuating circumstances to the ophthalmologist: 'Two lives have been suppressed,' the judges wrote, 'through a conduct that was not only premeditated, but also coldly and lucidly carried out in a very cunning manner.

Nor is there any trace of critical reconsideration: the sentence does not assess the fact that Amato continues to say he is innocent, an attitude understandable in any defendant, but the defensive line with which he described his wife, "in reality a mother and an impeccable medical professional", as a woman long suffering from an addiction to benzodiazepines, "unable to self-control and to abstain from the immoderate intake of these drugs to the point of death". Circumstance, the judges explained, belied by the evidence gathered in the trial. The two murders, in fact, were allegedly committed by administeringa mix of drugs, Sevoflurane and Midazolam, some twenty days apart. The first, also for the appeal judges 'a kind of dress rehearsal', that of Tateo, who was found dead on 9 October 2021, aged 87. Then, on the night of 30 to 31 October, Linsalata, a 62-year-old gynaecologist.

For the Court, which accepted the approach of the Prosecutor General's Office (Prosecutors Ciro Cascone and Antonella Scandellari), they are two related deaths, articulations of the same criminal design. The judges defined the circumstantial evidence against Amato as 'granitic', and on the sentimental motive (being able to live the relationship with another younger woman) and economic, they essentially shared the first instance sentence: his wife's death before the cessation of the civil effects of the marriage, they say, would have achieved a double objective, allowing Amato not to jeopardise his relationship with his children, as he could not be blamed for the collapse of the conjugal relationship, and allowing him to retain his status as legitimate heir pro-rata to a large estate.