Man denies murders of wife ‘who was divorcing him’ and her son, court told
Share:
A builder whose wife was taking steps to divorce him slit her throat and did the same to her son, a court heard. Maria Nugara said in a message to a friend the day before she died that she was “a bit scared” and “he’s saying I have to stay with him or things are going to get messy”, prosecutor Simon Spence KC said.
Calogero Ricotta, 64, denies the murders of his 54-year-old wife Maria Nugara, referred to in charges as Maria Ricotta, and her 29-year-old son Giuseppe Morreale, also known as Joe. Mr Spence told jurors at Chelmsford Crown Court that the pair were killed at the family home in the village of Ugley in Essex, near Bishop’s Stortford, on May 28 last year.
“The background to this tragic and violent incident was an increasingly unhappy marriage between the defendant and his wife, leading her to take steps to obtain a divorce from him and achieve some financial independence,” said Mr Spence, opening the prosecution case.
The barrister said these were “things we say the defendant didn’t want to happen and which he tried to prevent”. He said that Ricotta, originally from Sicily in Italy, attacked his wife after she was captured on CCTV arriving back at the house at 9.47pm.
“An argument between him and Maria started almost immediately,” he said. Mr Spence said that a youth who was present in the house heard screaming and saw Maria Nugara in the living room “pinned against the sofa and (Ricotta) standing over her stabbing”.
.png?width=1200&auto=webp&quality=75)
