An abusive builder murdered his ‘kind-hearted’ wife and stepson by repeatedly stabbing them and cutting their throats after she threatened to divorce him.
Court heard that the Sicilian-born Calogero Ricotta, 64, shoved Maria Nugara, 54, against a sofa in their living room and stabbed her as she screamed for help.
Her son Giuseppe, 29, from her first marriage, is said to have rushed in and leapt on his stepfather’s back, only to be stabbed himself.
A youth, who can’t be named for legal reasons, tried to intervene but ended up being stabbed in the hand, jurors were told.
Opening the trial at Chelmsford Crown Court, prosecutor Simon Spence KC said mother-of-four Mrs Nugara was ‘petrified’ of her husband and had told a friend her husband had warned: ‘Dead or alive, you are not leaving this marriage.’
Ricotta is also claimed to have threatened her at a family Christmas gathering, saying: ‘If she doesn’t listen to me, I will cut her throat like a sheep and put her in a hole.’
The double killing happened on May 28 last year, hours after Mrs Nugara’s solicitors emailed divorce papers to serve on her husband.
Mr Spence said: ‘The background to this tragic and violent incident was the increasingly unhappy marriage between the defendant and his wife, which led her to take steps to obtain a divorce from him and achieve some financial independence.’
Post-mortem examinations found Mrs Nugara had suffered 14 stab wounds and 44 incise wounds to her body, front, sides, hands and back.
One ‘gaping incise wound’, which cut through her voice box, both jugular veins and a carotid artery in her neck, would have ’caused uncontrollable blood loss and rapid death’.
Her son had chest and neck injuries which would have rendered him unconscious in seconds and dead within minutes.
The pair were declared dead at the scene after paramedics and police battled in vain to save them. Another woman in the house raised the alarm.
