On October 16, 2002, a man in the northern Italian town of Chieri shot and killed his ex-wife and six others relatives and neighbors before turning the gun on himself.

The gunman, Mauro Antonello, a 40-year-old construction worker, former security guard and gun collector, reportedly had a bitter breakup two years ago with his wife, 40-year-old Carla Bergamin.

Antonello left a videotaped message for the couple's 7-year-old daughter, who was at school when the slayings occurred, to "explain why you have been left without me," the Turin-based La Stampa newspaper reported Wednesday. "It was all mom's fault. It was she who didn't want to go back with me, who didn't want to reunite our family."

The man also reportedly left notes in the trailer he rented last week and where he spent the night before carrying out the massacre. "I kill you because I love you," he reportedly wrote to the people he would shoot. Chieri, a relatively well-off suburb of about 32,000 people, near the norhtwestern industrial city of Turin. The victims were Bergamin, her mother, brother, sister-in-law, as well as two neighbors and a woman who worked in the Bergamin family textile factory.

A day before the family rampage, a former customs police official in the northern town of Reggio Emilia videotaped himself shooting and killing his wife and daughter and injuring his daughter's boyfriend. The gunman then unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide, but eventually died in the hospital two days later.

Two weeks before, in the northern suburb, Leno, near Brescia, police found the body of a missing 14-year-old, Desiree Piovanelli, who had been stabbed to death in what allegedly had been planned as a gang rape. Three teenagers, including one who lived next door, and a 36-year-old neighbor who lived across the street were arrested and charged with the murder.

Man goes on shooting rampage in Italy, killing 8

The Deseret News

October 15, 2002

CHIERI, Italy -- A heavily armed man fatally shot his ex-wife and six other relatives and neighbors Tuesday and then killed himself in a rampage that horrified a northern Italian town, police and news reports said.

The bodies of three men and five women were found in two adjacent apartments in Chieri, a suburb of the northwestern city of Turin, said Col. Filippo Ricciarelli, of the carabinieri paramilitary police in Turin.

Italian news reports identified the assailant as Mauro Antonello,

Man kills 6, then self

The Cincinnati Post

October 15, 2002

Mauro Antonello - a former night watchman armed with two semiautomatic pistols, a light machine gun, and a revolver - fatally shot his ex-wife, six relatives and neighbors, and then killed himself at about 9 this morning. The victims, three men and five women, were found in two adjacent apartments in Chieri, about 10 miles south of Turin, said Col. Filippo Ricciarelli, of the carabinieri police.

Italian rampage

The Cincinnati Post

October 16, 2002

Stunned Italians were looking inward after a man shot and killed his ex-wife and six others before turning the gun on himself in this quiet suburban town, the latest in a series of domestic slayings. The gunman, Mauro Antonello, a 40-year-old construction worker, former security guard and gun collector, reportedly had a bitter breakup two years ago with his wife.

One more family massacre stuns Italy

The Record (Hackensack, NJ)

October 16, 2002

CHIERI, Italy - A gun collector shot and killed his ex-wife and six other relatives and neighbors Tuesday, then turned the gun on himself in the latest in a spate of small-town family slayings that have horrified Italians.

The killings occurred in two adjacent homes in Chieri, a relatively well-off suburb of the northwestern industrial city of Turin, said Col. Filippo Ricciarelli of the paramilitary police.

Italian news reports identified the assailant as Mauro Antonello, a 40-year-old construction worker, former security guard and gun collector who had an acrimonious breakup two years ago with his wife.

Mauro Antonello

In the latest killings involving families or children to shock Italy, a man went on a shooting rampage on Tuesday, shooting dead seven people with three guns before killing himself.

It was the third episode of domestic violence in Italy in less than 24 hours, leaving a total of 12 dead and two critically injured.

The morning killing spree took place in the tranquil, well-to-do community of Chieri, in hill country outside the northeastern industrial city of Turin.

According to an initial reconstruction, police said the man, identified as Mauro Antonello, 40, used several weapons to shoot his wife, from whom he was separated, her mother, his brother-in-law and his wife, and three neighbours.

Antonello, a gun collector, then killed himself. Initial reports said he was a security guard but he was later identified as a building company employee.

The weapons included a revolver, a semi-automatic pistol and a sub-machine gun. Antonello had permits for all of them.

Tuesday's violence was the latest to take place in the type of small communities of neat brick houses and trimmed gardens where families who can afford it move to escape urban crime.

Neighbours said the shooting began at about 8:45 a.m. local time and within 10 minutes eight people were on the ground. The body of one of the victims, apparently a woman, was still lying in a rear garden more than four hours later.

Neighbours said he shot his wife, Carla Bergamin, with a machine gun in the garden.

"I saw a man shooting and a woman falling to the ground, he had a dark jacket and after the first shots I took cover in my house, there was a lot of shooting," said Battista Cappa, a 71-year-old neighbour.

Antonello's next victims were two old-aged pensioners who had run out to assist the woman.

He then vaulted into the garden of the neighbouring house.

In the next couple of minutes, he dispatched his wife's mother, brother and sister in law.

At least two of the victims were killed in a small textile workshop belonging to his wife's family attached to the neighbouring house, and at least one other was gunned down in the garden.

"I saw a man who was shooting and a person who fell to the ground," the ANSA news agency quoted witness Battista Cappa, 71, as saying.

"He had a dark jacket on and after the first shots, I went back inside my home out of fear."

"I saw the man run between the two houses. He was bent close to the ground holding the guns," neighbour Giovanni Griva told reporters.

They found Antonello's body in an attic room. He had apparently shot himself in the head.

"I saw this man running between the two houses. He had a dark jacket on, running doubled up with guns levelled, and a baseball cap pulled down over his face," said Giovanni Griva, who lives across the road from the scene.

"He fired 30, 40 times, but I noticed too late to stop him.

"When I heard the first shots, I thought he was shooting with a pistol to scare off pigeons.

"I was shaving and when I noticed that the shooting wasn't stopping, I went to the window and saw this crazy man. It lasted around three to five minutes. Then he went into his house.

"There was a final shot and then everything went silent. Then, more or less immediately, the carabinieri and the ambulances arrived."

Provincial police chief Niccolo Paratore told reporters that all the weapons used by Antonello, a gun enthusiast, were legally held and licensed.

The couple's seven-year-old daughter had only just left for school and other members of the two families had gone to work.

Note to self

"I must wake up at five. I must remember to take my anti-panic-attack pills. I must be very relaxed and calm." Mauro Antonello's memo to himself to prepare for what he called 'the party'.

Antonello left a videotaped message for the couple's 7-year-old daughter, who was at school when the slayings occurred, to "explain why you have been left without me," the Turin-based La Stampa newspaper reported Wednesday. "It was all mom's fault. It was she who didn't want to go back with me, who didn't want to reunite our family."

The man also reportedly left notes in the trailer he rented last week and where he spent the night before carrying out the massacre. "I kill you because I love you," he reportedly wrote to the people he would shoot.

"I'm shocked, all those people shot. What can you say?" asked 15-year-old Andrea De Stefani, with a group of friends in a downtown piazza. Like hundreds of others, De Stefani had gone to the scene of the shooting earlier in the day.

"This is a small village where everybody knows everybody. We're tranquil people," said Mario Verniano, who works at a gas station a few yards from Bergamin's house.

"I used to see them. I still can't believe it happened," he said.

Having downed excessive amounts of camomile tea to calm his nerves, last Tuesday morning the 40-year-old unemployed construction worker from a small town near Turin drove a hired camper-van to the house of his ex-wife, wearing a flak jacket and carrying four firearms.

Hidden in the van, he waited until his ex-wife, Carla Bergamin, 40, had returned from taking their seven-year-old daughter to the school bus. Then, as she was climbing into her car to go to work Antonello shot her. He then proceeded to gun down the next six people he encountered -- his ex-wife's mother, her brother and his wife (who lived next door), two neighbours and a domestic wor ker -- before turning one of the weapons on himself. The massacre lasted less than two minutes.

Antonello, who had been estranged from his wife for two years, fired some 100 bullets from the weapons (a revolver, a machine-gun and two semi-automatic pistols) in the shooting spree which traumatised the relatively well-off street of semi-detached houses where it happened, and left Italy soul-searching on the latest in a growing number of mass family murders taking place in small and closed communities.