Murder and Aftermath
The plan was relatively straightforward. Olimpio Calvetti and Marzio were to kill Count Francesco Cenci in his bed, than toss him out a balcony, staging the scene to make it look like an accidental fall. Accordingly, on the night of September 8-9, 1598, Beatrice slipped her father a sleeping potion to knock him out. Olimpio and Marzio then snuck into his bedroom, held him down, and drove an iron spike into his head. They then dressed his body, and threw him over the balcony’s edge, breaking a part of it to make it look like it had collapsed. The duo then gathered the bloody bedsheets, and fled.
However, the killers had done a sloppy job in covering their tracks. The fatal wound in the count’s head did not correspond to a wound from a fall, and while Olimpio and Marzio had taken the bloody bedsheets, they neglected to wipe blood spatters from elsewhere in the count’s bedroom. It did not take the investigators long to realize that Francesco Cenci had been murdered, nor did it take them long to realize that the culprits were his own family members.
The papal authorities arrested Beatrice, her stepmother Lucrezia, her brothers Giacomo and twelve year old Bernardo, and her lover and hitman, Olimpio, and tossed them all in jail. The other hitman, Marzio, fled into the mountains, but was tracked down and killed by one of Count Cenci’s relatives. The people of Rome, who knew what kind of man Francesco Cenci had been, figured he deserved his fate, and sympathized with Beatrice and her coconspirators. However, Pope Clement VIII, ruler of Rome and the papal states where the crime had taken place, had other ideas. Viewing patricide as a heinous crime, and worried that leniency might encourage other children to murder their parents, the pope authorized the torture of the accused.
They began with Olimpio, the lowest socially ranked of the conspirators, but he kept mum, refusing to confess or implicate his lover, Beatrice, until he died during the harsh interrogation. Beatrice’s brother Giacomo was not as tough, however. He had not been at the Cenci castle on the night of the murder, but under torture, he spilled out that his younger sister had been the chief culprit, and that she had planned everything. The rest of her family also broke under torture, and Lucrezia and young Bernardo pinned the blame on Beatrice as the ringleader. Beatrice was made of sterner stuff, however, and withstood the torture, including getting stretched on the rack, without admitting to anything. The confessions extracted from the rest of the family were sufficient, however. In a subsequent trial, all were found guilty, and were sentenced to death.
The people of Rome protested, and managed to get the execution postponed, but it was only a temporary reprieve, and Pope Clement VIII insisted that the sentences be carried out. On September 11th, 1599, the Cencis were taken for execution in front of the Sant’Angelo castle in Rome. Giacomo got the worst of it, getting tortured in a cart en route to the scaffold. Once he got there, his head was smashed in with a mallet, then his corpse was quartered. Lucrezia and Beatrice were then executed, more swiftly and mercifully, their heads chopped off with an ax. At the last minute, twelve year old Bernardo, who had been forced to watch the deaths of his mother and siblings, was spared execution, and sentenced to life as a galley slave. However, he was freed a year later. The Cenci property was confiscated – and given to Pope Clement VIII’s family.
_________________
Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Ancient Origins – The Spirit of Beatrice Cenci: A Tale of Terrible Injustice in Ancient Rome
Atlas Obscura – The Femme Fatale Whose Tragic End Festers in the History of Rome
Encyclopedia Britannica – Beatrice Cenci