Laura Taroni was a nurse in the emergency department of the public hospital in Saronno, in the province of Varese. She lived in Lomazzo, in the province of Como, on the farm run by her husband's family. In November 2016 she was arrested together with Leonardo Cazzaniga, the department's deputy head, an anesthetist with whom she had a long relationship. He was accused of killing patients in the emergency room with overdoses of sedatives and painkillers. She was accused of killing members of her own family with him.
The courts found that Taroni and Cazzaniga killed her husband, Massimo Guerra, who died at home on June 30, 2013, and her mother, Maria Rita Clerici, who died in Taroni's house on January 4, 2014. Taroni was acquitted of a third death in the family, that of her father-in-law, Luciano Guerra, in October 2013, although Cazzaniga was later convicted of it. Taroni chose the abbreviated procedure, a fast-track trial on the case file, and in February 2018 she was sentenced to 30 years. The sentence was confirmed on appeal in July 2019, annulled by the Court of Cassation in 2020 because part of the appeal court's reasoning was missing, confirmed again at a retrial in February 2021, and made final by the Court of Cassation on July 8, 2022.
Little about Taroni's early life appears in the reporting. She was described as 40 when she was arrested and as 44 when her case returned to the Milan appeal court in February 2021. She worked as a nurse and was assigned to the emergency department in Saronno, where she met Cazzaniga at work, Il Giorno reported in 2017. After the first suspicions about deaths on the ward, she was moved to other departments, according to the local paper il Saronno.
She married Massimo Guerra, whose family ran a farm in Lomazzo, and the couple had two children, who were minors at the time of the events. The children are not named here. Il Giorno described the marriage as difficult. Taroni later told investigators that her husband had at times been violent, that he had pushed her into sexual practices she did not want, and that he had forced her to have an abortion. In her ruling, the trial judge traced Taroni's hatred of her husband to a tense marriage that, from about the summer of 2011, she experienced as abusive, Il Giorno reported. The judge also found that this hatred went on long after his death.
Her relationship with her own mother was difficult for many years. The trial judge called the later killing of Maria Rita Clerici the product of an "ancestral hatred" rooted in Taroni's childhood. Clerici's half-sister, Maria Antonietta, disputed that picture in a break during one of the hearings: "It is not true at all," she told reporters, saying that her sister loved her daughter.
Cazzaniga, reported as 60 at his arrest in 2016, was an anesthetist who had worked at the Saronno hospital for many years and became deputy head of its emergency department. He lived in Rovellasca, also in the province of Como. He is the subject of a separate account; his hospital cases appear here only as context. Prosecutors accused him of giving elderly and seriously ill patients lethal intravenous doses of drugs such as midazolam, morphine, propofol, chlorpromazine and promazine, given in overdose and in rapid succession, which staff called the "protocollo Cazzaniga." Witnesses said he called himself "God" and "the angel of death."
The relationship with Taroni was described in court as both "criminal and sentimental." According to the prosecution, the two of them treated anyone who stood in the way of that relationship as an obstacle to be removed.
The case against Taroni for her husband's death began years before he died. A colleague, a nurse identified in the press only as Jessica P., told investigators that in 2011 Taroni said she was putting antidepressants into her husband's coffee to reduce his sex drive, remarking that sugar dissolves in coffee but pills do not. The same colleague said Taroni told her that summer that she had secretly given him a beta-blocker, a heart drug that slows the pulse. Weeks later, SaronnoNews reported, Massimo Guerra was taken to the Saronno hospital with drug poisoning; an emergency doctor reported it to hospital management and to the carabinieri, but nothing came of it.
From early 2012, according to the prosecution, Taroni convinced her husband that he had diabetes, and he began taking medicine for a disease he did not have, among them metformin. Il Post, summarizing the prosecution case, said he had no serious health problems but was persuaded that he had diabetes and heart trouble. Cazzaniga, prosecutors said, signed false blood test results and records of hospital visits that never took place, which gave the treatment a medical cover.
One admission was described in detail at Cazzaniga's trial. On November 1, 2012, Guerra was admitted to the Saronno hospital. A doctor, Simona Sangion, testified that Taroni brought her two tubes of blood, saying she had drawn them herself. About an hour later the laboratory reported a potassium level "incompatible with life," which the doctor took to mean a contaminated sample. Taroni asked her to cancel a second blood test, then came back with Cazzaniga to have the tests ordered again. Cazzaniga, the doctor said, told her to record the diagnosis as decompensated diabetes mellitus.
Over two years Guerra grew tired, drowsy, nauseated and shaky. The prosecution said he lost a great deal of weight. His sister, Gabriella Guerra, told the court that his health declined from 2011.
Massimo Guerra ran the family farm in Lomazzo and sold its produce at local markets with his sister. His parents were Luciano Guerra and Maria Pia Florian. In the courts, his sister Gabriella became the main voice of the Guerra family, and she later said that Taroni had betrayed them "as a member of the family and as a professional."
On June 30, 2013, Guerra was working at a market with Gabriella when he became unwell; he was sweating, cold and numb, and she sent him home. Taroni was at the house. According to evidence later read in court, she exchanged eight messages with Cazzaniga between 11:33 and 11:58 that morning, and at 12:52 she called the on-call medical service. Guerra was found dead on the sofa in the living room. Taroni told the doctor who came that her husband had suffered a heart attack. He was 46, according to Il Giorno and Il Post (45 in other reports). His body was cremated.
In a conversation recorded years later, Il Post reported, citing the Corriere della Sera, Cazzaniga called the cremation "genius." Around the second anniversary of the death, Taroni told Cazzaniga that she had described her late husband to one of her children in harsh terms ("era un mostro," in her Italian), and added that if someone else had not killed him, she would have done it herself.
In the autumn of 2013 Massimo's father died. Luciano Guerra, 78, was admitted to the internal medicine ward of the Saronno hospital on October 1, 2013, and died there on October 20. He was buried in the cemetery in Lomazzo.
In February 2017 prosecutors charged both Taroni and Cazzaniga with his murder, alleging that he had been sedated with powerful drugs taken from the emergency department without any medical need. His body was exhumed that year for an autopsy by Francesco Introna of the University of Bari, with the toxicologist Franco Tagliaro. The experts' report, filed that autumn, found residues of midazolam, the same sedative used in the ward deaths charged to Cazzaniga, although they could not say how much had been given. Questioned by prosecutor Maria Cristina Ria on February 13, 2017, Taroni said she had found Cazzaniga in her father-in-law's room but had not seen him give any drug, and that if he had, it would "surely" have been midazolam or a curare.
At the end of her trial the prosecution itself asked for Taroni to be acquitted of this death. The judge went further than the prosecutors requested and found that she had not committed the act. Cazzaniga, tried separately, was convicted of Luciano Guerra's murder, and that conviction is final.
Maria Rita Clerici, Taroni's mother, lived with her daughter in Lomazzo after Massimo Guerra's death. She was 61, according to most reports (Il Giorno gave 63 in one article), and her relatives told the court she was generally healthy apart from recurring headaches. She had said she wished to be cremated and placed in her late husband's niche. She disapproved of Cazzaniga and of the relationship, and argued with him. Prosecutors said the hostility between the two came to a physical scuffle a few days before her death.
The prosecution argued that once Taroni was free of her husband she wanted to bring Cazzaniga into her family, and that her mother was a strong obstacle to that. "In the morning this poor woman was well," the deputy prosecutor general, Nunzia Ciaravolo, told the Milan appeal court in 2019, "and in the evening she was very ill."
In the days before January 4, 2014, Taroni and Cazzaniga told relatives, friends and colleagues that Clerici had a high fever and possibly pneumonia. The appeal court later found this to be false and part of the plan. When Gabriella Guerra suggested hospital care, Taroni answered that they could look after her better at home. Cazzaniga took drugs from the hospital, saying they were for her mother's pneumonia.
On the afternoon of January 4, 2014, Clerici fell ill, slipped into a coma and died about two hours later. Gabriella Guerra testified that she saw her lying unconscious in bed, with Taroni and Cazzaniga in the room and Cazzaniga holding a drip bag of clear liquid; she said she felt reassured, because she thought they were treating her. Neither of them called an ambulance or took her to hospital. The prosecution said that at the end Clerici collapsed to the floor and her daughter performed cardiac massage before the emergency services arrived. The couple told a doctor who came to the house that Clerici had a history of cancer that had led to sudden cardiac arrest, which was untrue. Her body, too, was cremated.
The inquiry grew out of the hospital. In 2013 an internal commission reviewed some of Cazzaniga's cases and found no grounds for a report. On June 20, 2014, a nurse in the emergency department, Clelia Leto, took her concerns to the prosecutor's office in Busto Arsizio, the court district that covers Saronno. Her complaint, Quotidiano Nazionale reported, also noted that Taroni's family had lost her husband, her father-in-law and her mother within a few months. A second nurse also complained, and il Saronno reported that one of them went to the carabinieri after receiving threats from Cazzaniga.
For two years the Saronno carabinieri, under Captain Giuseppe Regina, worked through medical records with experts appointed by the prosecutors, questioned more than 150 people and placed telephone and room bugs. The prosecutor's office, led by chief prosecutor Gianluigi Fontana, with Maria Cristina Ria as the prosecutor in charge, called the investigation "Angeli e Demoni" (Angels and Demons).
The recordings shaped the case against Taroni. In one, reported by EspansioneTv at the time of the arrests, she said: "Every now and then I have this urge. To kill someone." Other recordings, according to SaronnoNews, showed her talking about wanting to kill several family members who lived with her, and in one she told a babysitter that she had put drain cleaner on an aunt's tomatoes. In conversations with Cazzaniga she admitted giving her father-in-law a powerful antipsychotic without his knowledge.
On June 19, 2016, in a car, Cazzaniga described what he did with patients as euthanasia. Taroni corrected him: euthanasia, she said, is when a person who is still lucid asks you to end their life. Cazzaniga then corrected himself and called the acts voluntary homicides. In another conversation Taroni referred to a "choice" made in 2012. Prosecutor Ria called it "an ambiguous and troubling expression," since it could refer either to their relationship or to a pact.
On the morning of November 29, 2016, carabinieri arrested Cazzaniga at his home in Rovellasca and Taroni at the family farm in Lomazzo. The custody order ran to more than 60 pages. Cazzaniga was accused at that point of four deaths in the emergency room, on dates in 2012 and 2013; Taroni was charged only with her husband's murder, committed with him. Fourteen other people were under investigation, many linked to the hospital, including its medical director, the head of the emergency department and members of the internal commission. Taroni was taken to the Bassone prison in Como. Her lawyer, Monica Alberti, said she was "shaken and worried."
Investigators seized dozens of medical records at the hospital on the day of the arrests. In early February 2017 prosecutors added the deaths of Taroni's mother and father-in-law to the charges against both. A judge refused to order custody over the mother's death at that stage.
After the arrests, the alliance between the two began to break down. Questioned by the investigating judge Luca Labianca, Taroni played down her own role and placed the key decisions on Cazzaniga, Il Giorno reported. Cazzaniga said he had given Guerra diabetes drugs on the basis of a diagnosis Taroni had given him.
In May 2017 the Busto Arsizio prosecutors closed the first part of the investigation and moved to send both to trial, Taroni and Cazzaniga for causing serious injury to and murdering Massimo Guerra and for falsifying medical records, and Cazzaniga alone for four patients. In the summer of 2017 judge Sara Cipolla ordered an incidente probatorio, a pre-trial hearing to fix evidence for later use, so that Taroni's statements could be formally recorded. She was questioned over two days in late September 2017. She denied killing her husband but admitted giving him drugs, saying she did so to reduce his libido after their marriage broke down. Her lawyers argued that he died months after the drugs were stopped.
In January 2018 the questioning turned to her mother. According to EspansioneTv, Taroni blamed Cazzaniga, saying: "We looked at each other and he gave my mother the injection." She said she knew the injection would be lethal, and that Cazzaniga had told her that her mother had treated her badly all her life and would always stand in their way. In other accounts she said he had injected a clot-dissolving drug into her mother's jugular vein. The prosecutors argued instead that the couple had subjected Clerici to the "protocollo Cazzaniga" in the days before her death.
Psychiatric experts examined both defendants. The first assessment, by Isabella Merzagora and Franco Martelli, found that Taroni had a personality disorder but was capable of understanding and willing her acts.
Taroni chose the abbreviated procedure, under which a defendant is tried on the evidence in the file and, if convicted, receives a one-third reduction in sentence. Cazzaniga chose a full trial before the Corte d'Assise. On February 6, 2018, Fontana and Ria asked for 30 years for the murders of Massimo Guerra and Maria Rita Clerici, and for an acquittal over Luciano Guerra.
On February 23, 2018, after deliberating for about five hours, judge Sara Cipolla sentenced Taroni to 30 years: a life term reduced by one third under the procedure. She acquitted her of her father-in-law's death on the ground that she had not committed the act. The two former lovers sat close together in court and did not look at or speak to each other. "There is no longer any contact between them," Alberti said. She said her client was too shaken to speak and that she hoped someone in prison would look after her. Fontana said a prosecutor should never feel satisfied after a conviction, but that the court had largely accepted his office's requests. The Guerra family's lawyer, Luisa Scarrone, said the family still wanted to know who had killed Luciano Guerra.
The judge's 360-page reasons, reported by Il Giorno in May 2018, found that Taroni had given her husband drugs with no medical need, sometimes mixed into his food, and that this went well beyond what she admitted. Taroni had told the court she wanted to kill her husband because she felt abused, but that she had been acquiescent rather than active in the deaths. The judge rejected that account of her mother's death and found that Taroni had been present and accepted what was done. The judge described Clerici's killing as "terrible" and "unmotivated." Because both victims had been cremated, there could be no autopsy or toxicology, and the conviction rested on circumstantial evidence.
The case went to the Corte d'Assise d'Appello in Milan. On June 26, 2019, Ciaravolo asked the court to confirm the sentence. Taroni made a spontaneous statement declaring her innocence. "I never intended to kill anyone, nor did I ever do it," she said. On July 3, 2019, the court confirmed the 30 years. Gabriella Guerra said afterward that Taroni had betrayed the family. Scarrone said the family could feel no satisfaction "in front of a family that has been devastated."
The 122-page reasons, written by the presiding judge Ivana Caputo and reported by Il Giorno in December 2019, found that Taroni had begun giving her husband useless drug treatments in 2011, with Cazzaniga's agreement, first to incapacitate him and then to get rid of him because he stood in the way of the affair. The court found premeditation, because the harm was inflicted over a long period. It also found that Taroni had confessed that a drug Cazzaniga brought to the house and injected caused her mother's death, with her consent or at least without her opposition, and that the mother's killing was premeditated too.
Taroni's lawyers took the case to the Court of Cassation. Its First Criminal Section, presided over by Raffaello Magi, annulled the appeal ruling against her and sent the case back to another section of the Milan appeal court; the reasons were filed at the end of September 2020. The defense had pointed out that the chapter of the appeal ruling on "crimes committed within the Guerra family" was missing and that part of the document had not been signed by the judge who wrote it. The Cassation court found that the 13 missing pages were no clerical slip: they dealt with the defense's central objection, about Taroni's capacity to understand and will her acts at the time, and so her criminal responsibility. The appeal court had not answered that objection, nor the request for a new psychiatric assessment. A retrial on appeal, the court said, must look at the question again.
The retrial opened in Milan on November 12, 2020, and the court ordered a new psychiatric assessment. The expert, Franco Freilone of Turin, found that Taroni was "fascinated by death," and probably by control over death, but that she was capable of understanding and willing her acts at the time of the killings, with no acute or dangerous psychopathology. A defense consultant argued instead for mental incapacity. At the hearing on February 8, 2021, Ciaravolo again asked for 30 years, saying Taroni had shown a "lucid will to kill" and a casual use of drugs.
Taroni did not attend the final hearing, even by video link. Her lawyers, Alberti and Cataldo Intrieri, read a letter from her. She wrote that in prison she had found "the woman I was and the mother I want to be," that no one believed more than she did in the rehabilitative purpose of punishment, and that she had found serenity there.
On February 12, 2021, after more than four hours of deliberation, the court presided over by Valeria De Risi confirmed the 30-year sentence. It removed the aggravating circumstance of premeditation for the killing of her mother. Intrieri argued that dropping premeditation should have lowered the sentence. The family's civil claim against Taroni was rejected; Scarrone said compensation would be pursued in Cazzaniga's case, in which the hospital authority had been named as civilly liable. At the time Taroni was held in the prison in Como.
The defense appealed again. On July 8, 2022, the Fifth Criminal Section of the Court of Cassation rejected the appeal, as the deputy prosecutor general Luigi Giordano had asked, and the 30-year sentence became final. The written reasons, 22 pages by judge Luca Pistorelli, were reported by Il Giorno in February 2023. The defense had raised eight grounds, among them a complaint that it had not been allowed to cross-examine the psychiatric expert in Milan; the court noted that the expert's method had been discussed with the defense consultants, who raised no objection at the time. It refused to reduce the sentence despite the loss of premeditation, because two aggravating circumstances remained for the mother's killing: that the victim was her own parent and that poisonous substances were used.
Il Giorno summed up the motives as the courts found them: her husband was an obstacle to the relationship with Cazzaniga, and her hostility toward her mother was long-standing and made worse by her mother's open opposition to the relationship.
Cazzaniga's full trial before the Corte d'Assise in Busto Arsizio, presided over by Renata Peragallo, ended on January 27, 2020, with a life sentence and three years of daytime isolation. He was convicted of the murders of Massimo Guerra and Luciano Guerra and of ten patients, and acquitted of Maria Rita Clerici's death on the ground that he had not committed the act. The Milan appeal court confirmed the life sentence on April 13, 2021, acquitting him of three patient deaths and adding one. The Court of Cassation made the life sentence final on September 30, 2022, sending one patient's case back for a further appeal.
The two courts thus reached different outcomes on the family deaths. Taroni was convicted of her mother's murder committed with Cazzaniga, while he was acquitted of it. She was acquitted of her father-in-law's death, while he was convicted. According to Il Giorno's report of the 2022 Cassation reasons, the difference over Clerici came from a different judgment of how credible Taroni's statements accusing herself and Cazzaniga were, not from a different account of what happened.
The investigation also reached the people who had been told about Cazzaniga and did not stop him. They were public officials, and their outcomes are summarized here.
Some were tried with Taroni in the fast-track proceedings. In February 2018 Fabrizio Frattini, described by SaronnoNews as head of the emergency department and by Il Giorno as an anesthetist on the internal commission, received 1 year and 4 months, suspended, for aiding Cazzaniga; Claudio Borgio, head of nursing services, was fined 444 euros for failing to report and acquitted of aiding; the doctors Giancarlo Favia and Daniele Sironi each received 8 months, suspended, for false certification linked to Massimo Guerra's illness and insurance papers; Simona Sangion agreed a plea of 1 year and 2 months, suspended; Elena Soldavini was placed on probation. Sentences of up to 1 year and 4 months for two doctors and two hospital managers were confirmed on appeal in July 2019, although Il Giorno reported that Frattini was acquitted of aiding on appeal because the act was not a crime. In 2020 the Court of Cassation rejected the appeals of Frattini and Favia and annulled the rulings on Borgio and Sironi. At the February 2021 retrial Borgio was acquitted, and the case against Sironi ended without a conviction.
Others were tried with Cazzaniga. Roberto Cosentina, former director of the hospital authority in Busto Arsizio, who had set up the commission; Paolo Valentini, the Saronno hospital's medical director; Nicola Scoppetta, former head of the emergency department, who had been placed under house arrest in March 2017; and the forensic doctor Maria Luisa Pennuto were each sentenced to 2 years and 6 months for aiding and failing to report in January 2020. Giuseppe Di Lucca was acquitted. "If these people had acted differently, they could have changed things," Gabriella Guerra said. On appeal in April 2021, SaronnoNews reported, the charges against the commission members were declared time-barred.
Taroni has been in custody since November 29, 2016. She was held at the Bassone prison in Como after her arrest and was still in Como prison in February 2021, according to AGI. No transfer, prison permit or alternative measure has been reported.
Proceedings over money followed the criminal case. In July 2023 the Guardia di Finanza in Como, acting for the regional prosecutor of the Corte dei conti, Italy's court of public accounts, carried out a precautionary seizure of assets from both former lovers, claiming more than 2.25 million euros from Cazzaniga and 900,000 euros from Taroni on behalf of the ASST Valle Olona, the public health authority that runs the Saronno hospital. In April 2024 the Lombardy section of the Corte dei conti ordered Cazzaniga to pay more than 2.75 million euros and Taroni 400,000 euros, in her case for damage to the authority's image only, since she bore no responsibility for the hospital deaths. The court spoke of the "appalling systematic nature" of the crimes and of the public roles both defendants had held.
The case was the subject of an episode, "Gli angeli della morte," broadcast on Sky on August 31, 2021.
Taroni is serving a final sentence of 30 years for the murders of Massimo Guerra and Maria Rita Clerici. Il Giorno described the conviction as final in April 2024, and no later court ruling or news report about her had appeared by October 2026.
Proven, and final: that Taroni, acting together with Cazzaniga, murdered her husband in June 2013 and her mother in January 2014.
Not proven against her: the death of her father-in-law, Luciano Guerra, in October 2013. She was acquitted on the ground that she did not commit the act; Cazzaniga was convicted of it.
Contested between the two trials: who was responsible for Clerici's death. Taroni was convicted of it with Cazzaniga as her accomplice; Cazzaniga was acquitted of it.
Her own accounts changed over time. She first denied any role in her husband's death while admitting giving him drugs, later said she had wanted him dead, and gave several versions of her mother's death, finally blaming Cazzaniga for the injection. The courts did not accept that she was a passive bystander.
Allegations reported at the time of the arrests but not tried as separate offenses include the drain cleaner on an aunt's tomatoes and the antipsychotic she said she gave her father-in-law. They come from wiretaps and statements reported in the press and are not findings of any court.
Details that vary between sources: Massimo Guerra's age (46 or 45); Maria Rita Clerici's age (61 or 63); Taroni's age at arrest (40 or 39); and whether the 2020 annulment was caused by missing pages or by the failure to deal with her mental state (the reports show it was both: the missing pages were the ones that dealt with it).
2011: Taroni begins secretly giving her husband drugs he does not need; weeks later he is treated in Saronno for drug poisoning.
Early 2012: he is persuaded that he has diabetes and begins treatment for it.
November 1, 2012: he is admitted to the Saronno hospital; Cazzaniga has the diagnosis recorded as decompensated diabetes.
June 30, 2013: Massimo Guerra dies on the sofa at home in Lomazzo; his body is cremated.
October 1 and 20, 2013: Luciano Guerra is admitted to the Saronno hospital and dies there.
January 4, 2014: Maria Rita Clerici dies in Taroni's house in Lomazzo; her body is cremated.
June 20, 2014: nurse Clelia Leto takes her complaint to the Busto Arsizio prosecutors.
June 19, 2016: Cazzaniga and Taroni are recorded discussing euthanasia and homicide.
November 29, 2016: both are arrested; Taroni is charged with her husband's murder.
February 2017: the deaths of her mother and father-in-law are added to the charges; Luciano Guerra's body is later exhumed.
September 2017: Taroni is questioned at a pre-trial evidence hearing.
January 2018: she blames Cazzaniga for her mother's death.
February 23, 2018: Busto Arsizio, judge Sara Cipolla: 30 years for the murders of her husband and mother; acquitted over her father-in-law.
July 3, 2019: Milan appeal court confirms the sentence.
January 27, 2020: Cazzaniga sentenced to life; convicted over Massimo and Luciano Guerra, acquitted over Clerici.
September 2020: Court of Cassation annuls the 2019 appeal ruling.
November 12, 2020: retrial on appeal opens; a new psychiatric assessment is ordered.
February 12, 2021: Milan appeal court confirms 30 years, dropping premeditation for the mother's killing.
July 8, 2022: Court of Cassation rejects her appeal; the sentence is final.
September 30, 2022: Cazzaniga's life sentence becomes final.
July 2023: assets of both seized at the request of the Corte dei conti prosecutor.
April 2024: Corte dei conti orders Taroni to pay 400,000 euros for damage to the hospital authority's image.
October 2026: no later news found.