A pensioner who suffocated his wife
to death because she was suffering from advanced Alzheimer's
disease has committed suicide, sources said Friday.
Retired driver Angiolo Zanasi, 91, hanged himself in his
room in a private Turin-area clinic. On November 19 last year he
killed wife Lia Cotroneo, 88, then tried unsuccessfully to kill
himself.
Italy has seen a string of "mercy killings" of elderly
Alzheimer's sufferers by their spouses. Alzheimer's is a
debilitating neurodegenerative disease that causes progressive
dementia, and there is no cure.
In March, an 86-year-old man was sentenced to six and a
half years in prison for killing his ailing wife because he did
not want her to suffer any more. Vitangelo Bini was convicted of
aggravated murder in the death of wife Mara Tani, 82, who had
been seriously ill with Alzheimer's for 12 years.
Bini, a former traffic policeman, shot Tani in a Prato
hospital on December 1, 2007. He will not serve time in jail
because of his advanced age.
Also in March, an 85-year-old man strangled his
83-year-old wife to death, alerted the couple's son by phone,
then hanged himself in the garage. That incident took place in
the small town of Staranzano in Gorizia province.
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