The jury promptly returned a verdict
of murder, and immediately after
the inquest Angelo was arrested. The
following morning Jane Reynolds was
picked up at Sligo railway station and
also charged with murder.F
eelings in the town ran high against
the Italian who was said to have
led an innocent Irish girl astray, and
Angelo’s lawyer claimed he would never
receive a fair trial in Sligo.
Proceedings were further delayed
because Jane was pregnant. She gave
birth in July, telling prison authorities
that Angelo was the father.
Although the defendants had been
jointly charged with murder, they were
tried separately in Dublin because they
had to testify against each other.
Holding her baby in her arms, Jane
pleaded not guilty. But the prosecution- using a wooden
model of the ice
cream parlour and
adjoining house –
stacked up evidence
against her until the
defence were forced
to claim that her
“confession,” given
in the waiting-room
at Sligo railway
station, had been
taken under duress
and was inadmissible.
In his summing-up, the judge pointed
out that in none of her statements did
Jane Reynolds claim she had left the
bedroom on the night of the murder.
The jury retired for an hour and
returned a verdict of guilty with a very
strong recommendation for mercy,
which the judge ignored. When he
sentenced her to
death, she became
hysterical and
screamed out: “Oh, I
didn’t do it, my lord.
He killed his wife. My
lord, don’t hang me,
I have a little child. I
am not guilty.”
Many women in
the packed courtroom
burst into tears and
several spectators heckled.
The trial of Angelo di Lucia opened
next day with the prosecution claiming
that an innocent man who found his
wife dying from severe head wounds
would have had everyone in the house
up, and sent for the police. But Angelo
di Lucia washed his wife’s head, and did
not question Jane Reynolds because he
knew all about it and was a party to it.
Rosa’s cousin Joseph Mezza told the
court he hurried over from Belfast when
he heard by telegram that she was dead.
“Angelo was crying and said he didn’t
know how it had happened. He told
me he heard the servant girl screeching
and rushed into his wife’s bedroom and
found her on the ground. He told me
his wife wasn’t ‘all there in the head.’”
The defence argued that if Patsio’s
evidence was true, Rosa met her death
before her husband left the room he was
sharing with Patsio.
The prosecution countered that after
Angelo had been roused by Jane, he had
been absent for up to an hour from the
room he shared with his brother before
she came to tell Patsio that Rosa was
dead. What was Angelo doing during
that time?
The jury took little more than 30
minutes to convict Angelo of his wife’s
murder and he too was sentenced to
hang at Sligo Prison, on December 2nd,
1915.
Hopes were high that Jane Reynolds
would be reprieved as no 17-year-old
had been hanged in Britain or Ireland
since 1889. Public pressure won, and on
November 13th her death sentence was
commuted. Three years later she was
released on condition that she enter a
convent.
On November 23rd, Angelo di Lucia
was also reprieved on the grounds
that it would have appeared perverse
to reprieve one and not the other
when both had been proved jointly
responsible for the murder. He was
released 12 years later, in 1927, and
deported to Italy.
A century later, it’s hard to imagine
how Jane and Angelo hoped to convince
anyone that Rosa had committed
suicide by bashing herself over the
head with a hammer three times when
the first blow would have knocked her
unconscious.
It’s also hard to understand
how they could claim that all this
happened while Jane slept soundly
in the same room less than a yard
from a woman trying to kill herself
with a hammer.A Mystery
To This DayDETECTIVE
WORLD’S BEST TRUE CRIME STORIES EVERY MONTH!MASTER
On sale at your
newsagent
from February
21st, or see the
offer on page 55MARCH
http://www.truecrimelibrary.comWHY THE
DOCTOR
HAD HIS
WIFE KILLED
THE LIFE AND
CRIMES OF
A CANNIBAL
KILLER
THE BEAST
OF ABERDEEN
MURDER IN YOUR VILLAGE
This month: Woolacombe, DevonWHO PUT
OLIVE IN
THE AVON?
TEENAGER
HANGEDFOR ESSEX
MURDER“ELVIS
FAN”
NEVER
MADE IT
TO GRACELAND
EXECUTION
MURDER OF A
LAUNDRY MAID