Court sentences former Bank of Athens treasurer to life

Former Bank of Athens treasurer Vincenzo Pietropaolo has been sentenced to life in prison for the 2017 murders of his elderly father and estranged wife, with Judge Ratha Mokgoatlheng finding he was “innately and inherently evil”.

The judge – who handed down the ruling in the South Gauteng High Court on Monday – described Pietropaolo’s wife’s murder, in particular, as the “most callous” he had ever come across.

She was shot a total of nine times.

“I have been involved in criminal trials as a judge and a legal representative for 50 years,” he said. “I have never, ever, ever seen the cruelty which was meted out to the wife of the accused.”

In November, Pietropaolo was found guilty of first murdering his elderly father, Pasqualino – whose death was initially thought to be as a result of a home robbery gone wrong – in 2017 and then some seven months later his estranged wife, Manuela.

He was also found guilty of robbery with aggravating circumstances, unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition and defeating the ends of justice.

In sentencing him, Mokgoatlheng on Monday described the highly successful Pietropaolo as “a supreme talent”. The court previously heard Pietropaolo had come from a modest immigrant family but had been intensely career-driven and worked hard to provide for his own family as well as to progress through the ranks professionally.

“It is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions that he could not not deal effectively with his problems,” the judge said.

Pietropaolo did not testify either at trial or in mitigation of sentencing and Mokgoatlheng on Monday made much of this, highlighting that as a result of his refusal to take the court into his confidence, his victims’ loved ones had been left completely in the dark as to what had driven him to murder.

“I think the accused in my view is a person who couldn’t live with himself,” the judge said,

“He was ashamed of what he had done. He couldn’t live with the despair and the grief and the trauma he made to be visited on his children and his brothers and sisters.”

Ultimately, Mokgoatlheng found there were no substantial and compelling reasons for him to deviate from the minimum prescribed sentence for murder, being life in Pietropaolo’s case.

He was sentenced to two life terms, one for each of the murders, and a total of 26 years for the other crimes, all of which will run concurrently.

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