14. Sister Virginia’s Crime Spree
A nun threatened to expose the affair between Sister Virginia and her lover in 1606. Osio murdered her, with the complicity of his nun mistress. Marianne threatened the other nuns that they’d get the same if they snitched. To cover their tracks, the lovers spread a story that the murdered nun had ran off. However, rumors started to circulate about iffy goings on at the Monza convent. So Osio began to murder more people to quell the rumors. His victims included the blacksmith who had made him copies of the convent’s keys, and an apothecary who had supplied Marianne with abortion herbs.
Rumors continued to spread, however. Eventually, word reached the governor of Milan, who ordered an investigation. Osio, Marianne, and their complicit enablers were arrested in 1607, and tortured to reveal what they knew. Osio escaped, and was sentenced to death in absentia. He was killed soon thereafter by an acquaintance. Marianne was sentenced to life in solitary confinement, bricked up in a small cell, four feet by nine. She stayed there for fourteen years, until she was deemed reformed and released, to spend the rest of her life in a convent.
