23. A Family’s Vengeance Falls Upon an Abusive Father
Fed up with Count Cenci’s abuses and depravities, Beatrice Cenci began plotting her vengeance upon her father, and cast about for ways to kill him. Her stepmother Lucrezia had also had enough of count Cenci’s abuse, and she agreed to help. So did Beatrice’s brothers, Giacomo and Bernardo. Beatrice was the plot’s ringleader, and she enlisted the help of the castellan, Olimpio Calvetti, by seducing him. She also hired another accomplice, a man named Marzio, to act as a hitman.
The plan was relatively straightforward. Olimpio Calvetti and Marzio were to kill Count Francesco Cenci in his bed, than toss him out of a balcony, staging the scene to make it look like an accidental fall. Accordingly, on the night of September 8th – 9th, 1598, Beatrice slipped her father a sleeping potion to knock him out. Olimpio and Marzio then snuck into his bedroom, held him down, and drove an iron spike into his head. They then dressed his body, and threw him over the balcony’s edge, breaking a part of it to make it look like it had collapsed. The duo then gathered the bloody bed sheets, and fled.
