The shot was fired near a bakehouse, along the Cazella road. On the evening of November 3, 1884, Albertino Defendini was returning home after departing the cabin of Lucie Perri. The Gazette des Tribunaux, which here reproduces the facts as set forth in the bill of indictment, relates that he heard a detonation before feeling the wound: the projectile had traversed the lumbar muscles, traveling from the right iliac crest toward the left side, whence it was subsequently extracted. The injury was of such gravity as to incapacitate him from all labor for upwards of three months. In its opening lines, the journal thus places a neighborhood feud upon the very precipice of murder.
In an issue bearing the date of June 8 and 9, the Gazette chronicles the proceedings held on June 1 and 2, 1885, before the Court of Assizes of Corsica, presided over by Conseiller Luiggi. Two prisoners answered to the indictment: Ange-Dominique Vitori—so spelled in the headline, though most frequently written Vittori within the body of the text—and the widow Colombe Colombani. The title announced an attempted murder and an act of complicity; the final judgment would sever their destinies. The article commences with the charges framed in the indictment, subsequently setting forth the depositions, the answers of the accused, and the arguments of counsel. The narrative of the prosecution, the testimony elicited during the trial, and the prayers of the defense are kept scrupulously distinct throughout.
Defendini lived on terms of open discord with Colombani, who dwelt at Casalta. The Gazette reports that she reproached him with having set his dog upon a pig belonging to her, under the pretext that the beast had strayed onto his land. On October 11, 1884, an altercation arose between the widow and Marie-Dominique Defendini concerning several boughs of holm oak. Albertino came upon the scene and thrust Colombani, causing her to fall to the ground. According to the gazette, she no longer dissembled her rancor thereafter; she is even alleged to have threatened the household, protesting that she had procured firearms and declaring that Albertino and his wife had not long to live.
Vittori, likewise, harbored grievances against Defendini. He accused him of setting Paul-Toussaint Santoni’s dog upon his livestock, a matter of which he complained directly to Santoni. A few days prior to the attack, he engaged in an altercation with Defendini; the Gazette observes that he displayed unmistakable ill will during the exchange. The widow had ceased all communication with Vittori ever since he had served as an official witness during a judicial seizure executed upon her property. The report next notes a reconciliation between the two: on November 3, they were seen conversing at Chiosale. The prosecution characterized this encounter as the renewal of a common purpose of revenge.
On that very day, Vittori departed from Pastricciole in the company of his young sister Jeanne, whom he had gone to fetch from his mother’s home. At Vigna-Piana, he entrusted his hound to the girl, instructing her to lead the animal on a leash as far as the house, whilst he struck off alone, bearing a fowling piece. Ere they parted, he charged her to tell his wife, upon reaching Tribaldo, to tie the beast securely. The journal considers this precaution telling: a hound returning to its master’s side might well have betrayed his presence at Casella. This reflection belongs to the commentary of the Gazette; the factual matter reported remains the order given to the young girl.
Vittori did not return to his hearth until a late hour of the night. Tribaldo stood, writes the newspaper, but a short distance from Casella. Defendini related that upon stepping forth from the cabin of Lucie Perri, he perceived the widow’s daughter, who appeared to be keeping watch; the moment he showed himself, she hastened indoors. He likewise observed Colombani upon her threshold, conversing with a man whose voice he later claimed to have recognized: it was, he swore, the voice of Vittori. A few moments later, as he drew level with the bakehouse, he was struck down. The account does not elevate these observations of the wounded man to the status of independent testimony; it records them solely as his deposition.
The wound furnished a further piece of evidence. The projectile, oblong in form and pierced with a small aperture at one extremity, corresponded—according to the experiment of the cantonal magistrate, as reported by the Gazette—with the gun that Vittori had ceded to Pietri Marsilius in October 1883 in exchange for his own. The witness Colombani Pediaco stated that on the following November 2, as Vittori was setting forth to hunt partridge, he had drawn from the barrel a ball identically fashioned. The journal thus sets forth a material correspondence between the projectile and the firearm; it reproduces neither an official expert report nor the jury’s specific findings regarding this exhibit.
Further incriminating evidence arose from words attributed to Vittori. Raphaël Gambotti, a brother of Colombani, and Jacques-François Carlotti affirmed that he had confessed his crime to them. Regarding the utterances ascribed to the widow, the chronicle presents two irreconcilable points of reference: in the opening narrative, the woman Chiari places an interview with Colombani and her two brothers at Boca di Taglieto on November 10; further on, the summary of the depositions situates a conversation between the widow and her brothers on the day following the crime. The journal does not clarify whether these passages refer to one and the same exchange, nor does it afford the means to reconcile the dates. It prints in Italian the words Colombani is said to have uttered: “Se era stata buona l’avrebbe fatta da per me, non avrebbe aspettatu a l’altri.” The text provides no French translation; these words remain testimony reported by a single witness.
Following the ambush, Colombani was anxious, according to the report, to learn toward whom the suspicions of the Defendini family were directed. When Marie-Constance Paoli voiced an intention to visit the wounded man, the widow requested that she bring back whatever intelligence she might glean. Another witness, Ursule-Marie Defendini, declared that Colombani had told her Vittori had come to her house on the night of the crime and had instructed her two children, Pasqualina and Louis, to ascertain whether Defendini was indeed within Lucie Perri’s cabin. When questioned upon this matter by the witness, Colombani reportedly replied that her relations with Defendini were such that she would have suffered him to be fired upon “not merely with a musket, but even with a cannon.”
In the opening narrative, the Gazette further reports that Colombani allegedly told her brothers she feared arrest, adding that had she been able, she would have struck the blow herself without resorting to a stranger’s hand; concerning Vittori, she is also said to have remarked that he had betrayed himself through his own indiscreet speech. The account brings these words before the court through the testimony of Chiari, whilst both prisoners persisted in their denials. Vittori put forward an alibi which, according to the journal, the judicial investigation readily shattered.
At the bar, the accused maintained that the witnesses had woven a conspiracy against them; the journal dwells notably upon Vittori’s invectives against his accusers. Advocate General Angeli marshaled the evidence and demanded the condemnation of both. Maître de Caraffa pleaded for Vittori’s acquittal. Maître Blanchard contended that the legal constituents of complicity were wanting; Maître Joseph de Montera in turn assailed the accusation against Colombani, soliciting his client’s discharge. Thus, before the court, an identical tale of alleged vengeance divided itself between the question of who fired the shot and that of the widow’s participation.
The court declared Colombani not guilty and immediately restored her to liberty. Vittori was found guilty of premeditated attempted murder and sentenced to twenty years of penal servitude. The newspaper’s headline had linked both names under a single charge of attempted murder and complicity; the published verdict set them apart. The woman whose words and deeds occupied so substantial a portion of the indictment walked forth free, whilst the full weight of the penalty descended upon the man whom the chronicle designates as the sole instrument of execution.