ITALY: A Lady's Honor

On a balmy night last July, a statuesque Sicilian brunette, Graziella Quartuccio, 43, was snatched away in her nightgown from her Monreale home near Palermo by a machine-gun-toting gang of ski-masked Mafiosi. A kidnaping is no surprise in Italy. It has become such a way of life since 1970 that police now freeze the assets of the victim's family in an effort to prevent payoffs. Million-dollar ransoms are routine. But this case rocked Palermo; it is not honorable to involve women in such matters, and the victim's husband, Contractor Giuseppe Quartuccio, 66, was known to have Mafia connections.

Goodbye Embrace....

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