Private Crimes
The attractive Sandra Venturi, studying to be a singer at the conservatory of music in the Italian town of Lucca, has a promising career in opera ahead of her; until that time, however, she's content to give public performances in her native town. On the eve of her nineteenth birthday, during a thunderstorm, the young singer leaves the apartment she shares with her mother Nicole Venturi, a correspondent for a major Roman newspaper. Sandra is on her way to a secret rendezvous with a married man: Marco Pierboni, a good-looking industrialist. The latter is killed by gunfire, however, shortly before Sandra arrives at the deserted villa outside the town which they had chosen as their meeting-point. Nicole has no inkling of her daughter's affair. She thinks that Sandra has gone to stay the night with a girlfriend. When Marco's corpse is discovered the next morning, ambitious journalist Nicole senses that reporting this sensational murder case will make her famous outside her local region. The first thing Nicole does is contact her friend Superintendent Stefano Avanzo, who has been put on to the case. During the course of his investigations the superintendent has already called on the family of the murdered man, and has decided that the alibis of the various members of the family are shaky to say the least. Only Matilde, the mother of the murdered man, is above all suspicion. Severa, the family's trusty housekeeper, does her best to help Matilde get over the loss of her son, but all her efforts are to no avail. Matilde decides to find out the identity of Marco's murderer via a woman medium. Nicole, ambitious journalist that she is, is just as eager to solve the murder mystery. However, her initial investigations, which she quietly keeps Superintendent Avanzo informed about, come up against a dead end: clever discotheque owner Milena Bolzoni, the dead man's 'official' mistress, has an alibi. That same evening Nicole, who thinks her daughter is at the conservatory, is busy making preparations for Sandra's birthday. However, when the latter's friend Chiara worriedly reveals that Sandra didn't stay with her the previous night at all, as she had claimed, but was instead planning to spend it with the industrialist who was murdered, the alarm bells start to go off in Nicole's mind. She contacts Superintendent Avanzo, who starts a search operation; it is unsuccessful. Nicole, now in desperate straits, draws consolation from the woman medium whom Matilde, the dead man's mother, had contacted earlier on. Thanks to her special abilities, the medium succeeds in 'tracking down' the young woman. The magic route leads Nicole close to the mysterious villa. There she sees a body lying motionless on a riverbank: it's her daughter, Sandra. Aghast at the tragedy that has befallen her, Nicole throws her arms around her daughter's dead body. Nicole's colleagues in Rome are starting to wonder why they haven't heard anything from her, and they send experienced journalist Andrea Baresi to Lucca to give them an update on events. He soon finds out more details about the two murders from Superintendent Avanzo; the two seem to be connected, because both victims were shot with the same gun. Nicole's divorced husband Roberto, who left her and their daughter years beforehand, turns up at Sandra's funeral. Nicole, in a kind of lethargic trance, is hardly aware of her ex-husband's presence. A few days later, however, she can't avoid a painful confrontation with him about their past. When Roberto leaves, Nicole, lonely and utterly distraught, makes a suicide attempt. Fortunately it fails. Recovering in hospital, she hears from her friend Anna that because of the sensational nature of the murder case, her daughter has become the target of several slanderous rumours in the press. Now Nicole has an aim in life again: she must rescue her dead daughter's reputation. This fills her with new strength. She decides to take up the dangerous hunt for Sandra's killer all by herse
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