Suicide suspected after Fiat heir found dead Philip Willan in Rome Thursday November 16, 2000 The Guardian The heir to Italy's most powerful industrial dynasty, was found dead yesterday. The body of Edoardo Agnelli, 46, was lying at the base of a 200ft viaduct in northern Italy after what police said was an apparent suicide. It was the second time in three years that tragedy had struck the family that controls the Fiat manufacturing group: Edoardo's cousin, who was being groomed to lead the business, Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, died in late 1997 of a rare form of stomach cancer at the age of 32. Police saw Edoardo Agnelli's dark Fiat Croma parked at the side of motorway between Turin and Savona, near the village of Fossano. His body was lying at the foot of one of the viaduct's pillars among plastic bags, bottles and other refuse. His father, Gianni Agnelli, 79 - long the charismatic figure at Fiat's helm, and now its elder statesman as honorary chairman - visited the site to confirm that this was the body of his only son. At the family villa outside Turin, at Villar Perosa, relatives came and went by helicopter through the day, preparing for the funeral that will follow a post-mortem examination. Edoardo Agnelli, had shown little aptitude for the business world in which his family has played a leading role for more than a century. Rather, he went looking for spiritual illumination in India, having graduated in oriental religion and philosophy. But his exclusion from the family's businesses - the closest he came to a responsible management role was as a director of the Agnelli-owned Juventus football club in the 1980s - caused him considerable unhappiness, as he showed in interviews where he protested at being marginalised when younger relatives got preferment. "It's a tragedy," an unnamed woman friend in Rome was reported as telling the Italian media yesterday. "I was expecting him in the next few days. He certainly didn't seem depressed, but sometimes a moment of anguish can be enough." Edoardo Agnelli hit the headlines in October 1990, when he was arrested in the Kenyan beach resort of Malindi for possession of heroin. "I feel exhausted," he said on leaving court after learning of his acquittal on the drug charges. "It has been a tough battle, which I think I have faced fundamentally on my own." He found it hard to live up to the expectations of his father. Gianni Agnelli, a former playboy who married Princess Marella Caracciolo, had abandoned a life of jet set dissipation to reveal an unexpected gift for business. Unlike his reclusive son he was at ease in the limelight occupied by a family that resembled royalty in republican post-war Italy. Tension over the Fiat succession came to a head in 1986 when Edoardo - known by friends in New York as "Crazy Eddy" - announced his interest in taking charge of Italy's top industrial conglomerate. In a newspaper interview in Assisi he criticised his family for seeing "my personal search as a voluntary abstention from the problems of the group, almost as though I were incapable of assuming responsibilities". But there was no fulfilling role available for the family scion who was more at home in the company of Indian gurus or the denizens of psychedelic era New York than in a Turin boardroom. In 1998 he again vented his frustration at being bypassed in favour of younger relatives."Part of my family has been taken over by a baroque and decadent logic," he said in an interview with the leftwing daily Il Manifesto. "Meaning no offence to anyone, we are approaching the gesture of Caligula, who made his horse a senator." For his 22-year-old cousin, John Elkann, it was an unflattering parallel: the young man had just been selected to fill the shoes of Giovanni Alberto. In recent years Edoardo Agnelli, who never married, lived quietly on an uncle's country estate near Capalbio, Tuscany, pursuing his religious and philosophical interests. Angelo Magrini, the chairman of a blood donors' association in Turin, yesterday paid tribute to his social sensibilities and his generous work for charity. "He was a marvellous person who dedicated his life to others. He was always very attentive to those who suffered and ready to help people in need," Mr Magrini said. As the oldest child of Gianni Agnelli - he has a sister aged 43 - Edoardo should have assumed command of a workforce of 240,000 and a global business empire spanning car making, construction, fashion and media. His spiritual curiosity and rebellion against materialism took him in a quite different direction, to an obscure life and a lonely death that confirmed his role as the black sheep of Italy's first family. Guardian Unlimited � Guardian Newspapers Limited 2000
