A controlling builder who ‘slaughtered’ his wife and stepson hours after she served divorce papers on him was convicted of their murders today.
Sicilian-born Calogero Ricotta, 64, had a furious argument with Maria Nugara, 54, at their million pound family home and stabbed her as she screamed for help.
Her son Giuseppe Morreale, 29, from her first marriage, rushed in and leapt on his stepfather’s back but was stabbed himself.
A youth in the detached house in Ugley, Essex, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in the hand when he tried to intervene.
Cowardly Ricotta tried to blame Giuseppe, known as Joe, saying he had feared for his life as his stepson lunged at him with a blade but accidentally stabbed his mother.
But the jury – who only went out to consider their verdict this morning following a three-week trial – found him guilty unanimously of both murders and actual bodily harm in the case of the youth.
At the start of the trial last month, they were told how the defendant had previously threatened: ‘Dead or alive, you are not leaving this marriage.’
Sentencing Ricotta to life with a minimum 34-year term behind bars, Mrs Justice Mary Stacey said mother-of-four Mrs Nugara had ‘weathered the storms and kept on smiling’, while her son had been ‘singled out… for savage beatings’.
Giuseppe, also known as Joe, with his mother Maria. Ricotta tried to blame the 29-year-old, saying he had feared for his life as his stepson lunged at him with a blade
Giuseppe Morreale (pictured) tried to prevent his father Calogero Ricotta’s attack before he and his mother Maria Nugara were both stabbed
Ricotta (pictured) was sentenced to a minimum 34-year term behind bars
Describing how they had been ‘slaughtered… like animals’, she added: ‘You said you would kill Maria if she divorced you. We now know this was true.’
The judge added: ‘You used controlling and coercive behaviour to control Maria. Your vanity, pride and ego meant you would not agree to a divorce. Instead, you tried to intimidate Maria into staying in a loveless marriage.
‘By murdering your wife, you have effectively orphaned your children.’
Senior investigating officer Detective Inspector Lydia George said Ricotta was ‘calculating, controlling and violent’, adding: ‘His claims of self-defence were completely dismantled by the evidence.’
Two of Giuseppe’s siblings said in a victim impact statement read out on their behalf: ‘They were murdered in the most horrific way that only a coward can inflict on his own family.’
Mrs Nugara was ‘kind, caring and clever, with a cracking sense of humour’, they added, while their brother was an ‘enthusiast for everything that life had to offer’.
The double murder happened on May 28 last year, hours after Mrs Nugara’s solicitors emailed divorce papers to serve on her husband.
Ricotta, who wore a smart grey pinstripe suite during the trial as he sat alongside an Italian interpreter, began arguing with his wife almost as soon as she entered the house after she visited a daughter in Hoddesdon.
The deadly attack followed within minutes and the youth heard her screaming for help in the living room before Giuseppe came downstairs to find his mother ‘pinned against the sofa’ with Ricotta ‘standing over her and just stabbing her’.
‘Joe jumped on his back and got stabbed in the stomach,’ the boy told police in an interview.
Mrs Nugara and her son were lying on the floor with ‘blood everywhere’ while Ricotta was ‘slicing her and doing stuff to her neck’, he recalled.
Bravely, he fetched a broom and hit the defendant with it but ran away when the knife was pointed at him.
Evil Ricotta calmly washed the six-inch-long knife in the kitchen and changed out of his bloodstained clothing before going outside to meet police, who had been called by another woman in the house.
‘He seemed angry but also happy that he had got his revenge,’ the boy told officers.
Post-mortem examinations found Mrs Nugara had suffered 14 stab wounds and 44 incise wounds to her body, front, sides, hands and back.
One ‘gaping incise wound’, which cut through her voice box, both jugular veins and a carotid artery in her neck, would have ’caused uncontrollable blood loss and rapid death’.
Her son had chest and neck injuries which would have rendered him unconscious in seconds and dead within minutes.
The pair were declared dead at the scene after paramedics and police battled in vain to save them.
Maria Nugara (pictured) was ‘kind, caring and clever, with a cracking sense of humour’, two of Giuseppe’s siblings said
Giuseppe’s siblings described him as having an ‘enthusiast for everything that life had to offer’
A youth in the detached house in Ugley, Essex, who can’t be named for legal reasons, was stabbed in the hand when he tried to intervene
Opening the case at Chelmsford Crown Court, prosecutor Simon Spence KC said: ‘The background to this tragic and violent incident was the increasingly unhappy marriage between the defendant and his wife, which led her to take steps to obtain a divorce from him and achieve some financial independence.
‘Both of these are things we say the defendant did not want to happen and he tried to prevent.’
The couple had both been previously married and wed each other on Mrs Nugara’s 39th birthday in May 2009 but had begun sleeping in separate bedrooms as their relationship deteriorated, jurors were told.
Mrs Nugara looked after the paperwork of a house letting business, which she ran with her husband who owned several rental properties.
The boy said Giuseppe had a ‘difficult relationship’ with his stepfather and had been physically abused by him in the past.
Ricotta with Mrs Nugara. The couple had both been previously married and wed each other on Mrs Nugara’s 39th birthday in May 2009 but had begun sleeping in separate bedrooms after their relationship deteriorated
Tensions increased in the couple’s marriage in 2022 when Ricotta’s grown-up daughter came to live in the house with ‘a large number of dogs’, to the objection of Mrs Nugara
One incident left the younger man with bruising and police were called. Ricotta allegedly threatened to cut his throat with a chainsaw on another occasion.
Ricotta and his wife argued regularly, the boy added, including a ‘big argument’ in April last year which also led to police being called.
Tensions increased in the couple’s marriage in 2022 when Ricotta’s grown-up daughter came to live in the house with ‘a large number of dogs’, which Mrs Nugara objected to.
She regularly confided in a long-standing friend, Sylvia James, revealing in a WhatsApp message on the day of her death that her husband had warned she had to stay with him or she would have to ‘deal with the consequences’.
Prior to that, Mrs Nugara told her friend that her husband had threatened to kill her and bury her in the garden.
In a police interview, Ricotta admitted discussing divorce with his wife and they had both informed solicitors – but insisted the marriage was ‘in limbo’ as she kept changing her mind.
He tried to blame Giuseppe for the bloodbath, telling officers things spun out of control when he ‘came down with the knife’.
Ricotta (pictured, right) committed the double murder on May 28 after Mrs Nugara (pictured, left)’s lawyer’s emailed divorce papers to serve on her husband
The unnamed boy in the house at the time of the attack said Giuseppe (pictured) had a ‘difficult relationship’ with his stepfather and had been physically abused by him in the past
A set of broken goalposts in the family’s garden in Ugley, Essex
In court, Ricotta continued to claim he had been attacked, saying: ‘He [Giuseppe] lunged at me with a knife. He kept on lunging at me and I believe it is at this point that he has struck Maria with the knife.
‘I was in complete fear of the actions of Giuseppe.’
Graham Trembarth KC, defending, told jurors they should ‘keep an open mind and consider all realistic possible alternatives’ about what actually happened.
But Mr Spence said: ‘These killings were unlawful and not in self-defence. When you look at the pattern of injuries, the intention must have been to kill or at the very least cause serious harm.
