Woman With Alzheimer's Shot Dead in Hospital By Husband, 77

When Vitangelo Bini walked into the hospital room where his wife was being looked after on Saturday evening he seemed, said a witness, "as calm as always."

The only unusual thing about the 77-year-old retired local policeman was that he was carrying a bag. He put it down at the bedside and - watched by the other five patients in the room and a nurse, stroked his wife's head and murmured something in her ear.

Then he did something they did think was odd. He took two towels and put one over her face and the other on her chest. Before anyone could react, Bini pulled out a handgun.

"When I heard the first shot, I almost fainted," the witness told Italian news agencies. Seeing that his wife, 82-year-old Mara Tani, was still breathing, the pensioner shot her twice more in the chest and head.

Then he sat down in a chair, pulled out a mobile telephone and called the police to arrest him. His wife had Alzheimer's disease for 12 years.

"I couldn't bear for her to suffer like that," Bini was reported to have said as they led him away. "Now Mara is at peace. Soon I shall join her."

Dr Bruno Cravedi, the medical director of the hospital to which Tani had been admitted in the Tuscan city of Prato, said she was at an advanced stage of the disease.

"She had been taken in four days ago, as had happened several times in the past, to try to get her through an acute phase, so that she could then go back home," he said.

In the most violent and dramatic way, her husband's action has focused attention on the strains exerted by the illness in a rapidly aging society.

Entire pages of yesterday's Italian newspapers were devoted to the killing and the burden that Alzheimer's can create for relatives.

According to a report earlier this year by the non-profit organization Alzheimer Europe, one in 20 of Europe's over-65s have the disease.

A survey of carers found that in approximately half of the cases studied, at least 10 hours a day were often spent looking after the affected person.

A senior police officer in Prato, Francesco Nanucci, said that Bini appeared to have acted in a "firm and convinced" way. When his bag was opened it was found to contain a few personal items that he would need in jail.