Police on Monday arrested a well-known dermatologist after his wife's blood-spattered corpse was discovered at a villa owned by the family in the eastern city of Ravenna.
The 51-year-old doctor, named in local reports as Matteo Cagnoni, was held at a villa he owns in his native city of Florence, after trying to flee from police with the couple's three children aged six to eleven.
The arrest came after the body Cagnoni's wife, Giulia Ballestri, 40, was found on Monday with a fractured skull in a cellar at the villa in Ravenna three days after she vanished in the city.
Investigators said they found blood in various rooms in the villa.
Police believe Ballestri was beaten to death with a blunt object and that she was killed on Friday, the day she disappeared.
Ballestri's brother reported her missing after he found her car abandoned on a Ravenna street with the driver door open.
It was Ballestri's 40th birthday on Saturday but her relations did not hear from her, Il Resto del Carlino daily reported on its website.
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