A retired school caretaker shot dead his wife and son as slept in the family apartment on the eastern outskirts of Naples, before turning the gun on himself, reports said on Thursday.
The bodies of 53-year-old Cesare Cuozzo, his wife Anna Daniele and their 18-year-old son Andrea were found by Cuozzo's sister, who let herself into the apartment after ringing repeatedly on the doorbell.
The double murder-suicide is believe to have taken place early on Tuesday, and was the latest in a string of similar cases in Italy in recent months.
Cuozzo had been suffering from depression after a life-threatening illness forced him to retire early and he had become increasingly anxious about his family's future, investigators said.
Daniele was the sister of a Naples city councillor for culture, Nino Daniele.
On 10 July, a 74-year-old lawyer Gilberto Nurra shot dead his 66-year-old wife Franca Mastinu at their home on the outskirts of the Sardinian city of Caglari before committing suicide with the same pistol.
Five days earlier, an 82-year-old man stabbed his wife to death before trying to kill himself at their apartment in Lugo in eastern Italy.
Less than a month ago, on 23 June, a man knifed to death his wife and mother-in-law during an argument at the family home in the southern city of Reggio Calabria.
