Italian woman found dead at home, sitting at table in mummified state (photos)

Italian police have discovered the body of a 70-year-old woman sitting at the table in her home, almost two years after she died, in one of the repeated cases of loneliness and lack of care for the elderly in the country.

Marinella Beretta, who had no relatives in life, was found at her home in Prestino near Lake Como north of Italy. Police case at the event as he made warning calls for strong winds in the Lombardy region, from the danger of falling trees in the garden of the apostal.

The woman had not been seen by neighbors for more than two years, local media reported.

“What happened to Marinella Beretta in Como, the forgotten loneliness, weighs on our consciences,” said Italian family minister Elena Bonetti. “We have a duty to remain united, to remember her life and to leave no one alone.”

Beretta was the “personification of loneliness”, wrote journalist Massimo Gramellini on the front page of ‘Corriere della Sera’.

“Many of us have memories of large rural families in Italy. But our modern family is reduced… people die alone, we live alone, and that’s much worse. ”

Neighbors who had not seen Beretta since September 2019, assumed she had been displaced by the pandemic. Police who arrived at the scene said they had found no evidence of “suspicious play”.

The city council will pay for her funeral.

“The mystery of Marinella’s invisible life is a terrible lesson for us,” wrote the local daily Messaggero.

“The real sadness is not the fact that others did not notice her death, but the fact that they did not realize that Marinella Beretta was alive.”

The discovery of the body of the 70-year-old almost two years after her death has prompted calls for better care for the elderly in Italy.