14 DAY TRIAL // The modern technology is able to uncover even perfect crimes from the Renascence times.
Italian investigators decoded the events that led to the death of De Medici family.
It has long been suspected that Francesco De Medici (image), Grand Duke of Tuscany, and his second wife, Bianca Cappello, were not killed by malaria but by poison delivered by Francesco's brother, Cardinal Ferdinando De Medici, who was coveting for the dukedom.
For four centuries, that theory remained just that - a theory. Till the recent investigation carried out by forensic and toxicology experts at the University of Florence, that is.
Francesco's "was a lethal dose, but progressive, and the symptoms were compatible with arsenic poisoning" said Donatella Lippi, a professor of history of medicine and a co-author of the study.
The Medici family, art protectors and kings' bankers, ruled the city of Florence then Tuscany from 1430 to 1737, in centuries of European roughness and tumble alliances.
Francesco was ruler from 1574 until his death Oct. 17, 1587, at age 46, 11 days, and a few hours before his wife.
The researchers collected and tested beard hairs from Francesco's grave in the Medici chapels in Florence, but also remains found in clay jars in a crypt about 12 miles (19 km) west of Florence, but his wife's grave has never been identified.
The beard hairs did not reveal much, but samples of Francesco's liver got from the crypt indicated levels of arsenic that were "significantly higher" than those normally found in humans.
Ferdinando was the only person with an obvious motive to kill Francesco and his behavior at the time was suspicious.
He took charge of his brother's illness, minimizing its severity in dispatches to the Holy See.
After the death of the couple, he asked immediate autopsies, an odd measure, perhaps to cover up evidence.
"These important findings, in addition to the historical data collected on the events before and after the almost simultaneous deaths of the grand-ducal couple, allow us to rewrite the historical reconstruction of those events".
"It sounds pretty reasonable," said Richard J. Hamilton, a medical toxicologist who is Chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Drexel University, Philadelphia.
"They've established what they have, they've done an efficient job of matching the DNA," said Hamilton.
"The only surprising aspect is that Francesco - who had an interest in alchemy and chemistry and was suspected of having poisoned his first wife - could have been poisoned so easily and so quickly," Hamilton said.