On the night of 5th of August 1970, she and her husband, the actor
William Berger, were in their villa at Praiano, near Amalfi (Italy),
with seven of their friends. "All we were quietly sleeping that night.
- so told afterwards one of the guests, the art critic Alan Frenkiel -
At 2 a.m. I heard knocking hard at the door. I opened and saw scores of
policemen and carabinieri. They rushed in, woke all up and began
rummaging the whole house."
The result of rummaging was the finding of 0.9 grams of cannabis, the
use and possession of which was forbidden in Italy at that time. Hosts
and guests, all were arrested and, after a hasty interrogation in
Amalfi, put into prison or psychiatric hospital. Eight months later, on
trial, they were acquitted and released. All, but Lobravico. Although
she was suffering from hepatitis, she was locked up in the psychiatric
hospital for criminals of Pozzuoli, and there, without any treatment,
was even tied up to bed with straps, when the more and more unbearable
pains of her worsening disease made her scream. She was brought to
'Incurabili' (a hospital in Naples) only when dying: indeed, few days
later, on 14th October 1970, she died of acute peritonitis. About these
events,
William Berger (with the contribution of Timothy Wilson, an
authoritative psychologist) wrote the book "House of the Angels: Love
Notes from the Asylum" (Viking Press, 1974). ('House of the Angels' was
the name of the villa at Praiano, where the tragedy began.).
