Naples, husband killed with 189 stab wounds: daughters also civil parties in the trial

In a courtroom of the Third Section of the Naples Assize Court, not only is the perpetrator of a massacre involving 189 stab wounds being tried, but the final, definitive chapter in the unraveling of a family's demise is being played out. In the dock is Lucia Salemme, 58, held in the Secondigliano prison on charges of voluntary homicide aggravated by premeditation, cruelty, and family ties.

On the other side, her two daughters, Valentina and Manuela Rapuano, are filing a civil suit against her. A seemingly clear picture, however, hides a web of poison, overlapping suspicions, and complaints that have torn the Rapuano family clan apart for months.

The night of the massacre on Via Sant'Arcangelo in Baiano

To understand the abyss, we must go back to the night between September 3 and 4, 2025. In the apartment on Via Sant'Arcangelo in Baiano, in the heart of the Forcella neighborhood, Ciro Rapuano, 59, was murdered in his bed. The autopsy and forensic findings revealed 189 stab wounds. Lucia Salemme herself called for help around 2:00 a.m., claiming she had to defend herself from yet another physical attack from her husband.

The Naples Prosecutor's Office's reconstruction, however, demolishes the self-defense theory from the outset. There was no fatal fight: the man was surprised and stabbed in his sleep with two large knives. Technical premeditation also incriminated the woman: shortly before the crime, Salemme took care to deactivate the home's internal video surveillance system. The recovered footage shows an altercation that had occurred several hours earlier, but nothing that could justify or suggest an imminent defensive reaction from the woman.

The missing treasure and luxury shopping

Behind the bloodshed lies a financial motivation as banal as it is devastating. Inside their home, the couple kept over €400 in cash. A significant portion of this vast sum had disappeared in the months leading up to the crime. According to investigators' reconstruction, the wife and their youngest daughter, Manuela, had withdrawn and spent part of that treasure on luxury purchases on multiple occasions. Rapuano's discovery of the missing items had sparked ongoing tensions and arguments, culminating in a fatal outcome on the night of September 4th.

The version of the daughter Manuela and the doubts of the victim's family

Making the story even more complex are the dynamics within the home at the time of the murder. Manuela, the couple's youngest daughter, was also in the apartment with her baby daughter. The young woman told investigators that she awoke only after the massacre, finding her mother still armed with a knife, and that she had been threatened with death if she tried to intervene or raise the alarm.

The girl then categorically denied her mother's allegations, denying that there had been a fight between her parents and confirming, in fact, that her father was defenseless.

A deposition that led Manuela – as well as her older sister Valentina, who had left the family home some time ago – to drastically distance herself from her mother and to formalize her constitution as a civil party in the trial.

But the young woman's situation has become the subject of serious suspicion on the part of her paternal side of the family. The victim's sisters, through statements and interviews reported by local news outlets, have raised serious concerns about their niece's conduct while they were at the home.

How is it possible—Ciro's family accuses—that they didn't notice the immense savagery of 189 stab wounds inflicted just meters away, in an apartment in the historic center? And what was the girl's real role in managing the family money spent before the crime?

As the next hearing, scheduled for November 5th before the Assize Court, the trial promises to be a full-scale clash. On one side, a defense that will attempt to hinge on alleged past abuse; on the other, a prosecutor's office armed with digital evidence and an entire family torn in two, where the murder charges are inextricably intertwined with those of complicity, silence, and revenge over a bloody inheritance.