Edoardo Agnelli

This article is about Gianni Agnelli's son. For Gianni Agnelli's father, see Edoardo Agnelli (industrialist).

Edoardo Agnelli (9 June 1954 – 15 November 2000) was the eldest son of Gianni Agnelli the industrialist patriarch of Fiat, and Marella Caracciolo. After a troubled life, notable for his search for spiritual values, he committed suicide in 2000.

Life

Agnelli was born in New York, and his mother was an Italian-American. After studying at Atlantic College, he read modern literature and oriental philosophy at Princeton University, where he was given the nickname Crazy Eddie for his wild behaviour.

After leaving Princeton he travelled in India, pursuing his interest in oriental religion and mysticism, and Iran, where he met Ayatollah Khamenei and was reported to have converted to Islam. According to La Repubblica Agnelli's preoccupations became increasingly erratic, "Mysticism, Franciscanism, drugs, Buddhism, lectures against Capital, praise of the poor, criticism of the behaviour of Fiat."

As an adult Agnelli claimed to be the heir apparent to the Fiat empire, but his father, who had already been unhappy with Edoardo's timidity when he was a child, ensured that he would not inherit it. The only official position which the younger Agnelli held in the family businesses was as a director of Juventus football club, in which capacity he was present at the Heysel disaster.

In 1990 Agnelli was charged in Kenya with possession of 7 ounces of heroin, to which he pleaded innocent. The charges were later dropped.

Death

In November 2000, 46 year old Agnelli's body was found, near Turin, on a river bed beneath a motorway viaduct, on which his car was found abandoned. The viaduct is known as the bridge of suicides. The death was considered by Italian investigators to have been suicide.

A 2001 Iranian documentary film claimed, without offering any evidence, that Agnelli was the victim of a Zionist plot to prevent a Muslim becoming head of Fiat, in spite of the fact that he was not an heir to Fiat. The documentary has cult status on Iranian television and is frequently repeated in prime-time slots. In the Italian press the documentary was commentated as "building up an Urban Legend by Iranian authorities". In 2003 it was circulated by FARS, a press agency linked to president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. According to Corriere della Sera, the story is also enshrined at the Museum of Martyrs of Islam at Imam Sadiq University, Iran, which contains a portrait-shrine dedicated to Agnelli.