Black Widow ‘won't work for freedom’

Patrizia Reggiani once said she'd rather cry in a Rolls勞斯萊斯 than be happy on a bicycle. She doesn't seem to have changed her mind.

Dubbed戲稱 the Black Widow黑寡婦 after she was jailed for ordering the murder of her ex-husband, the heir to the Gucci family fortune, Ms Reggiani has spent most of the past 13 years at San Vittore prison in Milan.

Judges had offered her the chance of day release, if she agreed to take a job outside the prison walls. But Ms Reggiani, who's 63, was having none of it. She'd never worked in her life, she told the judges, and she didn't intend打算 to start now.

Her trial in 1998 attracted worldwide interest. It had everything: a woman betrayed by the man she'd loved and the low-life murder of the heir to a multi-million dollar fashion fortune.

For now, though, Patrizia Reggiani, who once complained that her allowance津貼,補助 of more than US$630,000 a year wasn't enough to live on, will return to the comfort of her pet ferret鼬 and her plants in her cell at San Vittore.

Mark Duff, BBC News, Milan

this text comes from bbc learning english

http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2011/10/111021_witn_black_widow.shtml