Edoardo Agnelli

Agnelli was born in New York City to Italian parents (his maternal grandmother was American). His mother, Marella Agnelli, and his father, Gianni Agnelli, married in 1953.[4] Edoardo Agnelli had one sister, Margherita Agnelli de Pahlen.[1] He had studied at Atlantic College, and he read modern literature and oriental philosophy at Princeton University.[5]

After leaving Princeton, he traveled in India, pursuing his interest in oriental religion and mysticism,[5] and Iran. According to La Repubblica, Agnelli's preoccupations became increasingly erratic, lecturing about Mysticism, Franciscanism, and Buddhism, praising of the poor, and criticism of the behavior of Fiat.[6] He was against materialism which made him move in a different direction than his parents, according to The Guardian.[7]

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 conversion to Islam, 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,[8] in which capacity he was present at the Heysel disaster.[9] In 1990, he was accused for heroin possession[10] but the charges were later dropped.[11]

In 15 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.[5] The viaduct is known as the bridge of suicides.[14] According to a report by Marco Ellena, the doctor from the public health office of nearby city Cuneo, who examined Edoardo's body, "He died because of deadly wounds after having fallen 80 meters".[15] The report also stated that he was alive when his body impacted with the ground.[15] His head, face and chest were damaged due to the fall and an autopsy detected some internal injuries which seemed to prove the suicide theory.[15] Nothing was unusual in his death scene and police did not find anything in his car apart from phones, cigarettes, a walking stick, an address book and a bottle of water.[15] Iranians believe that he was killed because of his conversion to Islam and commemorate his Martyrdom. [16] Finally, Riccardo Bausone, the public prosecutor who was working on Edoardo's case, closed the death case and concluded that Agnelli's death was a suicide case.[15][17]

Giuseppe Puppo, a journalist, an Italian journalist and writer, published a book about Angelli's death in 2009, using interviews and unpublished testimonies. Puppo regards some of the points as inconsistencies and oddities: the absence of the bodyguards of Edoardo Agnelli; the interval of two hours between leaving home and arriving on the Fossano viaduct; the cameras of Edoardo Agnelli, whose images have never been released; the telephone traffic on the two phones; the total absence of witnesses along a road section which recorded at least eight cars per minute at that time; the lack of fingerprints on the car; the hurried burial without a proper autopsy.[18][15]

Edoardo was buried next his cousin Giovannino in his family vault, in the cemetery perched above the grounds of the Agnelli family villa.[15]

Iranians believe that he was killed because of his conversion to Islam and commemorate his Martyrdom. [19]

• Gianni Agnelli
• Marella Agnelli