Ten days later, on October 23, Rudy Guede’s immediate next-door neighbor on via Canerino, Mara Madu Diaz, was at a friend’s farm in Gualdo Tadino, about an hour’s drive from Perugia, participating in the vendemmia—the annual grape harvest. She knew Rudy, as she often saw him in front of her house on his phone—he had to stand outside his own house to get cell service. She saw him almost daily, when she walked her dog in the morning and evening. He always said hello and often leaned down and petted her dog. That day, police interrupted her grape harvesting with bad news. Her little medieval house in Perugia—narrow, three floors high, with a single room on each floor—had been badly damaged in a fire.
She raced home to find her cat dead and her house nearly destroyed. Firemen and police told her a thief or thieves had entered through a lower window and that the fire had started on the third floor, in her bedroom, where someone had thrown a scarf over a lamp.
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Her cat strangled on the smoke, because whoever had feasted in the kitchen had left the pantry door open, blocking the animal’s escape route. When Mrs. Madu Diaz finally assessed the damage, she found that the thief had cleaned out her jewel box, including a gold watch of her mother’s.
She didn’t see Rudy again after the fire. When she learned he had been arrested and had a habit of breaking into homes, she wondered if he’d had something to do with her disaster. But the police never charged anyone. Her insurance paid for repairs, and the little house became habitable again after three years of work.
