Police catch fugitive fake nun hiding in convents to evade prison
A 47-year-old Italian woman who disguised herself as a Catholic nun and had been hiding out in convents to evade arrest for two years was finally arrested by police in northern Italy, according to reports.
The woman, who has not been named, fled Sicily in 2017 after being convicted of fraud by a court and sentenced to two years in prison, The Local reported, saying she was arrested from a Benedictine convent in Gallarate, north of Milan.
The convict, who changed her identity frequently, stayed in convents in the Lombardy and Piedmont regions.
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Investigators said the woman called convents pretending to be a “sister looking for help and claiming she was severely ill,” according to Il Globo, which said the nun who reported her to the police got suspicious because the woman’s stories “were full of contradictions.”
The nuns at one of the convents where the fugitive stayed said she presented herself as the niece of one of their sisters. In another convent, she claimed to be a mother superior.
The woman was cooperative after she was taken to a police station but seemed confused about basic biographical details, according to The Guardian. Police found that she was carrying a stolen identity card, and later identified her as the person sentenced in Sicily and arrested her.
A native of Acqui Terme near Alessandria, she now faces fresh charges of claiming false identity as well.
In a similar incident in 2013, a 61-year-old drug dealer from Calabria, who had disguised himself as a priest, was caught importing cocaine from France in his car.
