英语听力精选进阶版 13319

Black Widow ‘won't work for freedom’

21 October 2011

A few hours of work seems a small price to pay for a taste of liberty. But one of Italy's most infamous¹ inmates², known as the Black Widow, has rejected an offer of work in exchange for limited freedom. She was jailed for 29 years in 1998.

Reporter:

Mark Duff

Patrizia Reggiani 

Patrizia Reggiani is serving a jail sentence for murder

Report

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

Dubbed³ the Black Widow 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 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 of more than US$630,000 a year wasn't enough to live on, will return to the comfort of her pet ferret and her plants in her cell at San Vittore.

Mark Duff, BBC News, Milan

1 infamous   

adj.声名狼藉的，臭名昭著的，邪恶的

参考例句：

• He was infamous for his anti-feminist attitudes.他因反对女性主义而声名狼藉。
• I was shocked by her infamous behaviour.她的无耻行径令我震惊。

2 inmates   

n.囚犯( inmate的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• One of the inmates has escaped. 被收容的人中有一个逃跑了。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The inmates were moved to an undisclosed location. 监狱里的囚犯被转移到一个秘密处所。 来自《简明英汉词典》

3 dubbed   

v.给…起绰号( dub的过去式和过去分词 )；把…称为；配音；复制

参考例句：

• Mathematics was once dubbed the handmaiden of the sciences. 数学曾一度被视为各门科学的基础。
• Is the movie dubbed or does it have subtitles? 这部电影是配音的还是打字幕的？ 来自《简明英汉词典》