How much-loved son became drug-addled killer of desperate grandmother who tried ... trends now
On a January evening two years ago, Pietro Addis dialled 999 and told the operator: 'I'm calling to hand myself in.'
Asked what he had done, the cannabis-reliant then-17-year-old simply replied: 'There's been a murder.'
When police arrived at the property they found a naked woman lying dead in a bloody bath.
Sue Addis, the 69-year-old victim, was the teenager's grandmother with whom he had been living in her £1.8m Brighton house.
She had been stabbed 17 times, including suffering four wounds of such severity that each would have been life-threatening on its own.
Police Bodycam footage of the moment they entered the home of Sue Addis on the night of her murder and arrested her grandson Pietro Addis (right)
Sue Addis, 69, was co-owner of the popular Donatello restaurant in Brighton, specialising in Italian cuisine
Having lost his own mother to cancer when he was just six, Sue had taken on a maternal role in Pietro's life. And of all his family, he was said to have loved her the most.
All of which makes the events that unfolded in 2021 so utterly incomprehensible.
Why Addis killed his grandmother formed the basis of a two-week trial at Lewes Crown Court that had one question at its heart: was the teenager 'bad' or 'mad'?
In the months leading up to the killing Addis had stopped taking the medication he had been prescribed to treat Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
He had also started smoking cannabis heavily as well as taking other drugs including cocaine, MDMA, ketamine and Xanax, an anti-depressant.
Friends noticed a dramatic change in the teenager's behaviour, with him failing to turn up to work and becoming increasingly depressed, withdrawn and paranoid.
More and more concerned, his grandmother sought advice from a psychiatrist and elsewhere.
Indeed, on the very day that she died she had been researching how to get him into the Priory chain of mental health and addiction clinics for treatment. But, tragically, it was too late.
Prosecutors alleged that Addis, now 19, knew what he was doing when he attacked her, and that he did so in anger, previously becoming so enraged he would resort to punching walls or even himself.
One theory was that his granny might have suggested that he go for in-patient treatment, causing him to lash out.
Addis, who did not give evidence, admitted the killing but denied murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility, on the basis that he had been suffering from temporary paranoid psychosis, which explained the frenzied nature of the attack.
Yesterday, the jury accepted the explanation, unanimously clearing him of murder. Addis was remanded in custody ahead of sentencing, with Judge Christine Laing KC describing the incident as a 'deeply sad and distressing case', and adding: 'Mrs Addis was a warm and generous person who was supportive of her family and would do anything for them.'
Because not only was her family her life – when her brother fell sick in Australia, she flew there to donate her bone marrow - they were also at the heart of a of a £6m chain of Italian restaurants that made her one of Brighton's most recognisable figures.
As the company's success grew so it became a cornerstone of the local community, with generous donations to local charities and sponsorship of Brighton Football Club.
The popular restaurant was often visited by celebrities such as Bill Nighy (right, pictured with Ms Addis)
Sue (left) pictured with her ex-husband Pietro and EastEnders actress Michelle Collins
Bucks Fizz star David Van Day with Pietro and Sue Addis
Pietro Addis Snr with Tony Blair and Nicholas Parsons at Donatello, Brighton
Pietro Addis Snr pictured with Katie Price after the pop star visited Donatello
It also had an impressive celebrity clientele, frequented by the likes of Bill Nighy, model Katie Price and Eastenders' Michelle Collins.
Even Tony Blair dined there. Indeed, his visit to the Donatello restaurant almost 20 years ago famously reduced Mrs Addis' ex-husband to tears.
'You did not cry when we married, had each of our children or when we parted but you are crying now,' she joked to Pietro Senior – with whom she then ran the business and after whom his grandson would be named.
His reply was typical of the man: 'It is important to me because I am only a poor boy from Sardinia.'
Take a trip around most British cities and towns and there are plenty of Italian restaurants with similar stories.
Many date back to the 1960s, when mass foreign travel opened the eyes, and tastebuds, of the British public to 'exotic' foods.
And so it was that pasta and pizza gradually started to replace potatoes on the nation's plates.
In Brighton, for more than four decades the Addis family have filled that role.
Born in 1939 on the island of Sardinia, Pietro Addis Snr moved to the UK as a young man, firstly spending more than a decade working at the Italian Embassy in London, promoting his country's food and wine.
Identifying Brighton as 'the place to be' he opened his first restaurant in the city in 1967, launching the 'new concept' of two and three-course set menus in Brighton and battling the council to allow outside eating and drinking. But things really took off in the late Eighties when he and Sue opened two large restaurants, Pinocchio and Donatello.
The restaurants quickly
