ROME — Palermo medical examiners say their autopsy of Angelo Onorato, the Palermo political spouse found dead in his car last week, showed no signs of foul play. 

When Onorato did not arrive at a scheduled lunch on 25 May, his wife, European Parliament deputy Francesca Donato, tracked his Range Rover to an isolated stretch of Viale Regione Siciliana, Palermo’s ring road.

 There Donato found Onorato’s body in his drivers’ seat. The architect had a ziptie tightened around his neck, and a bloodstain on his shirt. 

 His autopsy, medical examiners said, confirmed that Onorato died by strangulation. But the team of doctors found no evidence of struggle. The blood on his shirt, they said, likely came from his own mouth and nose as he suffocated, not from a struggle. 

 Though the Palermo prosecutor’s office has opened a murder investigation, investigators say they increasingly believe that Onorato took his own life. 

Security camera footage from the morning of the 25 shows Onorato’s driving alone in his Range Rover down the Viale Regione Siciliana before turning into an area out of camera range, judicial sources say. 

 No other vehicles, and no individuals, stop in the blind spot before Donato’s arrival, Palermo police say. 

 But Donato has remained vocal in her conviction that her husband was murdered. At his funeral on 30 May, she told attendees that “the truth will come out, and that the perpetrators of this crime will be discovered.” 

Though the Palermo prosecutor’s office has opened a murder investigation, investigators say they increasingly believe that Onorato took his own life. 

 Palermo medical examiners await toxicology labs as their investigation continues.