Her husband Winston Burdett believed Schiavi was assassinated by either the Russians, Italian anti-fascists, or Persians while traveling through Iran.

[citation needed] She became a writer and journalist and met Winston Burdett, an American CBS News correspondent, in 1940 while they were both reporting from Belgrad, Yugoslavia.

During World War II, Schiavi was reporting from Belgrade, Bucharest, Budapest, and Sofia and while working for Italian newspapers L'Ambrosiano and Il Tempo.

[5] Lea Schiavi was murdered by undetermined assailants in South Persia on April 24, 1942, while her husband Winston Burdett was reporting in India.

Burdett believed she was killed because she had uncovered links between military training camps in Iran and an upcoming communist coup in Yugoslavia.

[1][6][3] This theory was investigated at the time by Lauro Laurenti while seeking answers to Schiavi's murder and taken up later by Italian historian Mimmo Franzinelli.