Italy - The Monster of Florence, 16 victims, 1968-1985

[FergusMcDuck]

SCOPETI

Friday, September 6th 1985. Nadine Mauriot was 36 and newly divorced. She had started her life anew, living with her two daughters and running a shoe store in the French city Montbéliard, close to the Swiss border. Also new in her life was her lover, eleven years her junior, Jean Michel Kraveichvili. A talented musician and skilled runner, the young man had been with Nadine for only a few months when they decided to take a short vacation to Italy. Leaving the children with Nadine’s mother, they promised to return before the start of the school year on Monday September 9th. Driving their white Volkswagen Golf, they visited Forte de Marmi, Tirrenia and Pisa before arriving in San Casciano, a town south of Florence, on Friday. Parallel to the main road between San Casciano and Florence was the narrow and rural Via Scopeti, and as the road wound through the hills, there was a small clearing opposite the gate to a villa. The French couple decided to pitch their tent in that clearing, far away from the traffic. Driving to Cerbaia, just to the west of San Casciano, they participated in the festa dell’Unità and ate a traditional Tuscan pappardelle with hare sauce. After the festivities, they drove back to their tent to fool around and sleep.

Murder site

The couple had not been in their tent for long when the Monster approached. The time was likely around close to midnight and the waning moon lit the scene. Peering through the mosquito net, the Monster saw the naked bodies of the couple illuminated by a camping light. Nadine was straddling Jean Michel, their faces close together, when the Monster fired three shots in rapid succession. The first missed and hit the pillow, while the second and third grazed Nadine’s forehead and pierced her cheeks. Nadine either tried to get up or Jean Michel tried to push her off him, when another bullet went through his left hand and into her chest. The fifth bullet hit Nadine in the temple, killing her.

With Nadine collapsed on Jean Michel, the Monster opened the mosquito net to get at the couple, but Jean Michel, barely wounded, leaped out from the tent, knocking over the killer who let of a shot in surprise. As Jean Michel ran around the tent to keep cover, the Monster fired and missed twice, before finally hitting the Frenchman in the right elbow. But the young victim was an avid runner, and hurried towards the treeline on the far side of the clearing. Unfortunately, it was not the way to the road, and Jean Michel was soon intercepted by the Monster. After receiving stabs in the arm and back, Jean Michel was grabbed and pushed down by the Monster who stabbed him repeatedly in the chest and stomach as the Frenchman tried to struggle before collapsing.

Once certain of Jean Michel’s death, the Monster returned to the tent. Dragging Nadine’s legs through the opening, he began his excisions. Once the vagina and left breast had been removed, Nadine was placed back inside, the mosquito net closed. Jean Michel was dragged by his feet into the bushes, the Monster having decided to hide his crime for the first time.

On Monday the 9th, a young man named Luca Santucci passed the scene while looking for mushroom when he discovered the bodies. SAM was immediately dispatched to the scene. From the start there was disagreement on when the murder happened. Sandro Federico, the experienced policeman in charge of SAM, claimed the bodies had to have been there for days. Doctor Mauro Maurri, on the other hand, based on the mostly intact form of Jean Michel thought the murders occurred between Sunday and Monday (this would be strengthened when a few days later, two witnesses claimed to have seen the French couple in their pensionat on Sunday). This dating would many years later be disproved by entomological science, but by then September 8th had already been established as the official time of death. The misdating would have serious consequences for the investigation and upcoming trials.

The next day, September 10th, an envelope arrived at the Procura di Firenze, addressed to Silvia Della Monica in cut-out letters. The word “Repubblica” was misspelled, with only one “b”. Inside was a bag containing a piece of Nadine Mauriot’s breast. Della Monica, understandably shaken, withdrew from the case and got a protection detail. The sensational message, reminiscent of Jack the Ripper and other famous serial killers, seemed to promise escalation.

And yet, that was the last anyone ever heard of the Monster.

After the murders in Scopeti, the gun of the Monster of Florence never killed again. No couples were murdered in subsequent summers. Many reasons have been posited as to why. Those who favor any of the suspects that would be dragged to trial in the coming years, point to increased police scrutiny as a deterrent. Others suspect he died or was otherwise incapacitated. Or perhaps he was simply satisfied. But if he was, Rotella and SAM were not.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Pista Sarda: Barbara Steri

Close to midnight, January 14th 1960, in a house in Villacidro, Sardinia, a young woman named Barbara Steri lay face down on the floor by her bed, the room flooded with gas. Outside the bedroom door, her 11-months old baby Antonio cried. By her side lay a note:

“I had a great love, but in the anxiety everything vanished. And here I can’t resist anymore. Everything is unbearable to me in this living under the dark moments. I think and think again to be loved and envied. Yet in my throes I pray for the good of my son. Good luck.”

Her husband, Salvatore Vinci, came home and when his wife would not answer, claimed he thought she was with a lover, so he fled to get his brother- and father-in-law, Salvatore and Francesco Steri, and together they made the tragic discovery. Five days later the coroner proclaimed the death as a suicide. Still, the gossip in the city said otherwise. The marriage had been notoriously rocky and violent. Why would Salvatore flee in the face of a lover? Barbara had just gotten a job and was due to start the day after her death. The job was in Cagliari, where she could bring her son, far away from Salvatore. Not to mention their neighbor, who recalled having Barbara over the previous evening to heat milk for the baby – since she had no gas at home…

Almost 25 years later, colonel Torrisi came to Sardinia to see if Barbara Steri was the first victim of the man he thought was the Monster of Florence. Among those he spoke to was Antonio Pili, the childhood sweetheart of Barbara Steri. Her family had disapproved of Antonio and, when Antonio temporarily moved away, forced her into marriage with her brother’s friend Salvatore Vinci after he had raped and impregnated her. She gave birth to a son in March of 1959, whom she named after her true love. She was eighteen.

Barbara and Antonio had continued their doomed relationship after her marriage, in which she was regularly beaten and abused by Salvatore. In December 1959, one of their secret trysts had been ambushed by a young man with a camera, Gesuino Pilleri, who took pictures and scolded the lovers as she fled. Fearing her husband, she told him that she had been attacked by strange men, and Salvatore filed a report. Yet Torrisi found a suspicious detail in said report – Salvatore had known about the camera. So it seemed likely that the whole affair had been arranged by the husband seeking proof of infidelity.

After the murders in Scopeti, Rotella, Izzo and Torrisi ramped up their efforts. Barbara’s brother and father, who had been with Salvatore when Barbara died, were questioned in Sardinia. After some pushing, Salvatore Steri admitted that Vinci had left them for a brief time to buy a gas cylinder for his wife. And while the men in the Steri family had largely protected Vinci, Barbara’s sisters were adamant that she wanted to flee, not commit suicide, and that Salvatore Vinci was a very violent man.

This was enough for Rotella, and Salvatore Vinci was formally placed under suspicion for his wife’s murder in October 1985. An expert opinion of the death was commissioned, and once Torrisi had finished his report to Rotella, the examining magistrate asked his counterpart in Sardinia to prosecute. On June 11 1986, Vinci was arrested. That summer was the first since 1981 that the Monster did not strike. Rotella was sure he had found his man.

After a lengthy preliminary investigation, prosecutor Altieri formally charged Vinci in November 1987. The trial, the first directly related to the Monster, commenced on April 12th 1988 and was attended by journalists from all around Italy, including the ubiquitous Mario Spezi of La Nazione. If anyone had hopes the trial would trap the Monster, they were sorely mistaken. It only took a few days for the case to completely unravel.

Salvatore Vinci was calm and certain during the proceedings, denying any violence against his wife, whom he considered faithful. The same could not be said for the young lover, Antonio Pili. In the face of an angry letter he had received from Barbara a few months before her death, accusing him of using her for sex, he first denied even knowing about it, then admitted to it on the stand. Pilleri, the photographer, claimed to have no recollection of the events, and could not produce a photo.

An appearance by Stefano Mele was canceled due to health problems, so colonel Torrisi had to address the court on his own, detailing the sexual perversions of Salvatore Vinci in great detail. The defendant took it on the chin, and bantered with the court reporters about sexual freedom. When Mele finally did arrive, he did little more than repeat old rumors and his tale of Salvatore confessing. By this point, Stefano Mele’s cognitive functions were obviously declined and few in the court were convinced. With nothing holding up the case but rumors, and the hope of finding a Monster, Salvatore Vinci was acquitted on April 19th.

In the end, it seems likely that Barbara Steri’s death was, indeed, a suicide. The expert opinion could not rule it out. Salvatore’s behavior before finding her can be explained by the fact that Antonio Pili carried a gun (for which he was charged months later), meaning a confrontation without witnesses could go badly. And the job offer that would have saved Barbara? It turned out to be fake, someone’s cruel joke. Neither the institution nor the contact person existed. Finally, a note was discovered, written by Barbara a week after the ambush by Pilleri. In it she talks about Antonio pushing her towards sleeping with one of his friends and even prostituting herself. Was Pilleri there to create blackmail material on behalf of Pili? And for a woman trapped in a loveless, abusive marriage, was that betrayal by a man she thought she loved enough to cause her to lose all hope?

Salvatore Vinci’s acquittal threw a wrench in Rotella’s plans, but he planned to continue working on the Sardinian trail. However, things had changed in the past three years. Media had become merciless in their criticism of SAM’s failures, and Pier Luigi Vigna, the brain behind SAM had lost faith in the Sardinian trail. Adolfo Izzo, nominal lead prosecutor, had supported it, but in the summer of 1986 he was transferred and replaced by Paolo Canessa, very much Vigna’s man. The same year Sandro Federico was replaced as head of SAM by Ruggero Perugini, handpicked by Vigna. After Vinci went free, Canessa signaled a change of direction in the investigation. Rotella objected, but couldn’t do much in the end. A legal reform was enacted in 1989 that removed the examining magistrate as head of the investigation, leaving that duty to the lead prosecutor. Typing up a final report that dutifully noted all the evidence against the Sardinians, Rotella acquitted them all on December 13th 1989.

On August 7th 1993 Francesco Vinci was tortured, mutilated, killed and burned along with his friend Angelo Vargiu, brother of the man who was once Salvatore Vinci’s alibi for Signa. Their charred bodies were found in the trunk of Francesco’s Volvo 240 in Pontedera. No one was ever charged for their murders. Stefano Mele, Giovanni Mele and Piero Mucciarini retreated from the public eye and died in obscurity. Salvatore Vinci, once freed, made one final visit to his hometown of Villacidro, before he vanished. His whereabouts are still unknown, though some claim to have encountered him in Spain decades later.

Pista Sarda had come to a close, but the investigations had not.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Il Vampa – Pietro Pacciani

Sometime after the murders in Vicchio, an increasingly disillusioned Pier Luigi Vigna was leafing through case files. Used to results, the constant setbacks and murky dead-ends of the Sardinian trail was starting to chafe and he wanted to investigate on other paths. Then, in one of the files, he found something that caused him to feel, in his own words, a “jolt all over his body”. A murder committed in 1951, where a man had attacked his fiancee and her lover in the countryside, killing the man and raping the woman beside the corpse. What caught Vigna’s eye was the cause of the killer’s rage. He had silently observed until his fiancee had bared her left breast – the same breast that the Monster had torn from Pia Rontini’s body in Vicchio.

The killer’s name was Pietro Pacciani, and he was known as Il Vampa due to his red-hot temper. Born 1925 in the Mugello (not far from the Monster killings in 1974 and 1984), he had been a partisan in World War 2. In 1950 he met 16-year old Miranda Bugli and the two became engaged. A year later, April 11th 1951, Miranda met with Severino Bonini, a junk salesman in his forties, in the countryside near Tassinaia. Pacciani hid in the bushes watching them until he flew into a rage, rushed out and stabbed Bonini to death. After raping Miranda and stealing Bonini’s money, he tried to hide the body but found it too heavy to carry.

Pacciani and Bugli were arrested the next day. The prosecutor claimed the two had lured Bonini into a trap. Bugli claimed to have been forced by Pacciani, while the latter just claimed to be a victim of his passions at seeing his fiancee with another man. The sentence, when it came, was lenient. Pacciani would only spend twelve years in prison, being released in 1964. The deed became a local legend, even immortalized in a murder ballad by a troubadour. Pacciani himself, when released, lived a rather quiet life. He married Angiolina Manni, a woman with mental health issues, and fathered two daughters, Rosanna and Graziella. By all accounts a miser and a tyrant, Pacciani worked as a farmer and a laborer for hire, often getting paid under the table. While his family lived on scraps Pacciani used his funds to buy and renovate two houses in Mercatale, a village just east of San Casciano. That’s where he lived when his daughters, finally of age and working outside the home, confided in their employer that Pacciani molested and abused them. On May 30th 1987, Pacciani went back to prison. A monster by all accounts, but was he the Monster?

The official line from SAM was that in the summer of 1989, the head of the squad Ruggero Perugini had run a check through SAM’s database, searching for a suspect to replace the now abandoned Sardinian trail. Perugini was a new type of policeman. He had studied in Modena under De Fazio, the man who had written the first Monster profile, and he was fascinated by the emerging behavioral science in law enforcement. Especially the FBI unit at Quantico where men like John Douglas were revolutionizing the study of serial killers. Perugini spent parts of the summer of 1989 at Quantico and even commissioned a new profile of the Monster, courtesy of the FBI Behavioral Science Unit.

Armed with that knowledge, Perugini checked the SAM database for anyone who might have reason to stop killing after Scopeti, and cross-referenced against a list of Tuscan residents between 30 and 60 convicted for violent crimes but who were free during all of the murders. Only one name appeared on both lists – Pietro Pacciani. This was the triumph of technology in the fight against crime – science had provided SAM with a new suspect.

There were reasons to doubt this even before Vigna much later admitted to having found Pacciani before the Scopeti murder. The reason Pacciani was in the database to begin with was that immediately after Scopeti there was an anonymous letter accusing him of being the Monster (much later the writer would be identified – he had no real knowledge of the murders but disliked Pacciani). Pacciani’s house was searched on September 19th 1985 and nothing was found, but he remained on file at SAM. Perugini also later admitted that when Vigna (who was about to become chief prosecutor of Florence) placed him at the head of SAM in 1986, he was given Pacciani’s file, and spent the next three years working almost exclusively on him. Even the computer search was dodgy – Pacciani was outside the age range, and the remaining parameters seemed almost arbitrary.

If Perugini had any problems with being handed a suspect by Vigna rather than finding one himself, he never complained. Instead, with Rotella gone, SAM could get to work on Pacciani. His daughter had mentioned a rifle that Pacciani had owned which couldn’t be found (Pacciani had no license) so with that as pretext Perugini started visiting Pacciani in prison. The farmer proved stubborn, emotional and prone to dramatic outbursts, constantly lying about even mundane things. In a subsequent search of Pacciani’s properties, Perugini came away with only a few things of note. One was a reproduction of Botticelli’s Primavera, another was a painting signed by Pacciani himself featuring violent imagery.

Perugini’s fascination with Primavera focused on one of the painting’s nymphs being attacked by a satyr, with golden leaves spilling from her mouth. This put Perugini in mind of Carmela De Nuccio, who had been found with her gold necklace over and in her open mouth. A psychologist was commissioned to analyze the painting by Pacciani. A postcard also proved consequential. Pacciani had connections to most of the murder sites except Calenzano, but the postcard from a man named Giovanni Foggi showed he had at least one friend in that area.

A few unrelated cannon shells (souvenirs from the war) allowed SAM to continue prying into Pacciani’s life on the pretext of illegal possession of weaponry. His friends were questioned and his living spaces searched several times. And while Perugini would only become more and more convinced of Pacciani’s guilt based on his behavior, evidence proved elusive. In autumn of 1991 Pacciani was formally placed under suspicion for the Monster killings, much to his dismay. Even his daughters, who had few kind words about their father, thought it impossible to be him, as he would spend most evenings drunk and abusive in the house. There was also the heart attack he had suffered in 1978 and his obesity. Chasing down a young and athletic Frenchman in the forest at the age of 60 seemed unlikely, but Perugini had faith in the physical strength of the life-long laborer.

Pacciani was released from prison in December 1991, and SAM realized they had to make a move. Perugini went on TV to talk directly to the Monster, in the hope of scaring Pacciani into incriminating himself over the tapped phone lines. A few months later, SAM decided to conduct a massive and thorough search of Pacciani’s properties, in the hope of finding the gun of the Monster. They knew it would likely be their last chance. An entire garden was dug up and searched inch by inch. And on April 29th 1992 an unfired bullet was found in the concrete base of a fence post. It was the age, brand and size of those used by the Monster. It was in bad shape, having been buried for a long time, and since it hadn’t been fired it couldn’t be matched with the gun, though a ballistic expert would write that it was “compatible” with having been inserted then ejected from the Monster’s gun.

A few weeks later, the carabinieri of San Casciano received an envelope containing a letter and a spring rod from a gun wrapped in fabric. The writer of the letter claimed he had found it by a tree where Pacciani would often go. While the spring rod could have been from many models of pistol (including the Monster’s Beretta), Perugini found more of the fabric that had been used to wrap the rod during a visit to Pacciani’s daughters in their house. The tears in both pieces of fabric matched up perfectly.

The only other physical evidence gathered was a set of German-made objects, which Perugini thought taken as souvenirs from Rusch and Meyer in Giogoli. The investigator flew to Germany in the summer of 1992 to show the objects to the victims’ families. The sketch-book of the “Skizzen Brunnen” brand proved most promising, since Horst Meyer had been a skilled artist and his family remembered him using that brand of book. Pacciani had written notes in that book dated to 1981, years before Meyer’s trip to Italy, but Perugini considered this a clever ruse on the suspect’s behalf. A local store in Osnabrück was identified as the likely origin of the sketch-book, though the book itself could not be matched with any particular purchase.

The trial against Pacciani opened in April 1994, more than a year after Pacciani had been taken into custody. It proved a circus, with Pacciani delivering his usual outbursts and theatrics. Since the physical evidence was limited to the bullet, the spring rod and the sketch-book, prosecutor Canessa’s case was mostly based on testimonies and psychological evaluations. Embarrassingly, the painting with violent imagery had to be discarded, since it wasn’t by Pacciani – he had forged his signature on an existing work.

The prosecution spent a lot of time trying to establish Pacciani as a voyeur, present at those rural nightly trysts that had been the Monster’s hunting grounds. Anna Maria Sperduto, who claimed to have been Pacciani’s lover claimed she had been interrupted one night when she was with another man by a flashlight-wielding Pacciani. Other couples testified to having spotted Pacciani spying on them. Most of them had been subpoenaed to the trial, and many suspected that the couples had been spicing up their stories for effect, not thinking they would be forced to testify. Taken as a whole, the evidence was thin, with one witness claiming Pacciani had gotten down on all fours and walked towards him “like a cat”.

More weight was found in the testimony of Pacciani’s daughters, who testified of their abuse and molestation to a rapt audience. The mysterious rifle had never been found, but Sperduto testified about having Pacciani pointing it at her, threatening to kill her. A man named Ivo Longo claimed to have seen an erratic driver on the Sunday of the Scopeti murder that he identified as Pacciani (though he described the car as dark or red, and Pacciani’s Ford Fiesta was white). And Mario Vanni, a retired postman and friend of Pacciani had been unfortunate enough to deliver a letter from Pacciani to his wife while the former was in prison, which had placed him in the crosshairs of SAM. On the stand, Vanni kept repeating that he and Pacciani were only “picnic friends”, a phrase that he could not have known would enter the Italian vernacular. Both Vanni and Calenzano-resident Faggi would be tied to Pacciani by their common visits to prostitutes, including Sperduto.

Still, no witness could match Lorenzo Nesi. The owner of a knitwear shop in San Casciano, who knew Pacciani through Vanni, had presented himself to the police on several occasions and thoroughly enjoyed the spotlight of the trial. He happily told of Pacciani talking about poaching with a rifle, then returned on a later date to say he had suddenly remembered seeing Pacciani in his car with an unknown man close to the Scopeti site on the Sunday that the murder was thought to have been committed. The judge wasn't suspicious of his sudden recollection, and in fact praised Nesi for his honesty.

On November 1st 1994 judge Ognibene issued his verdict – Pacciani was guilty of 14 out of the 16 murders, excluding the Signa murders. While Ognibene and Canessa considered Pacciani a suspect for that one too, either alone, or with Stefano Mele, they could not overturn the initial verdicts.

The sentence was controversial and the defense immediately appealed. While the appeals process begun, reporters like Mario Spezi began to sow doubt. He managed to get his hands on the FBI profile, which had never been publicized, and found that it bore little resemblance to Pacciani or his character. Further suspicion was thrown on the physical evidence – carabinieri marshal Minolito of San Casciano, who shared responsibility with SAM for the Pacciani searches, admitted to Spezi (on hidden camera) that both the bullet and the spring rod were highly suspicious and he suspected someone had planted them.

When Piero Tony was assigned as prosecutor for Pacciani’s appeal, he was astonished at the poor investigation and questionable verdict. Rather than trying to convict the farmer, he methodically demolished the case. Judge Francesco Ferri agreed and after two short weeks the trial ended in Pacciani’s favor, with minimal effort needed for the defense. On the last day of the trial, however, a policeman burst into the courtroom and pronounced that four new witnesses had been found, witnesses that had seen Pietro Pacciani with his friend Mario Vanni at the Scopeti crime scene on the night (as was believed) of the murder. When Ferri asked the identity of the witnesses, the policeman refused, only naming them as Alfa, Beta, Gamma and Delta. Angered at the shenanigans, Ferri denied hearing the witnesses and pronounced Pacciani not guilty.

Pacciani was a free man, but he had lost everything, and in December 1996 the Supreme Court annulled his acquittal and ordered a new trial that would incorporate the alphabetic witnesses. Paolo Canessa began the trial against Mario Vanni in 1997, as a first step towards a second go at Pacciani. That, however, was not to be. On February 22nd 1998, Pacciani passed away in his home, sick and lonely. Some called the death suspicious, but nothing was ever put forward to substantiate that.

Pietro Pacciani is still the official Monster of Florence as far as the Italian Justice system is concerned, though he technically died in legal limbo. The ripples produced by the attempts to convict him would end up swallowing several people unfortunate enough to have known him.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Compagni di Merende – Mario Vanni & Giancarlo Lotti

After Pacciani had been charged and was preparing for trial, SAM was disbanded, its job complete. Perugini saw his dream come true – he got a position as Italian liaison with the FBI. But when, in 1995, the appeal was approaching, chief prosecutor Vigna became worried. The conviction of Pacciani was the result of his hard work and he had no intention of letting it slip away. The testimony of Lorenzo Nesi, so appreciated by the judge, provided a tantalizing clue – Pacciani had traveled in his car with another, unknown man. That meant Pacciani could have had an accomplice, which meant they could play them against each other. Vigna and the others favored Mario Vanni, the hapless mailman and enthusiastic visitor of prostitutes who had embarrassed himself on the stand during Pacciani’s trial. A few remaining SAM agents started gathering material to Vigna’s new hand-picked man.

Michele Giuttari was placed as head of the Mobile Squad of Florence, with instructions from Vigna to nail Pacciani’s picknick friend. Giuttari buried himself in the many testimonies, credible or not, that had been gathered by SAM over the years, and called people back for new rounds of questioning. People who had seen cars around Scopeti and Vicchio were especially scrutinized, and potential owners of the red car from Ivo Longo’s testimony.

That the process was tainted by questionable methods was demonstrated by the story of Sabrina Carmignani. On her 18th birthday, September 8th 1985, she had driven the Scopeti clearing with her boyfriend and saw the car and tent of the French campers. Her testimony was actually damaging to the late time of death favored by the investigators, since she noted an eerie atmosphere and more flies than usual (according to the police, the victims would still have been alive when Sabrina visited the site). Giuttari and the others were more interested in a red car that had arrived at the site shortly before Sabrina and her boyfriend left. Another pair of witnesses had seen a red car, possibly a Fiat, near the clearing, with two middle-aged men beside it. In a lengthy interview, the existence of which was leaked to the media, Sabrina was pressured to say she had seen Mario Vanni in the red car, but she adamantly refused. To her dismay, she would read in the next day’s papers that the police claimed she had indeed named Vanni, and she hurried back to the station to set the record straight only to find that the report she had signed was now significantly shorter. Many years later, she told a reporter about how she had been pressured and even threatened (she was in a custody battle at the time) by the investigators.

If Sabrina could not place Vanni at the scene, the red car had now occurred in three different testimonies, and by a stroke of luck they found a man who was acquainted with Pacciani as well as the owner of a red Fiat. His name was Giancarlo Lotti, and he would be the centerpiece in the sad story of the Compagni di Merende, the Picnic friends.

In the early 80s, Lotti had been “dating” a prostitute named Filippa Nicoletti, while her boyfriend and provider, local soothsayer Salvatore Indovino, was in prison. Giuttari was interested in the Indovino character, and Lotti obliged with information. Nicoletti had been “replaced” as Indovino’s caretaker by another prostitute named Ghiribelli, and when she in turn was interviewed she was shown pictures of red Fiats. Intercepted phone calls between Ghiribelli and Nicoletti uncovered another clue – Ghiribelli too had seen a red car at Scopeti while driving past that night with her pimp, and she had recognized the car as Lotti’s. They also mentioned Lotti’s friend Pucci, and wondered if the police would get to him. When Ghiribelli confronted Lotti, he was flustered and talked about having stopped for a piss.

Ghiribelli and her pimp, Galli, both came back and gave testimony about the car at Scopeti, and the police dragged in Pucci. Fernando Pucci was a man with mental problems, perhaps the only person who looked up to Lotti. He immediately told the police that he and Lotti had been at the site, but had been chased away by two strange men who had threatened them. An interview later, he was adamant that it was Pacciani and Vanni, and he saw them murder the French couple. Lotti, faced with Pucci’s story, eventually agrees with it. With a day left of the Pacciani appeal trial, Giuttari sends a policeman to inform judge Ferri of his new witnesses, Pucci (Alfa), Lotti (Beta), Ghiribelli (Gamma) and Galli (Delta). It is commonly assumed that the refusal to name them was meant to antagonize Ferri into denying the hearing, giving Canessa a clear reason for a new trial at the Supreme Court.

Giuttari started to build the case against Vanni. Ghiribelli, enjoying the attention, started talking about black masses and that Nicoletti had prostituted herself to Vanni and Pacciani, something the latter hotly denied. However, it was Lotti who proved most helpful. Soon he confessed to having known about the Scopeti murder in advance and that he had been at Vicchio as well, essentially incriminating himself. He was taken to a secret apartment in Arezzo where he continued to provide the police with the information they wanted, always ready to adapt if needed. Vanni, who had been arrested directly after Lotti’s accusation, didn’t understand a thing of what was going on.

In November 1996, Lotti had admitted to being at the Giogoli murders as well, and the following month said he had a sexual relationship with Pacciani that had been used for blackmail. Astonishingly enough, Lotti’s lawyer had not been present at either interview. Lotti’s generous confessions also included Francesco Vinci, now safely deceased, and a local carabinieri named Neri who would have supplied Pacciani with the famous gun. As the trial against Vanni and Lotti (and also poor Faggi) geared up in the winter of 1997, judge Lombardi allowed for Lotti’s absence from the courtroom under the reasoning that he could be threatened by Vanni.

At the trial, Giuttari threw most of his dug up evidence at the court. One particular issue that would become a problem later was regarding sightings of Pacciani’s car near Vicchio in 1984. During Pacciani’s trial, a couple had come forward to claim they had seen two cars driving by at high speed just after the murders, one dark and the other red. At Vanni’s trial, three years later, that had become a white car and a red car, exactly matching Pacciani and Lotti’s vehicles. Another witness had approached SAM back in 1992 about seeing Pacciani in a red car at another road. She had been judged unreliable by the interviewers, but Giuttari had brought her back and now the cars had become the proper number (2) and the proper colors (white and red). The court took little notice of the fact that both sightings were on a route that made little sense for anyone to take and didn’t even properly connect. Lotti had even failed to find it on a guided tour.

On March 28th 1998, in a verdict of the same caliber as Ognibene’s, judge Lombardi sentenced Vanni to life in prison, while Lotti, on whose testimony the judge had placed the utmost faith, got 30 years. Faggi was acquitted. The appeal trial, a year later, almost saw a repeat of the Pacciani trial, when the prosecutor Daniele Propato advocated for Vanni’s innocence based on the poor evidence. This time, however, Lotti’s confessions was considered enough of a difference by judge Arturo Cindolo that Vanni and Lotti were convicted again on May 31st 1999. The supreme court affirmed the verdicts on April 26th 2000, putting an end to the whole affair.

After the death of Pacciani, the public interest in the case seemed to dwindle. Lotti, obese and alcoholic, was released two years after the supreme court verdict and died on April 30th 2002. Vanni, who never understood the reason for his misfortunes, descended into dementia. On April 14th 2004 he was released from prison for health reasons and died five years later.

The worst, however, was yet to come.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Pista Esoterica – Francesco Calamandrei

On September 26th 2001, the Italian TV show Porta a Porta broadcast a sensational episode. Michele Giuttari, head of Florence Mobile Squad and captor of the Picnic friends, revealed a new stage in the investigation of the Monster of Florence. There was, in fact, a secret organizer, a will behind the brutish men who had physically committed the murders. Lotti had spoken of a doctor who had procured the genitalia cut off the women for use in esoteric ceremonies. Viewers were shown a strange stone, found at the Calenzano murder site, shaped like a truncated pyramid and used for rituals. It wasn’t just a doctor either, a whole satanic sect stood behind him, powerful men who gathered in a certain villa not far from Pacciani’s home. A journalist, Gabriella Carlizzi, provided more details about the sect, which she had investigated for many years, along with its connections to the Monster of Florence.

Soon, Michele Giuttari was placed in charge of an elite group of policemen, GIDeS (Gruppo Investigativo Delitti Seriali, the serial killer investigating group), in cooperation with Canessa in Florence and a whole new connection to the city of Perugia, with the sole purpose of taking down the men behind the Monster. Several high-ranking members of the sect were identified, investigated and even charged. Newspapers and TV shows had Giuttari on regularly, where he would inform on the investigation as well as promote his latest books. The hype was intense (as can be evidenced from the start of this very topic thread).

Before the sordid end to the whole thing, we’ll go back to the start, with Gabriella Carlizzi.

While Carlizzi was a reporter, she was a rather unique one. Claiming to channel the spirit of a deceased Catholic priest, father Gabriele, she wrote on esoteric matters and the satanic-masonic sect she believed lay behind many crimes dating back centuries, the Order of the Red Rose. During the Monster of Florence investigation, she eagerly reported on it, identifying potential sect members that could have been the killer, usually doctors, befitting the public taste. Pacciani himself tried to get the investigators interested in her theories, which, to be fair, had about as much physical evidence for them as he had.

While her stories gave her a certain notoriety, they also got her in trouble. In 1990, she had lied herself onto the front-pages regarding the Aldo Moro case, then in 1995 she added some baseless spice to a story about a disgraced star physician, which ended in the pointless exhumation of beloved and famous actor Walter Chiari over the protests of his relatives. Her charity foundation, run by her husband, turned out to be fraudulent.

In February 1995, she went to the Roman authorities, claiming the Monster’s identity as well-known writer Alberto Bevilacqua. This had been given to her by a young woman claiming to have been the lover of Bevilacqua. The woman testified to the writer’s “split” personality and his use of Norzetam, the drug that was found at Baccaiano. The Romans sent Carlizzi and the woman to prosecutor Canessa in Florence. He in turn let the remaining SAM members investigate and they soon found enough untruths in the story that Carlizzi and the woman were both charged with slander. The investigating judge acquitted due to jurisdiction, though Carlizzi would eventually be convicted in a Roman court for slander against Bevilacqua.

If Carlizzi was dissuaded by this, it was not for long. After Pacciani won his appeal trial in early 1996, Carlizzi wrote to Vigna, Canessa and Fleury, talking about the sect behind the Monster killings and suggesting they look into Pacciani’s considerable assets. This time she got a bite – her theories were well received by Michele Giuttari, who had a far more generous filter for nonsense than his predecessors. He immediately investigated and found that Pacciani’s liquid assets amounted to almost 160 million lira (equivalent of ca 80 000 euro), along with two apartments valued together at 170 million. In all a considerable sum, though in Giuttari’s book about the case, it had expanded to 900 million.

With regards to where the money came from, Giuttari again followed Carlizzi’s lead. He and Canessa had Lotti brought up from Arezzo and put up in a hotel where he was interviewed without his lawyer. In addition to admitting to the Giogoli murders (from the last section), when asked about the money, Lotti said a doctor had paid Pacciani for the body parts. This was a complete change from his earlier testimonies, where he claimed Pacciani buried them in his garden. The doctor was conveniently never in full view of Lotti and his name had never been given. The lie was obvious, but Giuttari believed himself to have struck gold. The search for this mysterious doctor would consume his whole upcoming decade.

As for Pacciani’s finances, he had been notorious for his frugality, while also buying bonds from early on and getting good interest on them. He made his money on and off the books as a laborer, while his wife and children sometimes had to resort to eating dog food. None of Pacciani’s bank statements showed any particular increase that was correlated with a Monster murder, even less so a murder where body parts were taken. In the end, there was no real reason to think Pacciani’s money could only be explained by payments from a mysterious doctor.

Giulio Zucconi, a deceased gynecologist, was the first doctor to be fingered by Giuttari. The day Lotti told the court of the “doctor”, two of the victim’s relatives had phone conversation intercepted by the police (the shamefully excessive use of wiretapping would only increase over the years). They talked of old rumors regarding Zucconi as well as his widow being responsible for a strange story where Pacciani’s wife was robbed by a woman. Giuttari dug up some local gossipers that related anecdotes about Zucconi that bore little fruit, and once interviewed the relatives admitted they had just repeated gossip. Giuttari wasn’t deterred, and kept Zucconi as a suspect.

While Zucconi was dead and beyond the reach of Giuttari, Francesco Calamandrei, a wealthy pharmacist in San Casciano, was alive. Zucconi had used the Calamandrei pharmacy as an out-patient clinic, which raised Giuttari’s suspicions. Unfortunately, during the 80s, Calamandrei’s wife Mariella Ciulli’s mental health deteriorated and during consultations she started to obsess over the Monster of Florence whom she identified with her husband. In 1988 she went to the carabinieri to accuse Calamandrei. Many of the details in her story (which included finding body parts in the freezer) were seemingly taken from a book by reporter Mario Spezi, a friend of the family. During subsequent years, before she was institutionalized, she would contact any and all involved in the case. She gave more and more elaborate and fanciful accounts, which Vigna (another family friend) and Perugini dismissed.

On July 7th 1998 Calamandrei’s house was searched on flimsy pretexts by Giuttari. With the exception of a magazine called Diva Satanica (part of a fairly mainstream series of essays on eroticism), most value was placed on Calamandrei’s personal notes, detailing his failed marriage, drug-addicted son and general depression.

However, by the summer of 1998, the situation had changed for Giuttari. Pacciani was dead. Vanni and Lotti had been convicted. Vigna had been promoted to the National Anti-Mafia Prosecutor, and few saw any reason to continue the Monster investigations. Giuttari’s criticism of his predecessors and shameless book promotions came back to haunt him, and he spent two years fighting a transfer with the help of Canessa. After he managed to stay on, he started to look into the death of Milva Malatesta. She was the daughter of Sperduto, the woman who had claimed to be Pacciani’s lover, and had been murdered with her young son in 1993. Since the murder was so close to Francesco Vinci’s death, Giuttari theorized they were lovers, a hypothesis he could never prove, but which would have finally connected the first murders in Signa with Pacciani and the Picnic friends.

Things picked up when he got a visit from Carlizzi. Back when she had chased Bevilacqua in the 90s, she had come across a villa near San Casciano. It had been a retirement home in the 80s, now it was owned by a family that rented out various buildings on the property. When it was a retirement home, Pacciani had done some gardening work there. Bevilaqua had once been a guest, so Carlizzi went to interview the owners, who were well aware of her antics and turned her away. In 1997 the owners went to Giuttari regarding a guest, a painter, who had left without paying, leaving his material and a pistol behind. Excepting the pistol, it was little more than the usual artists stuff, though Giuttari tried to build something from it before he was sidetracked by his impending transfer.

Carlizzi’s visit came in April 2001, and she had fascinating news for Giuttari: she had found the painter, and he had sensational stories to tell. Giuttari headed to France to interview the painter. He claimed the owners had held him hostage in the villa, and he had to leave behind his property to escape. Not only had they stolen from him, they also did strange things in the nights. Giuttari managed to find two nurses from the retirement home era who testified of black masses and satanic rituals, though other testimonies contradicted the painter and the nurses.

Based on this, Giuttari’s right-hand man Fausto Vinci conducted a search of the villa. The owners, who were in Rome at the time, were told late in the evening to be at the villa the next day, or the police would break down every door. After a night drive to Florence, the owners could only watch as the police tore out all their furniture and heirlooms and piled them on the ground. A water pipe was broken, flooding one of the houses. When the (fruitless) search was done, Vinci’s men locked all doors, threatened the owners with arrest if they attempted to put any of their things back inside, and drove off. The owners got promises from Canessa that their things would be put back, but the promise was unfulfilled and most of their possessions were ruined by the elements during the fall of 2001.

Days after the search was done, Giuttari had his appearance on Porta a Porta. Still confident that the villa would yield its secrets, he prepared a document for the incoming chief prosecutor Ubaldo Nannucci. It included not only the villa, Calamandrei and Zucconi, but also Zucconi’s widow and brother. The pyramid-shaped stones were there, and some “esoteric” circles of stone that had been found in the area of Scopeti (essentially makeshift fireplaces to most people). But Nannucci was not as credulous as his predecessor. When a final search of a shed near the villa only turned up some Halloween decorations, rather than a satanic ritual room, Giuttari’s claim that it was a deliberate misdirection fell on deaf ears. As 2001 drew to an end, Nannucci stopped acting on Giuttari and Canessa’s fancies.

Giuttari was frustrated, but his salvation came from Perugia.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Pista Esoterica - Francesco Narducci

Francesco Narducci was a young gastroenterologist from Perugia, born into wealth and seemingly happily married. On October 8th 1985, just a month after the final Monster killings, he took his boat out on Lake Trasimene and never returned. Five days later, his bloated corpse was fished out of the lake. The quaestor (police chief) of Perugia let his friend, Narducci’s father, take his son’s corpse home for burial rather than taking it in for autopsy. The obvious reason was scandal – Narducci had been addicted to prescription drugs and had shown plenty of signs of depression. An autopsy could point to a suicide rather than an accident.

If the goal was to prevent gossip, it failed. As a young, handsome doctor it was perhaps inevitable that the people of Perugia would suspect Narducci of being the Monster. After all, once he died, the murders stopped. The gossip was so prevalent, SAM had asked for his file in 1987. It was quickly ascertained that Narducci had an ironclad alibi for at least one of the murders. When the Monster struck in Calenzano he had been in Rochester, New York. While that stopped police investigation, reporters like Carlizzi would keep Narducci’s name in the less-than-reputable news media. As the years passed, the stories became more elaborate, going from a solitary killer that committed suicide to a whole masonic sect that had arranged the death (or disappearance) of Narducci to cover their tracks.

In September 2001, Perugian prosecutor Giuliano Mignini was a true believer in the Narducci conspiracy. He could not investigate without a reason, but that was provided by a prank caller. As Mignini and Giuttari would tell the story, a beautician in Foligno was receiving threatening phone calls that referenced Pacciani and the Monster, satanism and “doctor Narducci who died in the lake”. The clear connection allowed Mignini to start a case and link up with Giuttari and Canessa.

The reality was less clear-cut. Mignini opened the case in October 2001. In January 2002, the public was made aware of the new investigation by (among others) Carlizzi. But the recordings of the phone calls (made by the beautician) didn’t mention Narducci or even a doctor until May 2002, when the new investigation was public knowledge. Before that it was just Pacciani. In fact, Mignini’s request to open the case states that since the Monster was mentioned, and Narducci had been rumored to be the Monster, that would warrant an investigation.

Regardless, one of the key facets of the Narducci conspiracy was that the body fished from the lake in 1985 hadn’t been Narducci but a decoy, which is why an autopsy wasn’t performed. The quaestor and the local carabinieri captain, as well as Narducci’s family and friends, would therefore have also been involved. The basis were a couple of photographs, the only ones taken at the time, of the body on the pier. Conspiracy theorists, Mignini included, had measured plank widths and angles on what was visible on the pictures and had come to the (dubious) conclusion that the body was too short to be Narducci. The goal of the investigation was to obtain an exhumation which would prove the conspiracy true.

Over the protests and legal lobbying of his family, Narducci’s grave was opened and the body inside was unquestionably Narducci. Undeterred, Mignini claimed a double body switch had occurred, once in 1985, and one in 2002 when the family got wind of the imminent exhumation. An autopsy was performed, revealing little but a small crack in a bone in Narducci’s neck. Mignini took this as proof that he was strangled (a gentle strangling at that to cause such limited damage), though more than likely it occurred when Narducci’s clothes (including a leather tie) were cut from his bloated body.

Mignini mostly seized upon discrepancies in the stories and testimonies surrounding the disappearance, search for and finding of Narducci, events that were sixteen years old at the time witnesses were to recount them. A lot of gossip told of a secret Narducci apartment in Florence that the police had searched shortly after his death, where (of course) body parts were found in the freezer. No one could ever give the address or claim to have been there with the exception of inspector Luigi Napoleoni, who had gone there on behest of a psychic, but could not remember where or when, nor prove it with any documentation.

Most of Mignini’s material came from a private investigation made in 1993 by a certain Pasquini who had lucked out in interviewing Emilia Cataluffi, who worked at the Perugia registry and was perhaps the biggest gossip gatherer in the province. She had told of reporters who had been ordered to hush up Narducci stories, and policemen like the aforementioned Napoleoni who had been similarly hushed by the quaestor, When interviewed again by Mignini, many of the witnesses downplayed or denied receiving pressure from the superiors, so Mignini simply used their words second or third-hand, through the testimonies of Pasquini and Cataluffi.

As the investigation continued, Mignini tapped a large amount of phones, including the former quaestor and carabinieri captain, combing through their words for even a hint of the conspiracy. Of course, he found plenty that could be used when viewed through the proper lens.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Pista Esoterica - GIDeS

While the Perugian investigation moved along with speed, things were slow in Florence. Nannucci was tired of Giuttari’s antics, and refused to act on his requests regarding the Monster, despite Canessa’s interventions. Since Giuttari was nominally the head of the Mobile Squad he was responsible for investigating all major crimes in the city, but he put all his efforts and resources into his Monster search. The rate of unsolved crime in Florence increased rapidly, but any attempt to transfer Giuttari was met with objections from the judiciary. Finally, a compromise was made. Using a new law that allowed a transferred policeman the men, resources and time (up to four years) to finish his outstanding investigations, Giuttari finally accepted his removal. Nannucci would come to regret this.

While GIDeS was portrayed in the media as an elite police group, it was in fact simply the men and resources Giuttari had been given to finish up the Monster investigation. He came up with the name himself. Since the law was new, the ramifications had not yet been fully realized, so now Giuttari operated essentially without oversight.

Mignini focused on proving the Narducci conspiracy, while Giuttari zeroed in on Calamandrei. The major problem was finding witnesses that placed the two together, not an easy task. Calamandrei had been well-known in his village, so finding ties to Vanni and Pacciani was easy, but Narducci only had ties to Florence in gossip. Nevertheless, old witnesses were dusted off. Lorenzo Nesi, the man who sank Pacciani, and the old alpha and gamma witnesses Pucci and Ghiribelli returned. They easily refreshed and updated their memories, now having seen Narducci, Calamandrei and all the others together, at Indovino’s or even at satanic orgies at Villa la Sfacciata. By showing a photoset consisting of only the suspects (all of whom had been prominent in newspapers) to a large amount of people, a handful of other witnesses were found to place Narducci among the others.

A parallel investigation was also conducted. Giuttari and Mignini were upset at the resistance from Nannucci and the Florence quaestor, not to mention the members of the media who were skeptical of the esoteric trail. Whether they actually believed it or not, they started to investigate them as suspects, since (at least in Mignini's mind) only the Monster’s co-conspirators would have any interest in criticizing GIDeS. Nannucci, quaestor De Donno and several reporters including Mario Spezi were wiretapped. Not even Canessa escaped. Giuttari secretly recorded his closest ally in Florence ranting about Nannucci, keeping the recording as a weapon against Nannucci.

Spezi, who had been particularly harsh in his criticism against GIDeS, was already suspect due to his friendship with Calamandrei. Carlizzi was convinced of his involvement in the Monster killings and had, as usual, produced an unreliable witness. Spezi had for some time conducted his own investigation, together with American writer Douglas Preston, and Mignini used recordings of their phone calls to claim that their investigation was in fact a misdirection, planting false evidence to take the investigation down another trail. Preston was pressured by Mignini to leave Italy, and Spezi was arrested and held without access to a lawyer in April 2006. Preston roped in the international journalist community who strongly protested Spezi’s arrest, and he was released after three weeks.

At that point GIDeS started to unravel. Canessa had been forced to publicly clear the Zucconi family and the owners of the villa. In the fall of 2006 a case was opened regarding the excesses Giuttari and Mignini had made in their investigation, particularly the wiretapping of public officials and investigation of critical journalists. GIDeS was disbanded, its material moved to Perugia. In April 2010 Giuttari and Mignini were convicted of abuse of office.

Meanwhile the trials went forward. Canessa brought Calamandrei to a fast-track trial, where judge Silvio De Luca unceremoniously acquitted the pharmacist of all charges on May 21st 2008, finding the case to be nothing but rumors and inferences. Canessa, perhaps disillusioned by Giuttari’s betrayal, declined to appeal. On April 20th 2010, two days before the conviction of Giuttari and Mignini, judge Paolo Micheli in Perugia acquitted all members of the so-called Narducci conspiracy, which included family, friends, police officers, reporters and a poor maid. In a hefty tome of a motivation report, Micheli systematically demolished the entire case. Mignini appealed all the way to the supreme court, but was finally defeated in 2016.

With that sentence, the esoteric trail, last official investigation into the Monster of Florence, ended.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

The Hannibal Lecter connection

In the english-speaking world, most people who have heard of the Monster of Florence have done so through the fictional work of Thomas Harris. His books about the serial killer Hannibal Lecter and the movie adaptations make references to the Italian murderer. In the novel “Hannibal”, one of the policemen on the trail of Lecter, Pazzi, used to work on the Monster investigation and was disgraced when the man he captured turned out to be innocent. He is killed by Lecter and hung from the walls of Palazzo Vecchio. Deleted scenes from the film adaptation show the Monster working as a janitor at the Palazzo, while the later TV series implies Hannibal himself was the Monster of Florence.

Thomas Harris had been an early promoter of the emerging profiling science, having done research with the new Behavioral Science Unit at the FBI for his novel "Red Dragon" (1981). Jack Crawford, head of the unit from the novels, is based on John Douglas and a lot of the methods used were popularized by the novel and its sequel, "Silence of the Lambs" (1988). With the success of the film version of Silence, Harris was under pressure to produce a sequel. With his contacts at the BSU, he became the guest of fellow FBI booster Ruggero Perugini, in whose house Harris was hosted as the Pacciani trial began.

Perugini’s theories regarding the Primavera reproduction became an important detail in Harris’ work (the “Monster” episode of the TV series is called "Primavera"), and Harris could be seen in the courtroom taking copious notes. His slow writing turned detrimental to Perugini; when the novel was finally published in 1999, Pacciani had been acquitted and died a free man. Perugini was said not to be particularly pleased with his character being a disgraced detective gorily killed by the famous fictional killer.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

“Carlo”

The book written by journalist Mario Spezi and American author Douglas Preston, the research for which put them both in Mignini’s sights, was published as "Dolci Colline di Sangue" while Spezi was imprisoned. A reworked edition was later released in English as "The Monster of Florence", and is perhaps the best known non-fictional source for the crime in that language. Much of the details in this write-up is taken from there. It's a great book, highly recommended for anyone interested in the case.

In the Italian book, Spezi and Preston specify their favored suspect as a member of the Sardinians, with the pseudonym Carlo. The English version dispenses with that and names him outright. Their suspect is Antonio Vinci, son of Salvatore. He would have stolen the gun used in Signa from his father and committed his first murders in Borgo San Lorenzo, 1974, when he was 15.

Spezi claimed to have picked up the theory from carabinieri who had continued a secret investigation after Rotella had cleared the rest of the Sardinians. Antonio, whose hatred for his father was well known, would have been reported to the police by his own father for breaking into his house. When the police came, Salvatore said nothing had been taken. This was a few months before the murders of Pettini and Gentilcore at Borgo San Lorenzo. The idea was that Antonio had indeed taken something – the gun and some ammunition.

There were some other coincidences. After the 1974 murder, Antonio had moved away from Florence, first to Sardinia and then to Lake Como where he was happy for a while. Then in 1980 he returned to Florence just in time for the rest of the murders. The FBI profile, discarded by SAM for its incompatibility with Pacciani, emphasized sexual dysfunction on the killer’s behalf. Antonio was married during the early 80s, but the marriage was annulled for not having been consummated. The Modena profile even said the 1974 crime implied an inexperienced teenager.

Antonio had looked up to and been the steady companion of his uncle Francesco Vinci, who was known for his skills with a knife and moving around the countryside without being spotted. When Spezi and Preston found him for an interview, Antonio claimed he had been with his uncle at the night of one the murders, and also confessed to having threatened his father with his scuba knife. Scuba knife was one of the type of blades the coroners thought could have been used in the murders. The murders ended when Salvatore was arrested – was his hatred for his father the engine that drove the killer?

So, does the theory hold up? There is nothing really against it, though there are a lot of unknown facts that prevent a clear verdict. For one, Spezi didn’t get any information from the carabinieri. It was, in fact, a British author named Magdalen Nabb that claimed to have gotten the story and facts of the secret investigation from the carabinieri, with whom she had good contacts. Spezi had gotten the facts from (the now deceased) Nabb, who was none to pleased about him making it public. That means that for example the report about Antonio’s break-in is unavailable (though Antonio confessed to it to Spezi and Preston), as well as other data that could shed more light on the situation. Spezi and Preston mention Salvatore Vinci checking himself into a mental hospital after Borgo San Lorenzo, possibly disturbed by his son’s actions. He did do that, but in 1980, six years later. I have not been able to find any earlier case.

In the end, Antonio Vinci can’t be excluded from the list of suspects, though a lot more evidence is required. He is still alive today, living in Florence.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

The Lotti hypothesis

Few characters in this story come across as pathetic as Giancarlo Lotti. In Spezi and Preston’s book he is a village idiot, easily manipulated and led by Giuttari and his men into confirming any and all theories they have regardless of how much he incriminates himself in the process. To those who believe in the guilt of the Picnic friends he is the weak tag-along to the more dominating Pacciani and Vanni, pulled into their murderous exploits. People who knew him talked about how children would tease and chase him, and his “friends” would pull practical jokes on him. Pictures from the trials show an obese man, often grinning like an idiot.

Yet professor Antonio Segnini, writer of the blog “Quando sei con me il Mostro non c’è” sees Lotti as the best candidate for the Monster of Florence – a singular, solitary killer as described in the profiles and original theories, not the bloated crowds of the Picnic friends. Lotti was almost two decades younger than Pacciani and Vanni, in his forties during the 80s, and did not have the physical limitations of the other ones. And while Pacciani and Vanni had been pulled into the investigation based on the intuition of Vigna and others, Lotti had been pulled in because a red car had been seen at the Scopeti crime scene by three different witnesses and one of them recognized it as Lotti’s.

This of course depends on Ghiribelli’s credibility, which given her later statements is dubious, but Lotti was indeed spooked by the situation and claimed he had only stopped there to pee, which was a confession of sorts. While Lotti and Pucci’s stories about being chased away by two men (who then became Pacciani and Vanni) are not credible, their presence there on Sunday evening would be suspicious. It needn’t be because they were involved in the murder – Lotti might have found the site on Saturday evening and decided to do some voyeuring, and when he realized it was a murder scene, he brought Pucci out the next day to show him in a shared morbid fascination.

But Segnini had found other hints of Lotti’s guilt. His former girlfriend Filippa Nicoletti testified that Lotti had taken her to the Vicchio crime scene years before the crime took place, meaning Lotti knew about the location. At Borgo San Lorenzo, Stefania Pettini had complained about being followed by a man in his mid-thirties just before she was killed. Lotti was 35 at the time. Was Stefania the victim of Lotti’s stalking? Was that why she was the only one not shot (deliberately) but killed with a knife?

At Signa, little Natalino had talked about seeing someone in the reeds. Was there a voyeur there? A voyeur who saw someone (in Segnini’s view Stefano Mele and Piero Mucciarini) commit a murder? A voyeur who then picked up the pistol that had been left on the ground to implicate one of the Vinci brothers? If the Monster was a complete stranger to the Sardinians it would explain their confusion and constant finger-pointing. It also explains why the Monster posing (presumably) as a concerned citizen sent the police the information they needed to discover the Signa connection. If Mainardi had indeed given information to the police before he died, it was in the Monster’s best interest to send the police down the Sardinian trail, where the real Monster could not be found.

It’s a solid theory. If you read Italian, I recommend professor Segnini’s blog for more information, including speculation into why the murders resumed in the 80s. (It also contains the murder reconstructions I've used for this write-up, which I've found far more persuasive than the ones by the police.) Much like with Antonio Vinci, it’s difficult to issue a verdict without more information, but the Lotti hypothesis can’t be dismissed.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

The end?

Recently, there has been talk of DNA testing on a blood stain preserved from the Scopeti, though no official information has been released. Without that, the only real hope of solving the crime is either the gun being found, or someone confessing.

Online you can find plenty of speculation, most of it conspiratorial and sensational, Giuttari and Mignini’s shadows looming large. A favored suspect is a former legionnaire named Vigilanti who had been looked at by investigators before. Other, more outlandish theories, try to connect the Monster with another killer of parked couples, the Zodiac killer.

In the end, we will likely never know. The mess left by the investigations of the 90s and 00s obscure much of the facts on the ground and most people involved are now dead. Little Natalino Mele still lives, his life ruined first by the Monster, then by the police. He remains the sole surviving witness to any of the crimes, and it is perhaps fitting the story that he no longer has any recollection of that night other than seeing the face of his dead mother, the very first victim.

 

[Romulus]

From Wikipedia in italian language

Mostro di Firenze - Wikipedia

Hypothesis MdF-Zodiac: The magazine Tempi published on 19 May 2018 the first part of a journalistic investigation in which it is stated that the famous Killer of the Zodiac was hidden behind the Monster of Florence. According to Francesco Amicone, the author of the investigation, the suspect would be an Italian-American residing first in the United States, where he would have committed the crimes attributed to the Killer of the Zodiac, and then would have moved to Italy, to kill again and earn the nickname. of Monster of Florence. The man, according to the investigation, would be the same American that Mario Vanni in a 2003 interception identifies with the name of "Ulysses" and "black" (this despite the alleged serial killer is not dark-skinned and is not known for professing right-wing political tendencies) . The man, a former CID agent of the 5th Battalion of the US Military Police, appears to have resided in the Florentine province since the summer of 1974, a few months after the last official letter sent by the Zodiac Killer to the San Francisco Chronicle . Furthermore, he would have signed his own crimes and his own letters making allusions to his identity, which would contain the Italian word "water" . On 29 May 2018, the same journalist published in Il Giornale the alleged partial confessions of the alleged murderer. The alleged serial killer, according to the same journalist, would also have declared that his colleagues at the CID were informed of his "second life" and that he would not have constituted himself, despite his repentance, "to avoid trouble for others" . Following these articles, Francesco Amicone denounced the US citizen of Italian origin Giuseppe "Joe" Bevilacqua, who denied the confession . Bevilacqua, accused by Amicone of being responsible for the crimes of the Monster and the Zodiac, had been "super-witness" of the Prosecution in the first trial of Pietro Pacciani and resided a few hundred meters away from the place of the double crime of 1985 .

 

[LadyL]

The end?

Recently, there has been talk of DNA testing on a blood stain preserved from the Scopeti, though no official information has been released. Without that, the only real hope of solving the crime is either the gun being found, or someone confessing.

Online you can find plenty of speculation, most of it conspiratorial and sensational, Giuttari and Mignini’s shadows looming large. A favored suspect is a former legionnaire named Vigilanti who had been looked at by investigators before. Other, more outlandish theories, try to connect the Monster with another killer of parked couples, the Zodiac killer.

In the end, we will likely never know. The mess left by the investigations of the 90s and 00s obscure much of the facts on the ground and most people involved are now dead. Little Natalino Mele still lives, his life ruined first by the Monster, then by the police. He remains the sole surviving witness to any of the crimes, and it is perhaps fitting the story that he no longer has any recollection of that night other than seeing the face of his dead mother, the very first victim.

Wow you wrote all that? I haven't read it yet but making a note to do so. Thanks for posting!

 

[tilomagnet]

Thanks for the great write-up. This must be one of the fascinating and disturbing cases ever.

One of the most baffling aspects of the case is the connection of the first murder in '68 in Signa, which seems to have straightforward motive and had none of the ritualistic components of the later murders, and the actual Monster killings which started in 74. This makes me think the "Lotti hypothesis" actually makes some sense even though it sounds rather ridiculous at first sight, i.e. the Monster happened on the first murder scene and took the weapon. Essentially it would mean that 68 killing and the whole Sardinian pervert clan was unrelated to the actual Monster killings.

 

[FergusMcDuck]

Thanks for the great write-up. This must be one of the fascinating and disturbing cases ever.

One of the most baffling aspects of the case is the connection of the first murder in '68 in Signa, which seems to have straightforward motive and had none of the ritualistic components of the later murders, and the actual Monster killings which started in 74. This makes me think the "Lotti hypothesis" actually makes some sense even though it sounds rather ridiculous at first sight, i.e. the Monster happened on the first murder scene and took the weapon. Essentially it would mean that 68 killing and the whole Sardinian pervert clan was unrelated to the actual Monster killings.

Thank you.

Yes, the Signa murders are confounding. While the other ones have essentially no leads, Signa has too many, none of them conclusive. You can imagine the frustration of the investigators who thought they finally found the key to the case...

There is actually another theory I didn't mention, which is largely popular online or by the believers in the Pista Esoterica, which is that there was police involvement in the crimes. Apart from Lotti accusing a local carabinieri of providing Pacciani with the gun, there was no trace of this in the legal history until Mignini alluded to it in his Narducci case. The idea was that the shells from Signa, that should have been destroyed after Mele's conviction per procedure, were actually planted by this insider. He would have faked the imprint from the gun on a set of shells, then make sure Tricomi received them after his request in 1982. This would explain the disconnect between Signa and the other murders - it was just a wild goose chase organized by the killer or his accomplices within the police force.

Like most of these theories, it falls apart when you look closer. It may have been routine to destroy evidence after conviction, but it certainly wasn't enforced by anyone, and plenty of policemen and prosecutors have testified to finding old material when doing research. The chain of custody was also well established and any conspiracy would have involved numerous people from various divisions, and finding a crime that not only involved a couple killed in a car but the same kind of gun as a murder weapon. Mignini felt comfortable postulating such conspiracies, but the Micheli court threw it out for being unsupported.

There were discrepancies in how Signa was discovered. The letters from the friendly citizen is one story, but others claim it was marshal Fiori who simply recalled a similar case and wanted to investigate (making him a prime suspect for the police-monster theory). The whole thing is a mess, and professor Segnini has a nice article delving through the various accounts. It does appear that the original letters were either lost or kept in secret so as to be useful as evidence in the future. SAM had not been organized then, so there were a lot of different divisions working on their own tracks at the time.

 

[tilomagnet]

The more I read about this case, the more convinced I get that Signa 68 and the MdF killings are not really related; Now if the passage of the gun was by almost unconceiveable circumstance (Lotti hypothesis) or by planting of evidence or something in between, it's impossible to know at this point.

Another aspect of Signa that makes me wonder is the presence and survival of Natalino. IF that was the first monster killing then I think the monster would have certainly killed the child to prevent identification. However I also cannot quite wrap my head around the fact that Stefano Mele would participate in and not veto the planned killing of his wife with his son sitting in the back seat of the car?! Surely he would have found an opportunity to kill her and the lover without the presence of his son. Or did he despise Natalino because he became convinced he was fathered by someone else?! The same more of less counts for Salvatore Vinci who has long been rumoured to be Natalino's father.

The killer(s) at Signa were just indifferent to young Natalino. The killer spared him but he obviously did not care if the child could be harmed or traumatized in the attack. Who could that be?

 

[FergusMcDuck]

I think most serious theories, be it the Lotti hypothesis or Spezi's "Carlo", posit a clear break between Signa and the others. For Spezi, the killer at Signa was Salvatore Vinci and the Monster was his son Antonio. For Segnini it was Piero Mucciarini at Signa and opportunist Giancarlo Lotti as the Monster. Theories that posit Salvatore Vinci as the killer in all cases, or even worse, Pietro Pacciani (as Vigna and Perugini believed) don't really work for me. Borgo San Lorenzo has such a feel of a first time, hesitant, full of mistakes, clumsy. Meanwhile all of the shots in Signa (excepting the last two, usually speculated to be by Stefano Mele) were precise and deliberate.

Mele is such a frustrating character, especially if you're doing a write-up and have to include every single one of his story-changes. I suspect I missed one or two, even. His family always said he was completely under the thumb of his wife and his friends (the Vincis), and would go along with their demands with minimal persuasion needed. Looking at what was said and when, whether it was Vinci or Mucciarini with him that night (some posit that he was not there at all, but I don't find that credible,), I don't think he possessed the strength of will to stand up to his friend and/or relative.

Regarding a better opportunity, I do think that in the end, these were not killers (unless you believe Salvatore killed his wife in Sardinia, which I don't), and would not necessarily plan, nor have the opportunity to commit the perfect crime. There are also a lot of things we don't know regarding the choice of time and place. Was there a question of timing? There are testimonies that Barbara and Antonio confronted someone outside the cinema before they drove to make love. Then there is the money, meant for Stefano, but now being spent on Antonio. Antonio and Barbara had only been together for about a week when they died. Was there something about that situation that required urgency?

Natalino's presence may have simply been a calculated risk. Stefano had to have known he would be there when he left his home that night. Whomever pressured Stefano likely didn't care too much and trusted their ability to manipulate a six-year-old child.

I see two scenarios for Signa.

1. The Mele clan are sick and tired of Barbara squandering the money Stefano receives from his father and having to settle their debts, not to mention the bad reputation. Piero Mucciarini takes it upon himself to end it. Since the Vinci brothers are notoriously violent and hate each other, and Barbara left one for the other, he gets Stefano to borrow Salvatore's gun. They plan to kill Barbara and Francesco, then leave the gun in place so Salvatore takes the fall. However, before they can enact the plan, Francesco dumps Barbara and she gets together with Antonio Lo Bianco. They still enact the plan: Stefano stays home sick to create a flimsy alibi, then he and Mucciarini (perhaps Giovanni Mele as well) go to Signa and commit the murders, throwing the gun on the ground. Mucciarini leads or carries Natalino to a distant house. Then, after the police have "broken the news" to Stefano, he (chaperoned by Mucciarini) go to the police and try to point them to Salvatore. Unfortunately, the gun was never found, taking considerable weight off their Salvatore Vinci-story. Perhaps in confusion and increased desparation, after Mucciarini had to go to work, Stefano starts to bend and puts himself on the crime scene with an unpersuasive story that he was there with Salvatore, but that he himself was the shooter. But then Salvatore comes in with an alibi and confronts Stefano. He breaks again, shifts to Francesco. When Francesco's paraffin test turned out negative, shift to Carmelo Cutrona. So on and so on.

Natalino, on the other hand, had been prepped by Piero to say he saw Salvatore. On his many talks with marshal Ferrero, Natalino indeed mentions something in the reeds, which then becomes "Salvatore in the reeds". But more and more, he starts to hint at his uncle Piero. When Mucciarini gets wind of this, he starts to push him towards other uncles with similar names, to confuse the script. Natalino finally retracts everything.

2. Salvatore Vinci for some reason wants to get rid of Barbara Locci. Maybe he still had feelings for her, feelings turned into jealousy. Or perhaps he knew he owed Stefano Mele a lot of money, and knew a way to square the debt. Kill Barbara for the Mele honor (and maybe swipe what remained of the insurance money). Salvatore has a car and a gun. He takes Mele with him, tags Barbara from the cinema, then sneaks up and shoots them. When he's done, he makes Stefano take the two last shots, making sure they'll both go down if Stefano informs. In this case, either Salvatore or Stefano takes the child to the distant house, and Salvatore takes the gun home to hide.

The next day, after having been informed of his wife's death, his relatives, including Mucciarini arrive to talk to Stefano. Mucciarini gets Salvatore Vinci's name out of Stefano and, realizing the seriousness of the case, drags him to the police. However, as soon as he leaves, Stefano begins to exonerate Salvatore, first by claiming he himself did all the shooting, then by blaming everything on Francesco. As for Natalino's talks of Piero, those are difficult to explain in this scenario. There are some tantalizing hints in the Rotella report of 1989. First is that when Natalino started talking about Piero and/or Pietro, he had a lot of Mucciarini's attributes, true, but also others that fit more with Salvatore Vinci, including profession. At one point he talked about "Pietro" working at night "like his cousin Daniela's father" (Daniela's father was Mucciarini), which would separate the two. Second would be a description of "uncle Pietro" visiting his mother during the days and having fun with her, that is, acting like one of her lovers (we don't know if Mucciarini was that, but he was likely not her type). Was "Pietro" another lover, and if so, who? Third, the fact that Natalino knew the names of his mother's lovers - with the exception of Salvatore, a name that was unknown to him. Fourth, Stefano would give his wife's lovers nicknames - Carmelo Cutrona was Virgilio, for example. Is Salvatore Vinci hiding behind the name "Pietro"?

While I can't dismiss either one, I am leaning towards 1.

 

[tilomagnet]

No #1 is a really solid theory. What you do you think about the passage of the gun, i.e. who was the "real" MdF ?

 

[FergusMcDuck]

While I do think Segnini makes a good case for it being Lotti, I myself am not certain. The big problem with someone picking up the gun is that the possibilities are very much endless. The real killer could hide among a great number of people who were checked but never really investigated, or the person might never have appeared on the police radar at all.

Ultimately, I can't really favor any suspect at this point. Even with Lotti, there are blanks that would need to be filled. Why did he stop killing after Scopeti? He was escalating, after all, bigger mutilations and taunting letters to police. Yeah, the police searched his acquaintance Pacciani's house shortly after, and that may have spooked him, but there was no follow-up by the police, and by all accounts they were still going along Pista Sarda at the time. It would be four years before Pacciani was even unofficially looked at - it's highly unlikely Lotti would know about it before. And almost being caught in Baccaiano, and potentially being identified by a victim, hadn't made the killer stop. As far as I have seen, there are no "breaks" in Lotti's life after 1985. He had a relationship with a prostitute a few years during the early killings, but it had ended well before.

There's a former legionnaire named Vigilanti that is favored among some crowds. I've never been persuaded by him, but there are those who make a case for him. He's a bit like Pacciani, in that he's such an unpleasant individual, you'd almost want it to be him.

I do hope the DNA test goes somewhere, but I've been let down by "new evidence" before. What I really wish is for the gun to be found. Even if there's nothing usable on it, it should at least give some clues.

 

[tilomagnet]

I agree.

The Lotti case is extremely weird. On one hand, there is definately some witness testimonies that do connect him to this crime series. However his initial connection to Signa as well as his subsequent conviction are based on almost incredible circumstance:

1. The passage of the gun: In Segnini's hypothesis Lotti witnesses (or at least happens on the crime scene very early on) a double murder on a lover's lane and picks up the murder weapon......only to use that gun for a series of lover's lane murders a couple years later. This sounds like straight out of a 70ies Giallo movie and must be almost unprecedented in crime history.

2. Later in the 90ies Lotti is only pulled into the case and convicted because of his association with Pacciani. However LE only happened on Pacciani by chance in the first place and he is more or less framed and railroaded by police when he was almost certainly not the main culprit in this case. In the end he may have known who did but most would agree that he was not the MdF. So what are the odds that LE frames one guy (Pacciani) and via this highly dubious investigation stumbles onto the real killer (Lotti)?!

In the end the real MdF may very well be someone entirely unrelated to the Sardinians and the "picnic friends". However Segnini's analysis is solid and it is strange that Lotti would implicate himself when he was really innocent and had no connection to the case. He was certainly a primitive and barbaric man but he was not a fool or an idiot.