Public Minister Giuliano Mignini | |
---|---|
Born | [1] | 13 April 1950
Education | Law degree |
Alma mater | University of Perugia |
Occupation | Public prosecutor |
Years active | 1979–2020 |
Known for | Monster of Florence Murder of Meredith Kercher |
Children | Four daughters [2] |
Giuliano Mignini (born April 13, 1950) [3] is an Italian magistrate. He retired as a public prosecutor in Perugia, Umbria, in 2020. [4]
He is known for his involvement as the prosecutor in the investigation of the death of Dr. Francesco Narducci, who was found dead in the Trasimeno lake in 1985. Mignini opened an investigation into his death as a cold case in October 2001, as he suspected he could be the victim of a murder. He was soon joined by prosecutors from the Florence jurisdiction who were also investigating on the deceased doctor, as they believed Narducci was involved in the Monster of Florence serial murders case. Mignini's investigation resulted in the prosecution of 20 individuals over the following years, on allegations indirectly connected to Narducci's death such as cover-up and side-tracking charges. In 2010 all 20 individuals had their charges dropped by a Preliminary Caourt, mostly due to the expiration of limitation statute terms. Mignini was convicted of abuse of office in 2008 together with police officer Michele Giuttari in a case connected to the Narducci investigations. Mignini and Giuttari were both acquitted on appeal in 2014.
Mignini came to wider public attention as the prosecutor who led the 2007 investigation into the murder of Meredith Kercher, and one of the prosecutors who led the subsequent prosecution of Rudy Guede, Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. The conviction of Knox and Sollecito was eventually annulled by the Supreme Court of Cassation on March 27, 2015. The verdict pointed out that as scientific evidence was "central" to the case, there were "glaring defalliances" or "amnesia" and "culpable omissions of investigation activities".
Mignini was born in 1950 in Perugia, the son of a high-school teacher belonging to a family of sculptors. He obtained his law degree from the University of Perugia. He had wished to pursue a career in the Air Force, but he was rejected by the Pilots' Academy because of a form of daltonism. [5] He passed the magistrate's examination in 1979, and worked for one year in Volterra serving as pretore (an investigating judge role which does not exist anymore in the Italian system). He served for several years as judge in the courts of Pisa and Terni, where he worked on different times both as a criminal and as a civil judge. In 1989 he returned to Perugia and served as investigator and criminal prosecutor (sostituto procuratore), between 2004 and 2012 he also had powers as the head of anti-mafia prosecutors (Direzione Distrettuale Antimafia) in Umbria, [6] in 2013 he took a post at the Appeals prosecution office (Procura Generale). [7] [8]
The investigation into the death of Francesco Narducci (1949-1985), a Perugian doctor, lasted about ten years, between 2000 and 2010. It is one of the investigations connected to the principal investigation on the serial murders known as "The Monster of Florence" case. [9] Dr. Francesco Narducci's body was recovered from Lake Trasimeno near Perugia, Umbria, in 1985 and was determined to be a drowning. [10] [11] His body was discovered a month after the final double-murder linked to the Monster of Florence. The name of Dr. Narducci belonged to a list of "persons of interest" issued by the Florence Police in relation to the Monster of Florence cases since 1987. [12] Police and prosecutors in Florence initially investigated Narducci's death as connected to the murders after a number of anonymous letters were received, but he had been dismissed as a suspect since he had been in America during at least one of the murders. [13] [14] [15]
In early 2002, blogger Gabriella Carlizzi contacted Mignini regarding her theories about Narducci being part of a secret society behind the Monster killings. [16] Narducci's name had also emerged within an ongoing phone stalking case Mignini was investigating, where some of the conversations they recorded included references to the Monster of Florence and secret societies. [14] [15] While Mignini would claim the intercepted conversations included references to Narducci as well, and those references caused him to open the investigation into Narducci, no reference to Narducci was made until May of 2002, months after the case had been opened and its existence leaked to the public. [13] A medical examiner had determined the cause of Narducci's death to be drowning, but no autopsy had been performed at the time, despite it being mandatory under Italian law, reportedly on the insistence of Narducci's father. Pathology professor Giovanni Pierucci had also examined the pictures of the body, taken from a distance on the pier in 1985, and believed that the apparent decay of the cadaver in the photo appeared too advanced to be consistent with a permanence of only five days in the lake's water, and had recommended the unburial and examination of the body. [17]
Mignini asserted that a second body had been used to stage a drowning in the lake, as a cover up for the killing, and claimed to have sufficient evidence that the whole finding of the body at the lake had been a staging, performed at the time as part of a cover-up by state authorities, coordinated by the Provincial head of Police (Questore). [18] [14] On June 6 2002, he had Narducci's body exhumed and examined, but the exhumed body turned out to be Narducci's. Mignini asserted that the body had been switched twice, and the pathologist claimed to have found evidence that the cause of death was not drowning but strangulation due to a small, isolated fracture on the upper thyroid horn. [13]
Mignini alleged that Narducci had been involved in the murders of the Monster of Florence case, which, according to the theories of the Florence Prosecution, also involved a network of other people linked together by a secret society, and that he had been possibly killed on order of his father, Ugo Narducci, a member of a masonic lodge himself. The same father had masterminded the cover up. [19] [20] Mignini's theory involved a complicated conspiracy of 20 people, including government officials and law enforcement officers, who all concurred in covering up Narducci's cause of death. Mignini indicted 20 people and charged them with the concealment of Narducci's murder. The charges against them were dropped in 2010, [21] partly due to expiration of statutory terms. [22] [23] [24] Narducci's family claim that he committed suicide after having been diagnosed with a serious disease while in the USA. [19]
Italian journalist Mario Spezi had covered the Monster of Florence case since 1981 and was still pursuing his own leads in 2006. On February 23. 2006, Mignini summoned American author Douglas Preston for questioning as a person informed about facts related to Spezi's activities. The police, on Mignini's orders, had wiretapped Spezi's phone conversations with Preston regarding a villa in the countryside of Tuscany. According to Preston and Spezi they had investigated the villa on a tip from an ex-convict that evidence regarding the Monster was hidden there, while Mignini interpreted the conversation as intention to plant evidence on the location. [25] [26] [27] Preston has claimed that Mignini used "brutal" tactics during his interrogation, and has accused Mignini of attempting to coerce him into implicating himself and Spezi in the murders, saying "they have techniques that could get you to confess to murder." [28]
On 7 April 2006 the Florence police arrested Spezi. Preliminary judge Marina De Roberti, on Mignini's request, ordered the men to be held in cautionary custody and not to speak with his lawyers anymore before the first hearing in Court that took place on 11 April. This, notwithstanding what many English sources claim, did not allow Mignini to hold and interrogate Spezi for six days without access to legal counsel: De Roberti's order was notified to Spezi on 8 April while he was actually speaking with his lawyer. Mignini formally suspected Spezi of complicity in the homicides of the Monster of Florence case. The request of custody was not motivated by the suspicion of murder, but based on the accusation of attempting to pollute the Narducci investigation. Spezi was held for 23 days, at which point an appeals tribunal found the arrest illegal. [29] [30] [31] [32]
In 2004, the Florence Public Prosecution office discontinued their cooperation with Perugia, and demanded that they alone have the whole investigation file on Narducci's death. Mignini refused to surrender the investigation, claiming the Trasimeno Lake shore where the body was recovered was in territory under his jurisdiction. The Florence police also presented Mignini a recorded conversation with the voice of prosecutor Paolo Canessa apparently admitting that his boss, Chief Prosecutor of Florence Ubaldo Nannucci, could not decide freely but rather was being forced by superior powers.
Mignini opened an investigation against Ubaldo Nannucci and against the Chief of Police in Florence, Giuseppe De Donno, baed on the recording of Canessa's voice. He accused both the Florence Prosecution and the Florence Police of voluntarily obstructing police activity and hindering the investigation into the death of Narducci. In 2005, the Florentine Police ordered the dismantling of the Serial Crimes Investigation Unit (Gruppo Investigativo Delitti Seriali or GIDES), the Unit that found a connection between the Monster of Florence and Narducci.
In 2006, Florence prosecutor Luca Turco, charged Mignini and the head of the GIDES Michele Giuttari with a number of counts, including the forging of Canessa's voice recording, plus a number of counts of abuse of office for allegedly ordering the wiretapping of the phones of various police officers and journalists involved in the Monster of Florence case. Some media called the escalation "a war between Prosecution Offices". [33] [31] [34] Florence prosecution accused Mignini of carrying on a "parallel investigation" in order to cover up for Giuttari's alleged fabrication of a false recording of Canessa's conversation, and ordered a police raid of his office. Perugian newspapers alleged that the true goal of the Florence raid in the Perugian office was their intention put their hands on the Narducci - Monster of Florence file. [35]
Mignini was charged of being implicated in the forging of a fake audio recording and abusing his powers as he investigated De Donno, and for having wiretapped phone calls of three journalists and two police officers for unjustified reasons. Mignini objected that the Florence Magistrates had no jurisdiction on him because of their conflict of interest (the magistrates prosecuting him belonged to the same office he was investigating into). A preliminary judge in Florence turned down his request to chenge the trial venue. In January 2010, a Florence court chaired by judge Francesco Maradei acquitted him of the first three counts of fabricating fake evidence, as Mignini and Giuttari managed to prove that the audio recording was authentic, [36] but found him guilty of the remaining four counts of exceeding the powers of his office. [7] He was given a 16-month suspended sentence. Mignini appealed the conviction, saying "My conscience is clear, I know I did nothing wrong." [37] He remained in office through the appeal process, as Italian law does not consider convictions final until all appeals are exhausted, but delayed taking a post at the Procura Generale where he had been already appointed. [38] [39] According to Rome-based journalist and author Barbie Latza Nadeau, even if Mignini were convicted, offenses such as this are rarely grounds for removing a prosecutor from office. [40]
In November 2011, a Court of Appeals accepted his preliminary objection and annulled the previous conviction, also declaring the prosecution by Florentine magistrates illegitimate - since some of the Florence prosecutors were also the offended parties - and sent the investigation file to a prosecutor in Turin. [41] [42] The Prosecution General of Florence appealed against the decision at the Supreme Court, so factually blocking the transfer to Turin for at least another year. In February 2013 the Florence office lost their appeal and the Supreme Court ordered the investigation be moved to Turin. Mignini said "It took me 7 years to be right". [43] In 2016, the Turin court dropped the remaining charges due to the expiration of statutes of limitation.
While the Italian justice system does not prosecute criminal allegations beyond statutory terms through penal courts, Italian Magistrates are still subjected to a judgement also by a disciplinary court of the High Council of the Judiciary (Consiglio Superiore della Magistratura, or CSM) which seeks to find out facts in the merits, even if the Magistrate has already been acquitted of criminal charges on technicalities, or when there is still reasonable doubt. Mignini underwent a lengthy trial by the CSM about the Florence allegations on Narducci case. In March 2017 the CSM disciplinary court acquitted Mignini of all allegations, finding that "there was no wrongdoing" in his conduct. [44]
Meredith Kercher was a young woman murdered in Perugia on 1 November 2007. Mignini was one of the two prosecutors who directed the investigation of the case. [45] [46]
In October 2011, Mignini told a reporter from the British newspaper The Guardian "I have felt under attack ever since I investigated Narducci. It all started there." He further suggested that the trial for abuse of power was related to persecution for his role in the Monster of Florence case and blamed American author Douglas Preston, co-author with Spezi of a book about the case, of masterminding a U.S. press campaign against him over the Knox case. As part of his summing up in the first Knox appeal he said "our judicial system has been subjected to a systematic denigration by a well-organised operation of a journalistic and political nature". [47]
Preston has criticized the conduct of Mignini [48] in the trial. In April 2009, Preston appeared in a segment of 48 Hours on CBS, in which he argued that the case against Knox was "based on lies, superstition, and crazy conspiracy theories". [49] In December 2009, after the verdict had been announced, he appeared on Anderson Cooper 360° on CNN and described his own interrogation by Mignini in the same terms, [50] claiming he was also denied a translator, and has since referred to the interrogation as "psychologically brutal". [28]
In 2013, the case against Knox and Sollecito was committed to another prosecutor, Alessandro Crini, who obtained the convictions in their retrial. [51] Knox and Sollecito were acquitted by the Supreme Court of Cassazione on 27 March 2015, ending the case. [52]
In February 2013, Mignini launched a defamation suit against Raffaele Sollecito, for allegations in Sollecito's book, Honor Bound (full title: Honor Bound: My Journey to Hell and Back with Amanda Knox, Presumed Guilty), including claims of secret negotiations between Mignini and Sollecito's family. [53] Mignini later withdrew his claims, and the remainder of the suit was dismissed. [54]
On 4 December 2015, Mignini was disciplined by the High Council of the Judiciary for violation of correct procedure in the arrest of Sollecito in November 2007. The Prosecutor General of the Supreme Court requested his acquittal. Mignini was defended by judge Piercamillo Davigo. The disciplinary panel stated that he issued an oral order of prohibiting legal counsel with Sollecito, instead of issuing a written order as provided by the law. [55] He was issued a censure. [56]
In June 2010, Mignini was the prosecutor involved in the case of porn star Brigitta Bulgari who was arrested and held for 11 days after being charged with child pornography; this followed the surfacing of a mobile phone video showing 15-year-old boys touching her breasts while she performed as a stripper in an Umbria night club. [57] [58] [59] Sexual contact with minors itself may be not punishable under Italian law, but it is illegal to produce videos. Bulgari had her charges dropped in October 2011 based on a preliminary judge assumption that "Bulgari was not aware that there were minors in the club" and "because of intense lights she could not see whether people were filming". Bulgari stated that she was "just trying to make a living" and that she felt sorry for Amanda Knox, pointing out that they were both investigated by the same prosecutor. [58] She also said that she would seek monetary damages for "muddying her name" (she then received €3.500 [60] ) and planned to write a book about her experiences after arrest. [58]
Douglas Jerome Preston is an American journalist and author. Although he is best known for his thrillers in collaboration with Lincoln Child, he has also written six solo novels, including the Wyman Ford series and a novel entitled Jennie, which was made into a movie by Disney. He has authored a half-dozen nonfiction books on science and exploration and writes occasionally for The New Yorker, Smithsonian, and other magazines.
Leoluca Bagarella is an Italian criminal and member of the Sicilian Mafia. He is from the town of Corleone. Following Salvatore Riina's arrest in early 1993, Bagarella became the head of the stragist strategy faction, opposing another faction commanded by the successor designate Bernardo Provenzano, creating a real rift in Cosa Nostra. Bagarella was captured in 1995, having been a fugitive for four years, and sentenced to life imprisonment for Mafia association and multiple murders.
Mauro De Mauro was an Italian investigative journalist. Originally a supporter of Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime, De Mauro eventually became a journalist with the left-leaning newspaper L'Ora in Palermo. He disappeared in September 1970 and his body has never been found. The disappearance and probable death of the "inconvenient journalist", as he became known as a result of his investigative reporting, remains one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in modern Italian history.
Amanda Marie Knox is an American author, activist, and journalist. She spent almost four years incarcerated in Italy after her wrongful conviction in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a fellow exchange student, with whom she shared an apartment in Perugia. In 2015, Knox was definitively acquitted by the Italian Supreme Court of Cassation. In 2024, an Italian appellate court upheld Amanda Knox's slander conviction for falsely accusing Patrick Lumumba of murdering Meredith Kercher.
The Monster of Florence: A True Story is a 2008 true crime book by American thriller writer Douglas Preston and Italian journalist Mario Spezi. It relates to a series of murders that occurred between 1968 and 1985 and involved couples who were killed while having sex in their cars in deserted lanes around the city of Florence in the Italian region of Tuscany.
Mario Spezi was an Italian journalist, author, illustrator, and caricaturist. He wrote the non-fiction true crime books Dolci Colline di Sangue (2006) and Il Mostro di Firenze (1983). He was a co-author in the book The Monster of Florence A True Story (2008) with American author Douglas Preston. Additionally, he was credited by Preston for providing details used in the novel Brimstone.
The Monster of Florence is the name commonly used by the Italian media for a non-definitively identified serial killer active within the Metropolitan City of Florence between 1968 and 1985. The Monster murdered 16 victims, usually young couples secluded in search of intimacy, in wooded areas during new moons. Several connected persons have been convicted for involvement in the murders, yet the exact sequence of events, the identity of the main actor and the motives remain unclear.
Meredith Susanna Cara Kercher was a British student on exchange from the University of Leeds who was murdered at the age of 21 in Perugia, Italy. Kercher was found dead on the floor of her room. By the time the bloodstained fingerprints at the scene were identified as belonging to Rudy Guede, an Ivorian migrant, police had charged Kercher's American roommate, Amanda Knox, and Knox's Italian boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito. The subsequent prosecutions of Knox and Sollecito received international publicity, with forensic experts and jurists taking a critical view of the evidence supporting the initial guilty verdicts.
Amanda Knox: Murder on Trial in Italy is a 2011 American true crime television film. It stars Hayden Panettiere as Amanda Knox, Paolo Romio as Raffaele Sollecito, Djibril Kébé as Rudy Guede and Amanda Fernando Stevens as Meredith Kercher, and first aired on the Lifetime network on February 21, 2011.
Candace Dempsey is an American author, journalist and travel writer. She has written for several magazines in the United States, and is the author of Murder in Italy (2010), a study of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher and the trials of Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito.
Il mostro di Firenze is a 2009 Italian six parts thriller television miniseries directed by Antonello Grimaldi. It depicts actual events surrounding the murders of the Monster of Florence and the investigation to discover his identity.
The Verdict Of Perugia is a German stage play written by Stefan C. Limbrunner that had its premiere performance on 17 September 2015 at the theatre "Cabaret des Grauens" in Burghausen Germany. It is notable for being the first theatrical adaptation of the Meredith Kercher murder case, and the subsequent miscarriage of justice concerning Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito. The play is both a true crime documentary and a classic courtroom drama depicting the Nencini trial that took place from September 2013 until January 2014 in Florence, Italy.
The Killer is Still Among Us is a 1986 Italian horror film written and directed by Camillo Teti, and co-written by Ernesto Gastaldi and Giuliano Carnimeo. It is loosely based on the crimes of the Italian serial killer known as "the Monster of Florence".
Amanda Knox is a 2016 American documentary film about Amanda Knox, twice convicted and later acquitted of the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher. It premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 10, 2016, and on Netflix on September 30, 2016.
Luigi Chiatti is an Italian murderer, named "The Monster of Foligno" by the media.
Ralph Lyonel Brydges was an English Protestant pastor and paedophile who was accused of being "The Monster of Rome", a suspected serial killer of young girls who was active in Rome from 1924 to 1927. Another man, photographer Gino Girolimoni, was wrongfully accused but later exonerated of the crimes, for which the inspector Giuseppe Dosi later accused Brydges of committing. Brydges was never tried for the crimes, amidst pressure from the British government, and later left Italy, supposedly committing other killings in other countries before his death in 1946.
Luca Lotti is an Italian politician who served as the Minister for Sport from 2016 to 2018 in the Gentiloni Cabinet.
Gino Girolimoni was an Italian photographer wrongly accused of being "The Monster of Rome" who killed children in Rome during the era of Fascist Italy. Girolimoni, il mostro di Roma, a 1972 film by Damiano Damiani, recounts the persecution that Girolimoni underwent in spite of his innocence.
Nino Filastò was an Italian lawyer and writer. He was known for defending multiple militants of the far-left in the 1980s. He also wrote on significant events in 20th-century Italy, such as the Murder of Ermanno Lavorini, the Italicus Express bombing, and disaster of the Moby Prince.
Mr. Ferdinando Zaccaria, in such occasion, admitted to the activity carried on by Spezi, by Ruocco and by himself, explaining that such result would have made a "world scoop", subsequently to which they would have made "a lot of money".
Pugno duro del giudice nei confronti di Mario Spezi
"Rome, 9 April 2006. Defence attorney Antonio Traversi explained "The prohibition of counsel is legitimate, to be fair it is usually applied to charges of a different gravity, given that the order of cautionary custody is not about a murder but about crimes of a very different nature and degree of danger, anyway there was this prohibition and we complied" Italian: "Roma, 9 aprile 2006. Il difensore Sandro Traversi spiegando che «è legittimo il divieto ai colloqui, per la verità generalmente applicato in processi di ben altra portata, visto che qui l'ordinanza di custodia cautelare riguarda non l'omicidio ma reati di natura e di pericolosità ben diversa, comunque c'è questo divieto e ci siamo attenuti»
Nel novembre 2011, la corte d'Appello di Firenze aveva annullato la sentenza di primo grado