The Monster of Florence (Italian: Il Mostro di Firenze) 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.[1] 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.
Law enforcement conducted several investigations into the cases over several years. In 2000, courts convicted two individuals for four of the double homicides. They had been charged with being part of an alleged group of murderers which became known in the popular press as the "Snack Buddies" (Compagni di merende), following the notorious and absurdly comical courtroom protestation of one of the suspects that the group were merely friends who on frequent occasion innocently consumed "snacks" together in local bars and restaurants. Multiple weapons were used in the murders, including a .22 caliberBeretta handgun and a knife, and in half of the cases, a large portion of the skin surrounding sex organs was excised from the bodies of the female victims.
Murders
Victims Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locci
Victims Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania PettiniCarmela De Nuccio and Giovanni FoggiStefano Baldi and Susanna CambiAntonella Migliorini and Paolo MainardiWilhelm Friedrich Horst Meyer and Jens Uwe Rüsch
Claudio Stefanacci and Pia Rontini
Jean Michel Kraveichvili and Nadine Mauriot
Lo Bianco and Locci
On the night of 21 August 1968, mason worker Antonio Lo Bianco (29) and homemaker Barbara Locci (32) were shot to death with a .22handgun in Signa, a small town to the west of Florence. The couple were attacked in their car while Locci's son, Natalino Mele (6), lay asleep in the backseat. Upon waking up and finding his mother dead, the child fled in fright and reached a nearby house.
Locci, a native of Sardinia, had been well-known in the town, receiving the nickname ape regina ("Queen Bee"). Her older husband, Stefano Mele, was eventually charged with the murder and spent six years in prison. However, while he was imprisoned, another couple was murdered apparently with the same gun. Several lovers of Locci's were suspected to be perpetrators of the crime. Even Stefano stated on several occasions that one of them had killed her, but no evidence was found, as other murders were committed while they were in prison.
In 1982, the murders of Lo Bianco and Locci were linked to the more recent murders based on a tip from an anonymous writer, who had possibly signed himself Un cittadino amico ("a friendly citizen") in a letter to police. On 20 July 1982, examining magistrate Vincenzo Tricomi found five bullets and five shell casings inappropriately stored in a folder among records of Mele's case file.[2]
Authorities were unable to reconstruct the chain of custody of those pieces of evidence and did not request a scientific comparison, even though it would have been necessary to check whether they matched the ballistic report from 1968. As the spent cartridges were fired by a gun used in four similar crimes, their presence in the Mele's case file suggested to law enforcement officers that the perpetrator of the more recent double murders was connected with them.[3]
Gentilcore and Pettini
On 15 September 1974, teenaged sweethearts Pasquale Gentilcore (19), a barman, and Stefania Pettini (18), an accountant, were shot and stabbed in a country lane near Borgo San Lorenzo while having sex in Gentilcore's Fiat 127. They were not far from a notorious discothèque called Teen Club, where they were supposed to spend the evening with friends. Pettini's corpse had been violated with a grapevine stalk and disfigured with 97 stab wounds.
Some hours before the murder, Pettini had disclosed to a close friend that a weird man was terrifying her. Another friend of Pettini's recalled that a strange man had followed and bothered the two of them during a driving lesson a few days before. Several couples of lovers who used to "park" in the same area where Gentilcore and Pettini were murdered stated that particular area was frequented by voyeurs, a pair of them acting very oddly.
Foggi and De Nuccio
On 6 June 1981, warehouseman Giovanni Foggi (30) and shop assistant Carmela De Nuccio (21) were shot and stabbed near Scandicci, where the engaged couple both lived. De Nuccio's body was pulled out of the car and the killer cut out her pubic area with a notched knife. The next morning, a young voyeur, paramedic Enzo Spalletti (30), spoke about the murder before the corpses had been discovered. He spent three months in jail and was charged with murder before the perpetrator exonerated him by killing again.
Baldi and Cambi
On 23 October 1981, workman Stefano Baldi (26) and telephonist Susanna Cambi (24), who were engaged, were shot and stabbed in a park in the vicinity of Calenzano. Cambi's pubic area was cut out like De Nuccio's. An anonymous caller phoned Cambi's mother the morning after the murder to "talk to her about her daughter." A few days before the murder, Susanna had told her mother that somebody was tormenting her and even chasing her by car.
Mainardi and Migliorini
On 19 June 1982, mechanic Paolo Mainardi (22) and dressmaker Antonella Migliorini (20) were shot to death just after having sex in Mainardi's car on a provincial road in Montespertoli. This time the killer did not have the time to mutilate the female victim, as the road was relatively busy. Several passing motorists had seen the car parked at the side of the road after its interior light had turned on. Mainardi was still alive when found, but died some hours later in hospital due to serious injuries.
Mainardi is believed to have heard or seen the killer approaching and attempted to drive away, only to lose control of his car and drive into a ditch on the other side of the road. Another reconstruction of the events suggests that, after shooting the couple, the killer drove Mainardi's car for a few meters to hide the vehicle and the bodies in a woodland area nearby, only to lose control of the car and abandon it in the ditch where it was discovered by a motorist only a few minutes later.[4]
Meyer and Rüsch
On 9 September 1983, Wilhelm Friedrich Horst Meyer (24) and Jens Uwe Rüsch (24), two students from Osnabrück, West Germany, were visiting Italy to celebrate an important scholarship Meyer had just won. They were found shot to death in their Volkswagen Samba Bus in Galluzzo. Rüsch's long blond hair and small build could have deceived the killer into thinking he was a female. Police suspected that the students were gay lovers based on pornographic materials found at the scene.
Stefanacci and Rontini
On 29 July 1984, law student Claudio Stefanacci (21) and barmaid Pia Gilda Rontini (18) were shot and stabbed in Stefanacci's Fiat Panda parked in a woodland area near Vicchio. The killer removed Rontini's pubic area and left breast. There were reports of a strange man who had been following the couple in an ice cream parlour some hours before the murder. A close friend of Rontini recalled that she had confided that she had been bothered by "an unpleasant man" while working at the bar.
Kraveichvili and Mauriot
On the night of 7–8 September 1985, Jean Michel Kraveichvili (25), a musician of Georgian ancestry, and tradeswoman Nadine Mauriot (36), both from Audincourt, France, were shot and stabbed while sleeping in their small tent in a woodland area near San Casciano. Kraveichvili was killed a short distance away from the tent while trying to escape. Mauriot's body was mutilated. Because the killer had murdered two foreigners, there was not yet a missing persons report.
The killer sent a taunting note, along with a piece of Mauriot's breast, to the state prosecutor, Silvia Della Monica, stating that a murder had taken place and challenging local authorities to find the victims. A person picking mushrooms in the area discovered the bodies a few hours before the letter arrived on Della Monica's desk.
Suspects and reaction
It was not until the Foggi-De Nuccio murders in 1981 that the police realized the killings were connected. A newspaper article about the Gentilcore-Pettini murder from 1974 caused the police to perform a ballistics test and confirm the same gun had been used in both murders.[5] Reporter Mario Spezi coined the moniker "Monster of Florence".
After the 1982 murders, police leaked false information that Mainardi had regained consciousness before dying in the hospital. Soon after, an anonymous tip called for the police to relook at the Lo Bianco-Locci murder from 1968; it was quickly determined that the same gun had been used.[6] The confession and conviction of Locci's husband, Stefano Mele, was subsequently revisited, as Mele had been imprisoned during the later murders. Mele's statements in police interviews were inconsistent, shifting the blame among his Sardinian relatives and acquaintances.[7]
Francesco Vinci was arrested first. He was a former lover of Locci's whose car had been found hidden on the day the false Mainardi information had been leaked. Francesco was kept in custody for over a year, even during the 1983 murders.[8] Examining magistrate Mario Rotella instead widened the net, arresting Mele's brother and brother-in-law, Giovanni Mele and Piero Mucciarini. The 1984 murders occurred when the three suspects were in custody, so the police released them.[9]
Rotella focused on Francesco's brother Salvatore Vinci, another lover and former lodger of Barbara Locci's. Vinci's first wife had died in a fire in Sardinia, ruled a suicide although rumored to be a murder. After the final Monster murder in 1985, Rotella arrested Vinci and charged him with the murder of his wife, intending to move from there to the other killings attributed to the Monster. The trial in Sardinia instead acquitted Vinci, who walked free. By this point, chief prosecutor Pier Luigi Vigna thought the Sardinian trail was spent, and wanted to look into the possibility of the gun having been picked up by an unknown party after its use in the 1968 murder. In 1989, Rotella was forced to officially clear all the Sardinian suspects and withdraw from the case.[10]
With the use of computer analysis and anonymous tips, a new suspect, Pietro Pacciani, was found. Pacciani had been convicted both for rape and domestic abuse of his two daughters, and for the 1951 murder of a man who had relations with his ex-girlfriend, for which he served thirteen years in prison. Inspector Ruggero Perugini found incriminating evidence, such as similarities between the 1951 murder and the Monster killings, as well as a reproduction of Primavera by Botticelli and another painting thought to be by Pacciani. The only physical evidence against Pacciani was an unfired bullet of the same brand as the Monster's, found in Pacciani's garden at the end of a lengthy search, later discovered to be planted evidence by the police.[11]
Pacciani was controversially convicted in his initial trial in 1994. At his appeal, the prosecutor took Pacciani's side, citing lack of evidence and poor police work. As a result, Pacciani was acquitted and released in 1996. Perugini's successor Michele Giuttari tried to introduce new witnesses at the final hour, but was denied.[12] A new trial for Pacciani was ordered by the Supreme Court, but he died in 1998 before it could begin. Instead, two alleged accomplices were tried, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti.[13]
Vanni had been a witness at Pacciani's trial, where he famously claimed the two of them merely to be "Picnic Companions" (Compagni di Merende), a term that entered Italian vernaculum. Lotti had been one of Giuttari's surprise witnesses, claiming to have seen Pacciani and Vanni commit the 1985 murder. After many more sessions of questioning, he had begun to incriminate himself in the murders as well. Both were convicted and condemned to life imprisonment, though their sentences have been widely criticized and many consider the murders to be unsolved.[13]
In 2001, Giuttari, now chief inspector for the police unit GIDES (Gruppo Investigativo Delitti Seriali, Investigative Group for Serial Crimes), announced that the crimes were connected to a satanic cult allegedly active in the Florence area. In his testimony, Lotti had spoken of a doctor who had hired Pacciani to commit the murders and collect the genitalia of the women for use in rituals. Giuttari justified this partly on the discovery of a pyramidal stone near a villa where Pacciani had been employed. The stone, Giuttari suggested, was indicative of cult activity. Critics, such as Spezi, found this idea laughable, given that such stones are commonly used as doorstops in the surrounding area.[14] The villa was searched, but nothing was found.[15]
Giuttari, the chief prosecutor of PerugiaGiuliano Mignini and Gabriella Carlizzi, editor-in-chief of the magazine L'Altra Repubblica, speculated that a pharmacist, Francesco Calamandrei, and a deceased physician from Perugia, Francesco Narducci, had been involved in the secret society ordering Pacciani and the others. Calamandrei was put on trial while Narducci's body was exhumed. In the end, Calamandrei was completely exonerated and nothing incriminating was found regarding Narducci.[16]
During the process, journalist Mario Spezi was arrested by Mignini. Spezi had been investigating his own favored suspect, a son of Salvatore Vinci. Mignini claimed he did so to obstruct the investigation into Calamandrei and Narducci's sect, to which he claimed Spezi belonged. After international outcry, Spezi was set free, his arrest declared illegal. Giuttari and Mignini were indicted for abuse of office. GIDES was dissolved, and no active investigation of the Monster of Florence remains.[17]
In 2017, Francesco Amicone, a freelance journalist, conducted an investigation on his own that led him to find a connection between the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer cases.[18] Amicone's inquiry has been published in Italian magazine Tempi, newspapers Il Giornale and Libero, and his blog ostellovolante.com since 2018.[19][20][21]
Amicone's suspect was Joseph aka Giuseppe Bevilacqua (Totowa, NJ, 20 December 1935 - Sesto Fiorentino, Italy, 23 December 2022) a former ABMC superintendent at the Florence American Cemetery in Italy, who testified to the Pacciani Trial. In 2017, Amicone found out that Bevilacqua had a 20-year military career when he retired from the Army to move to Florence in July 1974.[18][21]
Between May 26 and August 10, Bevilacqua and Amicone had seven meetings of circa two-three hours, as it was found by the Florence ROS Carabinieri in 2018.[18][22] During a phone call on September 12, 2017, Bevilacqua implied his responsibility in both the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer case, agreeing to Amicone's request to turn himself in. However, Bevilacqua later changed his mind. The conversation was not recorded.[1][18]
During the meetings in 2017, Bevilacqua told Amicone he was an undercover CID investigator operating in California at the time of Zodiac's activities in 1969 and 1970, and participated in the CID inquiry on the so called "Khaki Mafia", which involved SMA William O. Wooldridge, other Army sergeants,[23] and firms from Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area as well as in Reno, Nevada.[18][24]
Following a complaint against Bevilacqua by Amicone dated March 1, 2018, the journalist's first news articles on the "Monster-Zodiac connection" were published by tempi.it and Il Giornale in May 2018. Bevilacqua denied the admission of guilt and filed a lawsuit.[25] Despite this, Amicone did not stop accusing him.[1][24][18]
While an Army criminal investigator in Italy in the early 1970s, Amicone says that Bevilacqua might have had access to a case file of a double murder near Florence in 1968 where bullets and shell casings had been improperly stored.[24], and that Bevilacqua replaced the pieces of evidence with spent cartridges shot by the gun he would use in the Monster's homicides in order to link his future crimes to those murders for which he had an alibi.[24] Italian authorities collected Bevilacqua's DNA in late 2020.[18][21]
In 2021, at Florence assistant attorney Luca Turco's request, the investigation into Bevilacqua resulting from Amicone's inquiry was dismissed, and the journalist charged for defamation due to a complaint from Bevilacqua.[26]
In November 2023, Bevilacqua's DNA profile was sent by Amicone to the authorities that investigate the Zodiac case according to the journalist.[27]
Books, film and television
The Monster of Florence, a 1983 non-fiction book by Mario Spezi.
The Monster of Florence: A True Story, a 2008 true crime book by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi based on the case. [5]
Il mostro di Firenze, a 1986 film based on the case, written and directed by Cesare Ferrario, and co-written by Fulvio Ricciardi.[28]
Paolo Frajoli and Gianni Siragusa's 28° minuto (1991) is a drama starring Corinne Cléry and Christian Borromeo inspired by the case.
The 1996 book The Monster Of Florence by Magdalen Nabb doubted Pacciani as Il Mostro and was based on actual and extensive case documents, including the criminal profile report commissioned from the Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. Although the book is a work of fiction, Nabb states that the investigation in the novel was real and the presentation as fiction was a protective measure.
The 1999 novel Hannibal, the 2001 film adaptation, and the television adaption have all used the Il Mostro case as the basis for a sub-plot of the scenes set in Florence. Thomas Harris visited Florence and attended Pacciani's trial while researching the book. In the novel, supporting antagonist Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (based on Ruggero Perugini)[32] was professionally disgraced when he arrested the wrong man for the Il Mostro murders. In scenes that were cut from the film before its release, a janitor at the Palazzo Vecchio, who witnesses Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) murdering Chief Inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) before fleeing the city, is revealed to be Il Mostro. Although the subplot involving Il Mostro was removed entirely from the completed film, the deleted scenes are included as an extra feature on the DVD.[33] In the third season of the television series, it is implied that Hannibal himself (Mads Mikkelsen) was Il Mostro.
The 2011 e-bookThe True Stories of the Monster Of Florence by Jacopo Pezzan and Giacomo Brunoro (April 2011) gives a detailed account of all the murders and the different investigative theories.
The 2012 book Delitto degli Scopeti – Giustizia mancata[34] (The Scopeti Crime – Failed Justice), written by lawyer Vieri Adriani, Francesco Cappeletti, and Salvatore Maugeri, reanalyzes and reconstructs the final pair of murders, which took place in the town of Scopeti, of French tourists Kraviechvili and Mauriot. The book claims to expose missteps and procedural errors in the investigation.
In "Il Mostro", the second episode of Season 2 of the television series Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, the Monster of Florence is identified as a surgeon (played by Paul Sorvino). Suspected of being the Monster after the murders, he left Florence and continued to kill elsewhere in Europe and Asia. Now terminally ill, he returns to Florence and manipulates his son (played by Luca Malacrino), the product of an incestuous rape between the Monster and his own sister, into becoming a copycat killer.
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban and suburban settings. He targeted three young couples and a lone male cab driver. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history", and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives.
In Italian cinema, giallo is a genre of murder mystery fiction that often contains slasher, thriller, psychological horror, sexploitation, and, less frequently, supernatural horror elements.
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.
Lega Toscana, whose complete name is Lega Toscana per Salvini Premier, is a regionalist political party active in Tuscany. Established in 1987, it was one of the founding "national" sections of Lega Nord (LN) in 1991 and has been the regional section of Lega per Salvini Premier (LSP) in Tuscany since 2020.
A lovers' lane is a secluded area where people kiss, make out, or engage in sexual activity. These areas range from parking lots in secluded rural areas to places with extraordinary views of a cityscape or other features. The Oxford English Dictionary records use of the phrase "lovers' lane" from 1853.
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.
Giuseppe Addobbati was an Italian film actor known for his roles in Spaghetti Western and action films in the 1960s and 1970s. He was often billed as John MacDouglas for films released to an American audience.
The Villa Salviatino, Maiano, in the frazione of Maiano on the steep slope south of Fiesole, is a Tuscan villa overlooking Florence.
Voices from Beyond is a 1994 Italian horror film by director Lucio Fulci. The original shooting title of the film was Urla dal profondo. The story centers around the murder of a wealthy man despised by most of his relatives, with his spirit returning from the afterlife to guide his daughter in uncovering the identity of his killer.
Giuliano Mignini is an Italian magistrate. He retired as a public prosecutor in Perugia, Umbria, in 2020.
The Monster of Udine was an unidentified serial killer who killed at least four victims in the Province of Udine in north-eastern Italy between the years 1971 and 1989.
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 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".
Giorgio William Vizzardelli, known as The Monster of Sarzana, was an Italian serial killer.
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.
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.
Nano Morgante was an Italian dwarf who was a famed buffoon and court jester in the court of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Morgante was ironically nicknamed after the giant from the poem of the same name by Luigi Pulci. He was the most celebrated of the five dwarves of the Medici court at the Palazzo Pitti.
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.
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