Wolfgang Abel (born 25 March 1959) and Marco Furlan (born 16 January 1960) are a German-Italianserial killer duo who were arrested for a series of murders in Italy, the Netherlands and Germany between 1977 and 1984. They claimed innocence, saying they were scapegoats for a police force that could not find the real criminals.
The two members of the Ludwig group were both sons of the upper bourgeoisie of the city and came from the Verona hinterland: Marco Furlan, resident of the prestigious Borgo Trento district, was the son of the Head of the Burns Unit of the Ospedale Civile Maggiore in Verona (in this regard, many of "Ludwig"'s victims who were burned alive was emblematic) and at the time of his arrest he was about to graduate in physics at the University of Padua; Wolfgang Abel lived in Negrar di Valpolicella, where his family had moved to after a period in Munich. The son of a managing director of a German insurance company, he was a graduate in mathematics with honours and worked in the same insurance company as his father.
Furlan and Abel met in high school, soon finding themselves in agreement about needing to clean up the world from everything that they thought was "deviated": prostitutes, homeless, homosexuals, drug addicts, "sinful" priests, nightclubs and pornographic cinemas. Their relationship continued beyond school and was consolidated by virtue of the fact that both were part of a group of young people at the time, who used to meet in Piazza Vittorio Veneto in Borgo Trento.[citation needed]
At each of these crime scenes was a leaflet, written in Italian, headed with the name "Ludwig" over a Nazi eagle and swastika. Each had a slogan, such as "We are the last of the Nazis" and "Death comes to those who betray the true god", and explained the reason for each murder.
Abel and Furlan's criminal career together began on 25 August 1977 in Verona, when they burned Roma drug addict Guerrino Spinelli alive with four molotov cocktails in his Fiat 126. On 17 December 1978, the murder of homosexual waiter Luciano Stefanato followed, stabbed 30 times in Padua, with two blades later being stuck in his back. Almost a year later, on 12 December 1979, Furlan and Abel stabbed 22-year-old drug addict Claudio Costa to death in Venice. The homicidal series continued in 1980 in Vicenza, with the axe murder of 52-year-old prostitute Alice Maria Baretta. On 25 November of the same year they claimed responsibility for the first time in the crimes, by sending a letter with the name Ludwig in the Il Gazzettino newspaper's headquarters in Mestre.
They were also accused of having set a fire on 25 May 1981 to a small abandoned structure in Verona, La torretta di Lungadige San Giorgio,[1][2] formerly a part of old Austrian fortifications, which had become a shelter for beggars, drug addicts and homeless people: 17-year-old Luca Martinotti, who was spending the night there with another friend, died, while his friend was seriously injured. They were acquitted of this crime, although a letter allegedly signed by Ludwig had reached the editorial office of la Repubblica.
"LUDWIG OUR FAITH IS NAZISM OUR JUSTICE IS DEATH OUR DEMOCRACY IS EXTERMINATION LET IT BE KNOWN THAT WE HAVE PROMPTLY CLAIMED RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FIRE AT SAN GIORGIO IN VERONA WITH A MESSAGE SENT TO 'LA REPUBBLICA' WE ATTACH A METAL DISK IDENTICAL TO ONE APPLIED ON THE LARGEST OF THE THREE USED TORCHES GOTT MIT UNS"
On 20 July 1982, Ludwig targeted Father Gabriele Pigato and Father Giuseppe Lovato, both 70-year-old friars of the Monte Berico in Vicenza, both attacked while walking in via Gen. Cialdini (a street that runs along the walls of the general house) and hit with hammers by the two young men: Father Gabriele died immediately, while Father Giuseppe was transported in very serious condition to the San Bartolo Hospital, where he died shortly after. On 26 February 1983, the priest Don Armando Bison was killed in Trento, he was found with an awl stuck in the skull, with a crucifix attached.
On 14 May 1983, they set fire to the red light cinema "Eros" in Milan, killing six people (including the 46-year-old doctor Livio Ceresoli, who entered the building to provide medical aid and who was posthumously awarded the Award for Civil Valor) and wounding 32 others. On 8 January 1984, they started a fire at the "Liverpool Disco" in Munich, in which an Italian waitress who worked there died, with seven others injured; this last act was claimed in a leaflet sent to some newspapers, reading: At the Liverpool, they don't fuck anymore!
On the evening of 4 March 1984, the two criminals entered the Melamara Disco in Castiglione delle Stiviere in the Province of Mantua, where at the time there were 400 young people, most of whom were masked for a carnival party. In a moment of confusion, one of the two killers (disguised as a Pierrot) opened the emergency exit and let in his partner, who had two bags with as many gasoline canisters as they could carry.
Half-hidden in a dark corner, Abel and Furlan began to pour gasoline on the carpet and set it on fire. The two, however, had not taken into account the fact that the Italian public premises had to furnish fireproof coverings following the Cinema Statuto fire, which took place in Turin in February 1983. The disco's carpet was therefore flame resistant and slowed down the fire's propagation, which allowed a security officer to extinguish it.
Once discovered, the two assassins tried to attack the bouncer to escape, but they were stopped, surrounded by the crowd and finally arrested by police, who saved them from being lynched by the patrons. The number of Ludwig's attacks ended with 28 dead and 39 wounded.
Trial
Abel was subjected to psychiatric examination, also requested by the defenders of Furlan, Tiburzio De Zuani and Piero Longo, but the accused refused to undergo the talks. Specialists Balloni and Reggiani claimed that Abel had a reduced ability to understand the consequences of his actions, and also claimed that he had grown up without the affective attention that allowed him to develop a healthy personality, but this was very disputed. On 10 February 1987, both were sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment, while the public prosecutor had asked for both to be sentenced to life imprisonment.[3]
On 15 June 1988, the Court of Assizes of Venice appealed both for the beginning of imprisonment and ordered that Furlan be imprisoned in Casale di Scodosia, a town in the Province of Padua, from which Furlan fled in February 1991, just before the final sentence was handed down by Court of Cassation. He was captured in May 1995 in Crete, where he lived under a false name, and was brought back to Italy; in the meantime, on 10 April 1999, the Court of Appeal of Venice, presided by Nicola Lercario, had sentenced him to 27 years' imprisonment, with the sentence being confirmed on 11 February 1991 by the Court of Cassation. On the same occasion, Abel was also sentenced to 27 years. Shortly after the arrest in Crete,[4] Furlan tried to commit suicide in prison by trying to hang himself on the bars with a sheet, but remained unharmed.
The name Ludwig was later taken up by other fanatics of the Italian far right, who had never had any contact with either Abel or Furlan, but through the newspapers, they were attracted by their racist ideas. They decided to organize in the city of Florence on 27 February 1990, a mass beating ensuing against street vendors and immigrant drug dealers present in various parts of the city, leaving the Italian newspapers some flyers in which they claimed aggression by signing as Ludwig. Later they went on with bomb attacks against nomad camps in Tuscany, causing numerous injuries against the Roma. Particularly bloody was a bomb attack on an immigrant camp in the Province of Pisa, where a little girl lost an eye and a hand.
These violent actions caused much outrage because some victims of the attacks were children. This increased public pressure for an intervention by the Italian Police and the Carabinieri, who arrested the perpetrators of the attacks. The culprits were younger boys than Abel and Furlan, coming from different cities and, when questioned, they said they had never met Ludwig's members in prison, but wanted to copy them.[citation needed]
Release
On 18 April 2008, the news of the decision of the Milan Surveillance Court to disclose Marco Furlan to social services was announced.[5] Furlan, through his lawyer, Corrado Limentani, had asked to leave prison by day to return at night and on weekends. The judicial body refused his plea for release, but assigned him to social services, taking into account the murderer's good conduct and now imminent release, scheduled for early 2009. The news did not fail to arouse controversy in public opinion: protests in this regard began by the editorial staff of newspapers and magazines. On 24 April 2008, Furlan took his second degree with honours in computer engineering, while on 12 November 2010, he was released on probation for good behaviour.[6]
In 2009, the residential detention measure for Wolfgang Abel was changed to house arrest, discounted in the family home in Valpolicella. After the expiry of the sentence, after a further period of probation and the obligation to sign in Negrar, on 24 November 2016, the competent surveillance magistrate revoked the latter provision, giving Abel freedom. When interviewed by the Corriere del Veneto, Abel said that he was ready to make further unpublished statements and testimonies on his criminal experiences.[7]
Both criminals claimed that they no longer were in contact with each other.[citation needed]
Victims
Guerrino Spinelli, murdered on 25 August 1977 in Verona
Luciano Stefanato, murdered on 17 December 1978 in Padua
Claudio Costa, murdered on 12 December 1979 in Venice
Alice Maria Beretta, murdered on 20 December 1980 in Vicenza
Luca Martinotti, murdered on 25 May 1981 in Verona
Father Gabriele Pigato and Father Giuseppe Lovato, both murdered on 20 July 1982 in Vicenza
Don Armando Bison, murdered on 26 February 1983 in Trento
Livio Ceresoli, Giorgio Fronza, Ernesto Mauri, Pasquale Esposito, Elio Molteni and Domenico La Sala, murdered on 14 May 1983 in Milan
Corinne Tartarotti, murdered on 8 January 1984 in Munich
Ezzelino III da Romano was an Italian feudal lord, a member of the Ezzelini family, in the March of Treviso. He was a close ally of the emperor Frederick II, and ruled Verona, Vicenza and Padua for almost two decades. He became infamous as a cruel tyrant, and was, in fact, the most "notorious" of the "early tyrants".
Moses Sithole is a South African serial killer and rapist who committed the ABC Murders, so named because they began in Atteridgeville, continued in Boksburg and finished in Cleveland, a suburb of Johannesburg.
Flavio Tosi is an Italian politician who served as the mayor of Verona from 2007 to 2017. He has been a long-time member of Liga Veneta–Lega Nord.
Ronald Joseph Dominique, known as The Bayou Strangler, is an American serial killer and rapist who murdered at least 23 men and boys in the state of Louisiana between 1997 and 2006. On September 23, 2008, Dominique was found guilty and sentenced to several terms of life imprisonment without parole for his crimes. Following his conviction, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that Dominique's was the most significant serial homicide case in the country over the past two decades in terms of both death toll and duration.
In Italy, the phrase Years of Lead refers to a period of political violence and social upheaval that lasted from the late 1960s until the late 1980s, marked by a wave of both far-left and far-right incidents of political terrorism and violent clashes.
Donato Bilancia was an Italian serial killer who murdered seventeen people – nine women and eight men – on the Italian Riviera in the period from October 1997 to April 1998.
Benjamin Thomas Atkins , also known as The Woodward Corridor Killer, was an American serial killer and rapist who murdered, tortured, and raped 11 women in Highland Park and Detroit, Michigan, during a period of eight months between December 1991 and August 1992. He was apprehended after being arrested for rape charges and soon after he confessed to the murders. He was ultimately found guilty and given several life sentences in April 1994. He died from AIDS in 1997.
Andre Crawford was an American serial killer, rapist and necrophile who killed 11 women between 1993 and 1999 in Chicago. Many of the women were addicted to drugs or worked as sex workers. He also had sex with their corpses. In 2009, Crawford was found guilty on all counts and sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
The Red Brigades was an Italian Marxist–Leninist armed militant guerilla group. It was responsible for numerous violent incidents during Italy's Years of Lead, including the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro in 1978. A former prime minister of Italy through the Organic centre-left, the murder of Aldo Moro was widely condemned, as was the murder of left-wing trade unionist Guido Rossa in January 1979. Sandro Pertini, the then left-wing president of Italy, said at Rossa's funeral: "It is not the President of the Republic speaking, but comrade Pertini. I knew [the real] red brigades: they fought with me against the fascists, not against democrats. For shame!"
Wang Qiang was a Chinese serial killer, rapist and robber from Liaoning, China, and one of the most prolific murderers in Chinese history.
Ferdinand Gamper, known as The Monster of Merano, was a serial killer in South Tyrol, Italy. He killed six people in Merano during 1996, before he died.
Marco Bergamo, known as The Monster of Bolzano, was an Italian serial killer who murdered five women between 1985 and 1992.
Gianfranco Stevanin, known as The Monster of Terrazzo, is an Italian criminal and serial killer, convicted of murdering six women between 1993 and 1994. His case had great prominence in the national media and raised a debate on the question of the incapability of criminals to understand the consequences of their acts.
Ludwig Slavov Tolumov and Ivan Serafimov Ivanov, known jointly as The Sour and The Sweet, were a pair of Bulgarian robbers, rapists and serial killers who, in the span of two months in 2000, murdered 3 people and robbed several others. Serafimov, who was solely responsible for a murder in 1996, was shot by his partner Tolumov, who himself was subsequently apprehended and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Viktor Karamarkov, known as The Macedonian Raskolnikov, is a Macedonian serial killer who murdered four elderly women in the nation's capital from March to October 2009. Additionally responsible for numerous thefts and three attempted murders, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, and is currently incarcerated in Kolonija Idrizovo.
The War of Padua was a conflict in 1404–1405 between the Republic of Venice and the Carrarese lordship of Padua. In the power vacuum produced by the death of the Duke of Milan, Gian Galeazzo Visconti, in 1402, Francesco II da Carrara endeavored to expand into the Veneto and capture cities held by Visconti troops. These designs alarmed Venice, which allied with Milan to counter the common threat posed by the Carrarese state, and for the first time adopted a policy of direct intervention in the affairs of its hinterland.
George Lamar Jones was an American serial killer who killed at least three women in Mississippi and Wisconsin from 1972 to 1997, with his latter murders occurring at the same time as those of Walter E. Ellis, another unrelated serial killer. For his respective crimes, Jones was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment, remaining behind bars until his death in 2012.
Maurizio Giugliano, known as The Wolf of Ager Romanus, was an Italian serial killer who killed between two and seven women in Rome and the surrounding area from 1983 to 1984. He later murdered a fellow inmate at a mental hospital in 1993. For these crimes, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and remained imprisoned until his death in 1994.
Andrea Arrigoni was an Italian serial killer and former private investigator who killed at least two prostitutes and two carabinieri in two separate incidents from 2004 to 2005. He was killed shortly after engaging in a firefight with police, and was posthumously linked to his first known murder.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
