Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast - He Likes Teenage Girls

Episode Date: September 3, 2026

Roberto Succo was an infamous Italian serial killer who terrorized France and Italy during the 1980s.

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca. So how did this 16-year-old girl help bring down this Italian serial killer? So there's this guy, Roberto, and Roberto is 19, and he's a high school student in Mestry, Italy,

and Roberto has a serious problem. He's a paranoid schizophrenic, and he also has anger issues. And one night, in 1981, all of this finally catches up with him. Because Roberto decides to borrow his dad's car and take it out for a drive, But his mom is very protective, and she stops him. She tells him that he can't. I mean, she thinks he's not responsible enough to drive, and she worries that he could get into an accident.

And this isn't the first time she stopped him. And Roberto sees this as an act of hostility. Like, how dare she tell him no? And he completely loses it. He goes into the kitchen, and he grabs a kitchen knife, and boom, he starts stabbing his mother multiple times. and unfortunately she doesn't survive. He then drags her body into the bathroom and he leaves it there.

Hours later, his dad, who is a cop, comes home from work. And right then, Roberto sneaks up behind him with an axe and phow! He hits him with it. And unfortunately, he doesn't survive either. Now, eventually, Roberto steals his dad's police pistol and his parents' car and he flees the scene. But two days later, police track him down, and he's outside a pizzeria near the Yugoslavian border,

and bam, they arrest him. Now, because of the gruesome nature of his crimes, the courts give Roberto a psychiatric evaluation, and he's found to be legally insane, and therefore he lacks the capacity to understand the charges against him. So, rather than sending him to a regular prison, the judge sentences him to 10 years in a psychics. Psycheatric prison. And so Roberto is in this psychiatric prison and about five years go by. And it's now

1986 and he's about 24 now. And at this psych prison he's at, Roberto, he's on his best behavior. He's considered a model inmate like he's polite and there's no signs of aggression or anything like that. And because he's so well behaved, the prison gives him semi-freedom privileges. Like he takes classes through the local university where he studies geology, and they give him like day passes so that he can leave and go to class. And one day they give him a day pass so that he can go to class, and Roberto leaves the place, and he has no intention of ever going back. So he gets on a train, headed to Genoa, and he disappears.

And from there, he somehow, we don't know how, but he somehow gets an ID card, and he uses it to get into France. And there, in southeastern France, Roberto starts a brand new life. Like he integrates himself into a local community, he tells everyone there that he works as a traveling salesman, but he doesn't. He really makes his money by committing burglaries and armed robberies in the area. While he's there, he also meets a French 14-year-old high school student, and they start dating. And he likes her so much, he even proposes to her at one point. But fortunately, she ends up saying no, because she doesn't like that he's a bit crazy and has intense mood swings.

Good for her. Anyway, then in 1987, something crazy happens. He parks his car one night and he falls asleep in it. And in the morning, a local policeman is leaving for work and he sees him sleeping and he approaches the car to check on him. And Roberto knows that he's fucked. I mean, the ID he has is stolen and it's been all. altered, so he can't just give the cop this ID, and if the cop figures out who he really is, he'll get arrested and sent back to the psych prison. And Roberto doesn't want that. So he pulls out

a pistol, and blam, blam, he shoots the officer. Then he steals his gun and he frees the scene. And unfortunately, the officer doesn't survive. And from here, he completely abandons his life in this area. And he travels to the town of Anisey, and he kidnaps a local woman there, and he assays her, and he murders her. Then he travels to Chateau Arnau, Santo Bonn, and he shoots and kills a man there as well. And a few more months go by. And at this point, Roberto is living in a brand new city, too long. And his behavior here hasn't gotten any better. And one night, he's out at a local nightclub, and he gets into an argument with some random man there. And the two go back and forth, and pretty quickly, Roberto loses it.

And he pulls out a gun and blam, he shoots the man. And of course, he flees, and later he ends up at a nearby hotel. And through some witnesses, police are able to track him back to that hotel, and so two officers show up there. And Roberto is there, and he's sitting on the hotel stairs, and when he sees the two officers coming, he pulls out his gun and blam, blam! He shoots both officers and he injures one of them

while the other ends up dying. And so then he steals a car and he flees yet again. This time he travels from France all the way to Switzerland. And there he's in a town called Rol. And he walks into a random gas station and he pulls out his gun and he holds the clerk at gunpoint and he demands that he give him money from the register, and so the clerk gives him a bunch of money.

Then Roberto leaves the gas station, and he spots a woman in her car, and so, boom, he pulls his gun on her, and he gets into her car, and he takes her hostage, and he orders her to keep driving. Later that evening, the woman is still driving, and Roberto is still holding her hostage,

and then, boom, they're able to break through two different police roadblock barriers, and after this hostage ends up opening the car door and diving out of the moving car and crashing the car and Roberto gets out and he runs away. And so now he's in a town called lease. And there he walks into the first apartment building

that he sees and he rings the doorbell of the first door he sees and a teenage girl answers and there's four teens in this apartment and he holds them up at gunpoint and he ties them up and he essays one of them. Then he steals their parents' clothes for some reason and he leaves. Meanwhile, back in Tilan in France, police are still investigating the three shootings he did there,

trying to figure out who pulled the trigger. Well, remember when he was living there in Tilan? So there's this teenage girl who happened to know Roberto back then. They seem to like teenage girls. But anyway, this girl knew Roberto, and so police interrogate her and she tells them where to find his old apartment. And so police go search his old apartment, and they dust the place for fingerprints, and the fingerprints come back, letting them know that Roberto is the same guy who escaped from the psych prison years before. And so police releases photograph and information to the

public, asking anyone who recognizes him to come forward, and from here a multinational manhunt begins in France and Switzerland. And remember the 14-year-old French high school student he dated and asked to marry him? Well, she's 16 now, and she sees his face on the TV one day and she goes right to the police station and she tells them everything she knows about him. But by this point, Roberto has fled Switzerland and returned to Italy, right back to his hometown of Mestri. And while he's in Italy, he meets yet another high school-aged girl and he starts seeing her, but pretty quickly her parents recognize him from the news and they call the police. And so, bam, they finally arrest him.

And I'm not sure if this is actually a mugshot, but here is a picture of him. And so they end up putting him in an Italian prison, and once again, he's ruled legally insane, and he's ordered to be transferred to a psychiatric prison. But instead of going back to the asylum, he ends up unaligned. Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research.

Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcfwalk.ca.caving himself.