Timesuck with Dan Cummins - 411 - The Monster of Florence

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

Between 1968 and 1985, eight couples having sex in either parked vehicles or a tent in remote areas just outside of Florence, Italy were murdered. The killer shot them with the same .22 handgun. And from four of the women, the killer took a brutal trophy.... their vagina. As morbidly fascinating and troubling as these crimes are, the inept, corrupt, and superstitious  investigation into catching the killer is even  more troubling and fascinating. Watch the Suck on YouTube: https://youtu.be/v3Wt9iIp-kIMerch and more: www.badmagicproductions.com Timesuck Discord! https://discord.gg/tqzH89vWant to join the Cult of the Curious PrivateFacebook Group? Go directly to Facebook and search for "Cult of the Curious" to locate whatever happens to be our most current page :)For all merch-related questions/problems: [e-mail] (copy and paste)Please rate and subscribe on Apple Podcasts and elsewhere and follow the suck on social media!! @timesuckpodcast on IG and http://www.facebook.com/timesuckpodcastWanna become a Space Lizard? Click here: https://www.patreon.com/timesuckpodcast.Sign up through Patreon, and for $5 a month, you get access to the entire Secret Suck catalog (295 episodes) PLUS the entire catalog of Timesuck, AD FREE. You'll also get 20% off of all regular Timesuck merch PLUS access to exclusive Space Lizard merch. And you get the download link for my secret standup album, Feel the Heat.

From 1974 to 1985, the monster of Florence, Coldy killed seven young unmarried couples, 14 people in total, and possibly another couple in 1968. The serial killer's impact was large. The culture of Florence was substantially altered due to his dark, looming presence. The monster of Florence only ever used two weapons over the course of his killing spree, a.22 caliber Beretta handgun, and a scuba knife. The location of his kills always the same, the magnificent wooded hills that surround the Italian city of Florence. He targeted couples having sex in parked vehicles, and from four of his female

victims, this serial killer took a disturbing trophy. Their vaginas, which he brutally and meticulously severed whole from their bodies using that scuba knife. And as darkly fascinating as the horrible crimes of the monster of Florence are, the investigation into catching him, I feel, is far more fascinating. Throughout the course of the convoluted investigation into the monster, so many clues were neglected or ignored. So much legitimate evidence was dismissed, other evidence was planted, wild accusations were thrown haphazardly at anyone

they might stick to, and there was a whole bunch of talk about a secret Satanic cabal behind the killings. The main characters in this story are actually not the monster and his victims, but an award-winning Italian investigative journalist named Mario Spezi, and accomplished American author of crime novels, Douglas Preston, both of whom became inextricably entangled in the case when they joined forces to write about it in the early 2000s and Both of whom laid out a case for who the real killer very possibly was in a way that several teams of investigators Working on this case for roughly five decades have never been able to do Today we're gonna meet each person that has ever been officially suspected of being the monster, examine the evidence against them, investigate how an investigation could go so terribly wrong, and

ultimately by the end we'll maybe even determine who the monster of Florence really was. In another serial killing, corrupt Court of Justice, premarital sex, get-ya-killed, true crime crime, Maserati buka spaghetti. Does justice ever get served in Italy? Edition of Time Suck. This is Michael McDonald and you're listening to Time Suck. Well happy Monday and welcome to the Cult of the Curious. I'm Dan Kelmance, a master sucker, newest member of the Galactic Federation of Light team. Hell yeah.

And John Lennon Starship co-pilot, button pusher. This button last week. Ding. Yippee. And you are listening to Time Suck. Hail Nimrod, hail Lusifena, praise be to good boy Bojangles and glory be to Triple M. I hope everybody is having a great summer. And a big thanks to the new listeners who have found this show, the people who have rated and reviewed it recently.

That still helps so much. The listeners who have become Patreon space lizards recently. And the OG space lizards and OG listeners who continue to support this strange product. I appreciate all of you beautiful bastards, and I hope you find today's show as entertaining as I did. Before I really dig in just quick word to any Italian listeners I am very aware that there are many smart, logical, decent, hard-working, etc. All the good adjectives Italian people just like there are smart, logical, decent people in every nation and every culture, of every race. That being said, many of the Italians that I will be mentioning in this story,

Oh boy, highly superstitious, completely illogical, frankly fucking idiots, easily prone to hysteria, who seem mostly motivated in life by trying to fuck anything and everything that moves and blaming everything that goes wrong on the devil. Oh boy, this is the second episode I've done that heavily involves the modern Italian legal system, the first being episode 330 about Amanda Knox. And just like in that episode, I found the Italian judicial system to be an embarrassing and wildly corrupt farce, virtually lacking any real justice. And you know, the same is true today, in today's episode.

I firmly believe that the actual monster of Florence could have definitely been arrested, but was not because the investigation into him was ran by just this cadre of law enforcement officers and magistrates just confusingly, maddeningly bad at their jobs. The good news about that is that this episode turned out to be way more comedically entertaining than I assumed it would be going in. So let's begin. Get used to that Mario button. In their co-written non-fiction novel, The Monster of Florence, a true story published in 2008, author Douglas Preston writes, In the spring of 2001, Mario Spezi and I set out to find the truth and track down the real

killer. This book is the story of that search and our eventual meeting with the man we believe may be the monster of Florence. Along the way, Spezi and I fell into the story. I was accused of being an accessory to murder, planting false evidence, perjury, and obstruction of justice, and threatened with arrest if I ever set foot on Italian soil again. Spezzi fared worse. He was accused of being the monster of Florence himself.

Yeah, we're going to begin today's episode by familiarizing ourselves with the culture of 1960s Florence, such a historic and beautiful city, as well as cover a little bit of history about the Tuscan capital. After that we'll jump into a pretty hefty, fascinating, infuriating timeline of the investigation and the killings. Here comes that background. In The Monster of Florence, a true story. Douglas Preston writes,

Many countries have a serial killer who defines his culture by a process of negation, who exemplifies his era not by exalting its values, but by exposing its black underbelly. England had Jack the Ripper, born in the fogs of Dickensian London, who preyed on the city's most neglected underclass, the prostitutes who scrabbled for a living in the slums of Whitechapel. Boston had the Boston Strangler, that suave, handsome killer who prowled the city's more elegant neighborhoods, raping and murdering elderly women and arranging their bodies in a tableau of unspeakable obscenity. Germany had the monster of Dusseldorf, who seemed to foreshadow the coming of Hitler by

indiscriminate and sadistic killing of men, women, and children. His bloodlust was so great that on the eve of his execution, he called his imminent beheading the pleasure to end all pleasures. Each killer was in his own way a dark embodiment of its time and place. Italy had the monster of Florence. And just real quick do you remember the monster of Dusseldorf aka the vampire of Dusseldorf aka Peter Curtin that hammer-happy psychopath we covered here in episode 253? I forgot about him. So brutal. Stabbing elderly women and children alike with scissors, smashing the fuck out of people with hammers, raping both people and animals, ejaculating the sight of blood like Andrei Chikatilo. He liked to rustle as well!

Fucking crazy. Back to Florence. As the monster of Florence case unfolded, it dragged out of the dark and into the light, scandalizing aspects of Italian culture that occasionally shocked people more than the actual killings. The sexual habits of young people, specifically young unmarried people, was one such uncomfortable truth this very Catholic nation was forced to deal with during this period. In 1970, Italy became one of the last Western nations in the world to legalize divorce. It was still illegal to get a divorce in 1969 due to the church's powerful influence. Like I said earlier, the monster targeted very specific victims, unmarried couples. Having sex in cars and the hills

surrounding Florence, luckily for this killer, finding two people that fit this criteria, not a difficult task. In Italy, both today and back then, though today it's slightly less common, the overwhelming majority of young people live with their parents until they get married, and most do not marry until their mid to late 20s. Because of this, Preston wrote,

"'Having sex in parked cars is a national pastime.' It has been said that one out of every three Florentines alive today was conceived in a car. That's fucking crazy. On any given weekend night, the hills surrounding Florence were filled with young couples sparked in shadowy lanes and dirt turnouts in olive groves and farmers fields. Well, hey, Lucifina! Sounds pretty fun. Playing a lot of backseat bingo. No church or government has ever kept young people, in general, from fucking before marriage. And that'll never happen.

Man, when there is a will, there is a way, and when it comes to sex, there's so much will. As the case of the monster continued to go unsolved, horny couples trying to smash outside of mom and dad's earshot were forced to abandon the woods and find sweet sexual refuge elsewhere. Like in their parents' bedrooms. Yes, father, we are fucking at the foot of your bed. We refuse to hide our love any longer. So take a good hard look at my lover's good hard dick, daddy.

That didn't happen. At least not that I know of. Being out of stupidity, desperation to get their dicks and or clit sweat, or fearlessness in the face of a serial killer, throughout the 1980s, hundreds of couples continued to travel into the woods at night. And some of them never made it out. In addition to the countless number of couples having sinful pre-marital, probably super fucking hot and passionate car sex in the woods each night, so so many shrub sluts. The investigation also inadvertently exposed

another nocturnal group occupying those very same hills. This was my favorite part of the episode. An assemblage of sexual voyeurs, locally known as the Indiani. In English the word Indiani translates to the Indians. That is not what it means in this context. It was slang for a shady group of pervs, given this pretty blatantly racist nickname, because of the way that they crept around in the dark. During the 1980s, each night, and it's 1970s as well Dozens if not hundreds of indiani scattered across the Florentine hills Hiding in the thick foliage and waiting to watch young lovers fucking their cars. That's crazy

Reminds me of all of my friends in college who went on this Gonzaga in Florence year-long study abroad program that they've had every year in Gonzaga for decades and decades Gonzaga has a satellite campus in Florence, Italy, and I visited friends studying there for several days, 1997. And some of my friends who were girls talked about peeping toms. And I remember these conversations because my mind was blown

about how brazen these peepers were. I have distinct memories of two different girls who said that when they went for their morning jogs, like if they, they ended up varying their morning jog routines. Cause if they stuck to the same path and the same time, dudes would know that they were running and would watch them and just beat off. Like these two girls, different guys. One was on his balcony and one I think was behind his window and his home.

I remember the balcony story the most where she would just run and she had to you know obviously change her route because this guy would just be on his balcony fucking no pants just didn't care like that his dick was fully exposed just blatantly beating off like eye contact just like no shame like it's a normal thing to do. Anecdotally it seems that for much of recent history being a fucking creepy pervy dude is just pretty common in Florence. Just an accepted part of life. According to Preston, when these pervs went out to spy on couples, some indiani were so

dedicated to being pervs that they carried, quote, sophisticated electronic equipment, including parabolic and suction cup microphones, tape recorders, and night vision cameras. This isn't something these guys were doing once or twice. Like, this was a fucking way of life for them. You know, some people take up bird watching for a hobby. Some people get into model trains. These guys got into spying on young couples, fuck, while they watched and beat off in the woods. Like a huge community of guys doing this.

Because these pervs, quote, worked in the same area, and kept the same hours as the monster of Florence, while investigating the killer of the police, found themselves having to delve deeper and deeper into this unsettling and crowded world of peeping toms on the Florentine hills. And what they found was just so bizarre. As is written in The Monster of Florence, a true story, the Indiani had divided the hills into zones of operation, each managed by a group or tribe who controlled the best posts for vicarious sex watching. Some posts were highly sought after, either because they allowed for very close

observation or because they were where the good cars were most commonly found. A good car is exactly what you might imagine. A good car could also be a source of money, and sometimes good cars were bought and sold on the spot in a kind of depraved stock market in which one Indiana would retire with a fistful of cash, seeding his pot to another to watch the finish. A wealthy Indiana often paid for a guide to take them to the best spots and minimize risk. People were paying fucking guides to take them to the best spots and minimize risk. People were paying fucking guides to take them into the hills and watch young lovers fucking cars. Dudes were building side hustles, like businesses off of this.

What do you do for work, Angelo? It's a bit of a tourist guide. It's fun to take people like the Piazza del Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, go see the Statuezza del Duomo, Ponte Vecchio, go see the statue of David. Well, I uh, I mostly take all the perverts, how you say, into the woods, uh, to sneak around, uh, to watch the younger people to fuck into cars. That's fucking insane. That'd be somebody's job.

Also, a good car was a car known to have especially attractive women, uh, fucking inside of it. Like, so they weren't, like the guys on the hill, they weren't buying or selling the actual cars if there was any confusion there. They were just buying and selling like you know access to view these cars. Like the best hidden spots with the hottest people fucking in them. I actually feel sorry for these losers. Like how pathetic have you let yourself become when you're when you're paying another pervert to have them give up their prime peeping spot in the woods for you for that night to beat off. While investigating the monster of Florence in 1981, the police also discovered that buried within the Indiani subculture of Florence existed yet another

micro-society of creeps, the creeps that preyed on those creeps. At night, just like with the Indiani, this group of men would venture into the dark woodland hills surrounding Tuscany's capital, hide themselves away in the shadows in the trees. But instead of spying on the young people fucking, these guys would come to the hills to spy on the people spying on the young people fucking. And they would take notes on who these peeping toms were, take photos of them with their night vision cameras, catch them jerking off or whatever, and then use those photos and evidence to blackmail them. That was like another like side little industry off of this. There's just a whole hidden layered subculture in the hills around Florence, an entire micro economy based exclusively around people fucking in cars. Another buried thread of Italy's fabric that the monster of Florence case unraveled was not a nefarious subculture like the indiani, but a forgotten part of its history.

And that was the mass immigration from the island of Sardinia to the mainland in the 1960s. Sardinia, the second largest island in the Mediterranean, slightly smaller than the island of Sicily, the largest one, and one of 20 different regions of Italy. However, its people have long viewed themselves as a very distinct separate culture from Italy. Nowadays, Sardinia boasts a legion of million-dollar seaside resorts, stunning golf courses, fine dining establishments, lots of other luxury-type tourist activities. However, back in the 60s, as Mario Spezi wrote, the poorest most backward area in all of Italy was the barren, sun-baked interior mountains of the island of Sardinia.

Back then, almost nobody in Sardinia spoke Italian, using instead a language all their own. Lugo de Reisi, considered to be the oldest and least contaminated of all the Romance languages. I did not know about that language. That language today is generally referred to as Sardinian. In the 1960s, amidst the massive industrialization of Italy, thousands of Sardinians emigrated from their island to the mainland to find factory jobs.

And most of these immigrants landed in the heart of Tuscany, the region of central Italy that has Florence as its capital. Despite joining the masses on the mainland, the Sardinians still lived by an entirely separate set of rules that had long been at the center of Sardinian culture. The Barbagian Code Again, per the authors of The Monster of Florence, a true story. At the heart of the Barbagian Code was the man known as the Balente, the wily outlaw, the man of cunning, skill, and courage who takes care of his own. Stealing, particularly livestock, was an exalted activity under the Barbagian Code when it was committed against another tribe because aside from mere gain it was a heroic act. The thief by

stealing demonstrated his cunning and his superiority to his adversary who paid a just price for his incapacity to take care of his own property and flocks. Kidnapping and even murder were justified under similar rules. The Belente had to be feared and respected. So this mythic esteem that Sardinia, you know, the Sardinian people held for who they considered to be a just outlaw amongst them would end up playing a pretty big role in the search for the monster of Florence. Investigators had a very hard time getting anyone who was Sardinian to rat on one of their own. So now let's head to Sardinia where our timeline

begins. On January 14th 1961 on the Italian island of Sardinia a 17 year old girl named Barbarina is found dead in her bed with scratches on her face and bruises around her neck. Bruises that clearly point to strangulation, scratches that point to her being attacked and fighting with whoever strangled her. Also found in the room with Barbarina's body is an open tank of propane gas and because of this her death is ruled a suicide. You know because obviously no one could have ever just easily placed this tank of propane in her room and then opened it after

very obviously strangling her. No way that'd be impossible. Most people in this Ardenian town of Vilsidro, where she lived, believed Barbarina had been murdered by her new husband, Salvatore Vinci. About a year before her untimely death, at only 16 years old, a young Barbarina was dating a local boy named Antonio. Unbeknownst to her, Antonio was despised by one of the town's gangsters, Salvatore Vinci, in order to humiliate Antonio. And because he was a rapist, one afternoon, Salvatore ambushed Barbarina, dragged her into a nearby field, and violently raped her. Soon after the assault, Barbarina discovered she was pregnant with Salvatore's child.

And then at the behest of religion and for the sake of her family's honor, she was then pressured to marry her rapist and that little cultural difference is real fucking hard for me to understand truly can't imagine as a father and just as a human being with some empathy who at least tries not to be a piece of shit like how the fuck could you do that like what like how could you like to your fucking child it's a honey it's a it's only right uh the thing you do here is to marry your rapist. If you don't want to marry your rapist, you should not let yourself get raped, okay? Do we understand each other?

Fucking crazy. Sorry. Oh my God, stop! I hit that button twice, got on a bad cycle with it, and it seizureed. Nine months later, Barbarina gave birth to a little boy. According to Preston, everyone in town knew that Salvatore mistreated her, that he beat her, didn't give her enough money to eat, just enough to buy milk for the baby. The baby was her only happiness.

She named him Antonio after her great love and continued to see her first lover on the sly. And then Salvatore learned of his wife's infidelity in November of 1960 when somebody took pictures of Bobberina and Antonio, her boyfriend, not her son, sneaking off into the countryside together. A little over a month later, God, wouldn't you know it, Bobberina was dead. Rumors quickly circulated that Salvatore was the one who killed her. Sure seems likely based on this situation. Eventually, the community's outrage at the likely rapist and murder forced Salvatore Vinci, along with his older brother Giovanni and his younger brother Francesco, to flee

the island of Sardinia. And this rape and murder not the only source of outrage against this despicable family. Giovanni had been shunned by the small community years prior, when he allegedly raped his youngest sister. And Francesco feared for his penchant for violence, also known to beat the women he dated. Of these three brothers, Francesco was actually the one known as the Belente, the macho just outlaw I mentioned earlier. So in 1961 the three Vinci brothers took a ferry to the

mainland, landed in Tuscany and just stayed there for many many many years. Once in Tuscany the brothers stayed there for many, many, many years. Once in Tuscany, the brothers each went their own ways. Francesco took to hanging around a few shady bars known to serve as the unofficial headquarters of the Sardinian gangster scene in Florence, committing petty crimes to get by. Like a minor mafioso type. Salvatore, on the other hand, found work as a bricklayer. We're in a room in the home of some fellow Sardinian immigrants. The Mele family will meet them. Giovanni found work as a sister

raper. Like if you didn't want to rape your sister but you wanted your sister raped you would just you just give him a call. You get the job done. It's to me Giovanni, I'm here to do some raping. I'm not sure what he did. Uh, sources don't say. Jumping seven years ahead now to the first suspected murderers committed by- murders committed by the monster of Florence. Maybe. Some don't consider this first pair of murders being connected to the next seven. Others do.

So sometimes when I refer to later murders, like when I talk about like four pairs of killings, I'll make it clear, but you know, sometimes not including this one. But on the evening of- but this one does tie into the other murders at the very least. On the evening of August 21st 1968, 29 year old Antonio Lobianco and 32 year old Barbara Locchi shot to death in Antonio's white Alfa Romeo while Barbara's six-year-old son Natalino was in the back seat, supposedly sleeping. What a nightmare for that poor little kid. Barbara was originally from Sardinia but moved to Tuscany as a teenager to marry a fellow Sardinian man named Stefano Mele. Stefano, in addition to being 20 years older than his young wife, very non-confrontational, very meek, mild-mannered. When he and Barbara were

wed, she moved into the Mele family home where Stefano lived with his siblings and their father. Which sounds fucking terrible. I'm glad to live with your family like that is not the cultural norm in this country. As soon as she moved into the Mele homestead, Barbara is said to have become a problem. She was openly flirty with other men. She disliked dressing modestly, preferred to wear tight red skirts that accentuated her curvy figure, had a penchant for stealing money from her husband's family, sneaking out of the house at night to go dancing at clubs without her husband, and then oftentimes she would sneak the men she met out in the town back into the melee house

to fuck them there. Pretty ballsy. I don't understand that. Maybe, maybe probably, I don't know, go with those dudes to their houses. Why are you bringing them back to fuck in the home where your husband, his parents, and siblings are all staying? Although this infuriated Stefano's father-in-law, well, her father, father-in-law, his father, Barbara's husband Stefano did not mind her nightly escapades. In fact, he encouraged them. Was she married to a cuck who liked it when his wife fucked around him? We'll learn eventually here what the deal is here. And then Salvatore de Vinci, that likely Sardinian rapist and murderer we met earlier, well now he moves in with the Mele family as well. And Stefano was unbothered by the affair that now bloomed between the handsome Sardinian and his young wife. During the trial for Barbara's

death, Salvatore would testify that Stefano wasn't jealous. He was the one who invited me to live in their house when I was looking for a place to live. Come live with us, he said. We got a free room. So I moved into Mele's house and right away he brought me to meet his wife in bed. Then he urged me to take her to the movies. He said that it didn't matter to him or he would go play cards at his social club and leave me alone with her in the house. So very different strokes for different folks. Definitely not my kink, but maybe it worked for Stefano. Again, eventually we'll learn what's going on here. At some point after Salvatore and Barbara's affair began, Stefano was severely injured in a

vehicle collision. A car wreck kept him bedridden at the hospital for the next four months. And then the next year Barbara gave birth to a boy named Natalino. Although she claimed her husband Stefano was the father, it was obvious to anyone with the ability to count to nine that Natalino was conceived during the months Stefano was in the hospital. When the couple were definitely not fucking. When she was definitely fucking Salvatore. Therefore the child could not be Stefano's. This again did not seem to bother Stefano.

He appeared happy to raise the child as his own. While Salvatore was fine with the situation, his dad was not. And now he kicks his son, Stefano, his wife, Barbara, baby Natalino, and Barbara's boyfriend, Salvatore, the fuck out of his house. Stefano and Barbara now stay together and move to a working-class suburb just outside of Florence. Barbara continues to see Salvatore until the summer of 1968 when she dumps him for his macho brother Francesco. Uh-oh. One night that summer, Barbara wore a new dress to go meet up with Francesco and his friends at a bar when she arrived.

Francesco thought her dress was too, quote, slutty and punished her for it. He pushed Barbara down into the floor of the bar in front of everyone else there, grabbed a fistful of her hair, literally dragged her out of the bar kicking and screaming out into the middle of the street where he ripped off her dress, kicked some dirt in her face, called her a whore. No one stopped him. No one intervened. Which tells me this bar was full of other dudes who also had no respect for women or that Francesco was a scary motherfucker. Or both. Not surprisingly, the affair between these two fizzled out soon after this assault. Jumping ahead a few years now to August of 1968, when Barbara met Antonio Lobianco,

he was a muscular bricklayer from Sicily, and like Barbara, he was married. Reportedly, when he first saw Barbara, and was told her name, Antonio claimed, Barbara, I'll fuck her in a week. So Barbara clearly loved a classy guy. Reportedly when he first saw Barbara and was told her name, Antonio claimed, Barbara? I'll fuck her in a week. So Barbara clearly loved a classy guy. He did fuck her in a week, and then on August 21, 1968,

Antonio, Barbara, and Barbara's six-year-old son now, Natalino, went to see a Japanese horror movie at the movie theater. Afterwards, they all piled into Antonio's car, drove into the Florentine countryside to find a good spot to fuck. Uh, Natalino, uh, not part of the fucking thank god, to be clear. Only Antonio and Barbara were fucking. And Barbara was a terrible mother, right? Can we agree on that based on just this one date?

And can we also agree that Antonio was a fucking dirtbag? I mean, who, for starters, takes their six-year-old to a Japanese horror movie? Like six years old? That seems like a terrible idea. And then on the way home, others are going to fuck in the same car inches away from this kid. My god, the night, you know, this night was fucking this kid up even before his mom got killed.

Well, these two decide to park at a location they frequent often for some good old backseat deep dicking, a secluded dirt road near an old and rarely visited graveyard So just keeps getting better The couple started having sex in the driver's seats Barbara straddling Antonio cowgirl style Which means she would have been able to watch her kid While she fucked this guy her kid who for sure was awake Then in an instance the interior of the car lit up and flashes a bright yellow The killer had silently approached the vehicle from behind, positioning himself just outside

the back left car door. They then steadily reached inside an open backseat window, holding the gun mere inches above the child's head, and fired seven shots in rapid succession with a.22 Beretta. Four into Antonio and three into Barbara. The six-year-old now began, of course, to scream for help. Then someone opened the car door, likely the shooter, scooped up little Natalino, hoisted the child onto their shoulders, and started singing a lullaby to calm them down. It was Natalino's father,

Stefano Mele. He was holding a gun. Did not expect that plot twist at all when I first went through this. Did this cuck get tired of his wife getting fucked by other men? Hmm. A few hours later, Stefano Mele picked up by the police, taking him for questioning. At first, he told investigators that he was sick and had been home by himself all night. But after traces of nitrate powder were found on his hand, Stefano broke down, confessed that while he had witnessed the murder of his wife, he didn't kill her himself. He said that Salvatore Vinci killed his wife and Antonio and Antonio and that he had just gone along with it. Doesn't explain the nitrate powder but you know, interesting. Salvatore likely

you know, this the young boy who was in the backseat in Natalino's real father or biological father rather. seemingly overcome with regret Stefano then soon retracted his accusation against Salvatore instead took full responsibility for the crime saying he alone acted and executed the double homicide but then a few hours later doubled back again asserts once more that Salvatore killed Barbara and Antonio. That back-and-forth confession befuddled investigators so they decided to bring Salvatore in to see how Stefano and he would interact.

The exchange took place according to those present was pretty remarkable. When Salvatore Vinci arrived at the police station he calmly marched into the interrogation room exuding an air of authority. Inside he stood silently before Stefano staring coldly at the small man and when Stefano finally met Salvatore's eyes he apparently immediately crumbled to the ground began to sob and repeat. Forgive me Please forgive me over and over again very afraid of this guy Stefano just a sad little mouse of a man when Salvatore departed the station Stefano once again insisted He was the sole perpetrator now of the double homicide However, investigators were already uncovering other clues that more than one person may have been involved in this double homicide investigators were already uncovering other clues that more than one person may have been involved in this double homicide.

For example, while being questioned, young Natalino told police straight up that he saw Salvatore, that dirty shrub slut, lurking in the bushes by the car. Also described a shadow of another man at the crime scene. And said he saw someone he referred to as Uncle Piero or Uncle Pietro, a man he knew who parted his hair on the right and worked at night. Who is that guy? Well, they don't look into it. Natalino's testimony largely ignored.

Investigators were reportedly irritated with the child's incoherence and confusion. So much so that at one point, one awesome officer said to the boy, if you don't tell the truth, I'll take you back to your dead mother. So that guy's pretty cool. In the end, the authorities ignored the child's testimony, other indications that there had been multiple perpetrators, and just focused on Stefano. According to author Douglas Preston, at this point the police and the examining magistrate, the judge who oversees the

investigation, felt satisfied. Regardless of the particulars, the crime was solved in the main. They had the confession of the wronged husband backed by forensic evidence in the statements of the son. Stefano Mele was the only one charged with murder. He was given a reduced sentence of 14 years and with that the case was closed. Or at least investigators thought it was. But soon after Stefano was released from prison, 13 years later in 1981, his guilty verdict will be put into question and the case will be reopened. Backing up from 1981 though to 1974 now. On the night of September 14th 1974, so about six years after that double homicide we just went over, there is another double homicide which we will talk about right

after today's first of two mid-show sponsor breaks. And in the back, if you don't want to hear these ads get the entire catalog ad free and more by signing up to be a space lizard on patreon for five bucks a month. And now let's return to the night of September 14th 1974 and this second double homicide. 18 year old Stefania Petini and 19 year old Pasquale Gentilcor are murdered while having sex in Pasquale's car. The couple had spent the earlier part of that fateful Saturday night in a discotheque called Teen Club in Borgo San Lorenzo, a rural

municipality on the outskirts of Florence. After the club, they drove Pasquale's Fiat 127 to find a secluded spot to fuck in the countryside. They were engaged to be married in just two weeks, but of course they would never see their wedding day. They were both shot and killed in the act of having sex. And then their killer or killers dragged the naked Stefania out of the vehicle and stabbed her 97 times. She was already dead for all those wounds. He used knife wounds to create an elaborate intentional design that encircled both her breasts and her vagina. The killer then took an old sharp branch from a grapevine, repeatedly penetrated her corpse with it. Interestingly, the day

before she was murdered, Stefania had confided in multiple friends that a strange man had been following her all week. She was terrified of him. One of her friends even told police that she had recently seen and talked to the strange man. A few days earlier she said that she had showed up to take a driving lesson. She and Stefania were taking together or showed up to a driving lesson she and Stefania were taking together and tried to talk to them but the police doesn't seem ever figured out who this dude was didn't seem like they really uh put any effort in trying to track him down and now let's check in with one of the authors of the monster of Florence who gets swept up into this story now Mario Spezi on the quiet

Sunday morning of June 7th, 1991, 36-year-old Mario Spezi was dying of boredom at work. He was a journalist for Florence's local newspaper, La Nazione, and that particular Sunday, it seemed that there was absolutely nothing remotely interesting happening in all of Italy to write about. So instead of working, Spezi was sitting at his desk,

smoking a cigarette, reading the paper. His piece was then soon interrupted when a coworker who covered the crime desk approached him and asked for a favor. He explained to Spezzi that he had a date with a not bad-looking married woman that morning and was hoping Spezzi could cover the crime desk in his absence. What the fuck is happening in Italy in the 70s and 80s? Does anyone there just have like a monogamous traditional sex life? Is it just the most sex-crazed nation on earth? It might be. I looked into a lot of studies about infidelity in Italy and it seems that somewhere between 55 and 75% of Italian men cheat on their spouses.

And between 35 and 50% of women have affairs as well. And I imagine those numbers were higher in the 1970s and 80s, but I can't prove it. Also found a bunch of blogs on Italian culture where the bloggers just kind of matter-of-factly state that, yeah, that's just how it is. Just different there. Having lovers outside your marriage, very much a cultural norm. Also, I love that that writer doesn't even describe the lady he's hooking up with as attractive.

Can't even do her that kindness. She's just, she's not bad looking. She'll do. Just some not bad looking married lady that, you know, he's just excited to go fuck. She is not so beautiful but that's not a matter. You know, I'm not gonna get to my nigger wedding. Here we go! Just always gotta fuck. All Spezzy would have to do, this guy explained, was hang around the police headquarters in case something came up.

I've already made the calls, nothing's going on. As we all know, nothing ever happens in Florence on a Sunday morning. But then of course something did happen. Something terrible. I've already made the calls, nothing's going on. As we all know, nothing ever happens in Florence on a Sunday morning. But then, of course, something did happen. Something terrible. When Spezi arrived at the police station, the place was in chaos. By eavesdropping on all the frantic commotion, the journalist deduced that a crime had taken place near Villa del Arrigo, a well-known estate in the Florentine Hills, and that at

the scene that there were two of them, he didn't know yet what two of them meant. Less than an hour later, Spezzi was driving along a small country road searching for signs of a crime scene. Eventually, he spotted a squad car. The squad car of a local carabinieri, a marshal, pulled over next to it. The carabinieri are a major national law enforcement agency in Italy that is part of the military. The first thing Spezzi noticed was that the crime scene had not been sealed off or secured. There was also only one cop present who allowed Spezie to enter the area freely. Had no concerns about crime scene contamination. So that's awesome.

At the direction of the officer, Spezie followed a tiny dirt path into an olive grove. There he saw a parked car with a man slouched in the front seat. They're just not even guarding these dead bodies at all. The boy seemed to be sleeping in the driver's seat," wrote Spezi. His head leaning on the side window, eyes closed, face smooth and untroubled, only a little black mark on his temple, which lined up with a hole in the spiderwebbed window indicated a crime had occurred. Spezi circled the car, contaminating the crime scene further—not that the one cop of the

scene of this double murder seemed to mind—and found a woman's naked corpse displayed flat on her back in a patch of flowers. No one had even thrown a blanket over her. Her pubic area had been carved out of her body, and there was no sign of where it had disappeared to. In the first double homicide of 1968, right, the woman was just shot and left in the car. In the second, in 1974, the woman is shot, dragged out of the car, violated with a grapevine, stabbed 97 times around her breast and vaginal area. And now in this double homicide, the woman is shot, dragged out of the car, and her vaginal area is carved the fuck out. When Spezi commented on this horrifying mutilation, the officer present told him that some animals

must have come in the night and eaten the flesh between the victim's legs. Skin, muscle, organ and all. And then he told Spessy, the hot sun did the rest. Oh wow, holy shit, how dumb is this cop? What fucking animal only eats a woman's vagina? Not eats out, just literally eats, but then doesn't eat any of the rest of her. And since when does the sun help destroy a corpse's vagina but not affect the rest of her? What is happening?

This'll probably be a raccoon or maybe a squirrel. The squirrels around here are as well known for their taste of a vagina. It's why we call them the pussy squirrels. Yes, the pussy squirrels. They're number one. Ciao bella. Mario Luigi, Tuscan and Gnocchia, Sofia La Venda, Bagini, Antonio Banderas. I picture this guy saying all that shit and then just shrugging his shoulders like,

Ah, life, you know, it's crazy. He just goes back to puffing a long thin cigarette, not caring about the crime scene, just daydreaming about fucking somebody's wife that night in some other part of the woods. Back at the police station, Spe Spezi learned that the female victim was Carmela De Nuccio, a 21-year-old aspiring designer working for Gucci right there in Florence. Male victim was her fiancé Giovanni Fagi, 30 years older, a trusted local electrician. They'd been engaged to be married later that summer.

Thanks to Spezi's investigative reporting, La Nazioni will be the first publication to break the news of the killings to Florence. Early the next morning, Spezzi went to meet Dr. Mauro Mari, the chief medical examiner assigned to the double homicide. Mari also happened to be one of Spezzi's closest friends. With a tape recorder on the table and a lit cigarette in hand, Mari told the journalists what he learned about the victims. You said the pussy squirrels are the gs, they got another pussy from a lady. What do you do? That's life, it's crazy. No, he said the killer used a knife or some other sharp instrument. The instrument had a notch or a tooth in the mild, perhaps a defect, perhaps not.

It might have been certain type of knife that takes that form. So he says there's not to the knife. Seems to me, although I won't swear to it, that it was a scuba knife. Three cuts were made to remove the organ. The first clockwise from 11 o'clock to 6 o'clock. The second was counterclockwise again from 11 o'clock to 6 o'clock. The third cut was made from the top to bottom to detach the organ. Three clean decisive cuts with an extremely sharp edge. Like Jack the Ripper replied Spezie and then Dr. Dr. Mowry replied, no not like him.

Our killer is not a surgeon, not a butcher. Knowledge of anatomy was not required here. The investigators have been demanding to know was the operation well done? Well, what does that mean well done? Who has ever done an operation of this sort? Certainly it was done by some with no hesitation. One who perhaps uses certain tools in his professional work. Wasn't the girl a leatherworker for Gucci? Didn't she use a cobblers knife? Wasn't her father also a leatherworker? Perhaps it was someone in her orbit. It had to be someone with no mean ability with a knife, a hunter, or a taxidermist. Above all, a person with a determination and nerves of steel. Although he was working on a dead body, it was, after all, only just dead.

Later that day, the entire staff of La Nazzione met to discuss the new information Spezzi had received about the victims. Again thanks to Spezzi's reporting, La Nazzione was the only publication in all of Italy that knew about this mutilation. During the meeting, a young reporter suddenly asked if anyone remembered a very similar murder that took place in Borgo San Lorenzo, 1974. Everybody did. Spezi, who had now officially been assigned to head all coverage on the case,

quickly got to work writing an article comparing the recent murder of Giovanni Foggi and Carmela D'Annuccio to the 1974 murders of Stefania Patini and Pasquale Gentilcor. Tipped off by Spezi's article, the police decided to start investigating the possibility that the killings had been committed by the same person. Two days later, police announced that a ballistics test has revealed that the Giovanni Foggi, Carmela De Nuccio, Stefani Petini, and Pasquale Gentucore had been killed by the same gun, a.22 caliber Beretta long-rifle handgun. The bullet shells collected from both the 1974 murders and the 1981 murders

bore the same distinct mark on the rim of the cartridge. Each gun's firing pin will leave on a microscopic level a signature of sorts, a fingerprint of sorts. And the same ballistics fingerprints have been left on bullet casings from both double murders, which meant one thing. A serial killer, very likely loose in Florence. Same weapon used. To track down the murder, the police first went to speak to some of those indiani. Remember those shrub slut pervs? Those forest peepers? Those hot, hard Italian father daddies, simply dripping in olive oil that they used to lube up their filthy Italian sausages?

The prevalence of peeping toms in the Florentine hills is well known to the station, and the investigators strongly believe that at least one of the pervs had to have witnessed something that night. Maybe an indiano had even been watching Carmela and Giovanni have sex when they were killed. With minimal effort, they discovered that there had, of course, been an indiano in the area when the crime took place. A local perv named Enzo Spalletti. Oh, Enzo, it's Enzo!

That's a crazy guy! Look at what he's doing! When he wasn't creeping on strangers while they had sex, Enzo worked as an ambulance driver in Florence. That's cool. That's good that he had an important job. Entire town knew he was a voyeur, that's what the sources say, including his wife, who Spezi described as, quote, a fat, honest, simple country girl. For fuck's sake, what a rough description. Spezi described as quote a fat honest simple country girl. For fuck's sake what a rough description. Spezi describes Spalletti as a he doesn't he doesn't hold back when he describes this guy either. He describes Enzo Spalletti as quote a small man with an enormous mustache, tight little eyes, a big nose, a chin that stuck out like a knob, and a small sphincter like mouth.

A chin that stuck out like a knob, and a small sphincter-like mouth. He looked like a man with something to hide. My god, Spezzy does not hold back when it comes to just brutally describing people. We need to talk to the fat-a-dumb-a-country bumpkins' husband. The little beady-eyed left-of-a-man with the stinky butt hole for a mouth. He's the guy we need to track down. When Spilletti was taken to police headquarters for questioning, though he admitted to being in the Florentina Hills night of the murders, he vehemently and arrogantly denied spying on anyone. Mr. Peeping Tom Butthole-Mouth claimed

that the night that that night he had picked up a prostitute from town and drove her into the woods to fuck. So that's cool. When he's not watching other people fuck in the woods, he's fucking the woods himself. Was anyone in Florence in the 1970s or 80s not fucking in the woods? Interrogators pointed out that no sex worker would ever in a million years get into a stranger's car. What? Let alone allow that stranger to drive them 40 miles away into the middle of the woods. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what a lot of sex workers would do. But maybe that wasn't the norm in Florence. What do you mean not get into a stranger's car? After his alibi was questioned, Spalletti admitted that he had been spying on couples. Sorry, after his alibi was questioned and it didn't hold up, Spalletti admitted,

or I don't know, he felt it didn't help. Anyway, Spalletti admitted that he had been spying on couples in the area that night. So he was lying about the sex worker, and that he even parked his car not far away from where Carmela DiNuccio and Giovanni Fogghi had been murdered. He also admitted that he knew Carmela and Giovanni, or more accurately knew of them. He'd watched them fuck previously. He told interrogators that the couple's copper fiat was known as a quote, good car, amongst the indiani and Vantage points from where a voyeur could watch Carmela and Giovanni fuck highly sought after up. It's a play mo fucking Spalletti also said that night he had been watching a different couple and despite how close his car was to the victims He never saw anything but the police didn't buy this and so a few weeks later Spalletti charged with being the monster of Florence and

The ambulance driver slash voyeur is locked up in the Florentine prison of La Marate. While Florentines rejoiced that the murder had been caught, journalist Mario Spezi thought they had the wrong man. For months after Spalletti was convicted, Spezi expressed his opinion to anyone who would listen. He wrote scathing criticisms of how poorly the investigation was being handled in newspaper articles and pointed out that the police had never found any direct evidence linking Spalletti to the crime. Then just four months later, October 21st, 1981, Spezzi's doubts are proven justified and Spalletti is proven innocent.

On the night of October 21st, while Spalletti is incarcerated, the monster strikes again. A fourth couple is murdered in the woods outside of Florence. This time he violently ended the lives of 26-year-old Stefano Baldi and his fiance, 24-year-old Susanna Cambi. They were murdered in the same ritualistic way as the previous two couples. The night they died, Stefano and Susanna had driven to a rural area nestled at the base of the Calvana Mountains. The couple parked their car on a dead-end dirt road between vineyards, started having sex in the front seat.

As Spezzi arrived at the crime scene the next day, he was unsurprised to see that again, no effort had been made to secure the area or preserve the evidence scattered around it. I feel like the first order of business for an Italian police officer when they arrived at a crime scene, or at least when they did a few decades ago, was to set up a stereo system and just play the Benny fucking Hill theme on loop, just max volume.

I feel like the Italian police department in Florence would just hire literally anyone in the 70s and 80s. You could be blind, deaf, just released from prison where you served 15 years for rape and murder, literally be flipping through pages of some homemade magazine of kiddie porn in the lobby of the police station. Walk into your interview with a heroin needle stinging out of your arm. Not be wearing any clothes at all from the waist down. Just take a shit in the middle of the job interview, on top of your desk.

And then whoever is interviewing you, and still immediately get hired. Just uh, ah, you're the perfecto! You're gonna feel it right, perfecto here. I take a shit on the desk in celebration and solidarity with you! Stefano and Susana's bodies were more or less assembled in the same way as the previous victims. Stefano was dead in the driver's seat as car door windows shattered from the gunfire. The left car door Susana had been dragged out of was still wide open. They found her body 10 meters from the car, splayed on the grass with their arms

crossed over her exposed chest. Just like the previous murdered woman, her entire pelvic region had been carved out and removed. Medical examiner Maro Mari informed investigators there was no evidence of rape or molestation, but that she'd been mutilated using the same notched knife as the other's, the previous two female victims. How did he know that what her vagina had been cut out? It's missing. How did anyone know if she'd been raped or not? I'm pretty sure you would you would need to find the vagina to make that determination. Also found at the site was a granite doorstop shaped like a

truncated pyramid. The style of doorstop very popular in old Tuscany country houses as you recognize it immediately Remember this little doorstop detail. It's gonna be important for some insanity coming up at the end of the episode Or you know what don't even worry about it. I'll remind you Additionally the Winchester series eight shells collected from the site all bore the same distinct mark of the monsters gun The day after these murders Enzo Spalletti, the first and far from the last guy to be arrested for being the monster of Florence on Zero Evidence, is now released from prison. Over the course of the next month Mario Spezzi writes 57 articles for La Nazione

on the serial killer and in one of the articles he describes the killer as the monster of Florence a moniker that will stick. During this period, Spezi will later write, The police and the carabinieri were swamped with letters anonymous and signed which had to be followed up on. Doctors, surgeons, gynecologists, even priests were among those accused, along with fathers, son-in-laws, lovers, and rivals. Up to this time, Italians had considered serial killers a northern European phenomenon, something that happened in England, Germany, or Scandinavia, and of course in America where everything violent seemed to be magnified tenfold, but never in Italy. While individuals were concocting their own personal theories about why their ex-boyfriend

or shitty boss or father-in-law had most definitely committed these homicides, the country as a whole, also painting an elaborate picture of the serial killer. Public opinion began to jell around the portrait of the monster. He was a man of culture and breeding, upper class, and above all a surgeon. Hadn't the medical examiner stated that the operation performed on Carmela and Susanna had been done with great ability? Hadn't there been talk that the operation might have been done with the scalpel? And there was the cold-blooded and highly calculated nature of the crimes themselves, which hinted at a killer of intelligence and education. Inadvertently, Spezzi had helped fuel the biggest theory that the killer was someone who worked in

the medical field, even though he himself did not believe that. More than anything else, perhaps, this belief was fueled by the unfortunate headline for an article about Stefano and Susanna, he wrote, which read, the surgeon of death is back. Though he was speaking metaphorically, the people of Italy largely took this literally, and doctors, nurses, vets, and especially gynecologists now became subjects of immense suspicion and harassment. Eight months after the previous killings, June 19, 1982, the monster of Florence strikes again. This time he or they murdered 22-year-old Paolo Menardi and his girlfriend, 20-year-old

Antonella Migliorini. It was the first Saturday of the summer. Paolo and Antonella had spent the earlier part of the evening hanging out with some friends at an ice cream kiosk in Piazza del Popolo. When Paolo first suggested that he and Antonella drive out to the countryside to get some alone time together, she refused according to some of her friends. She was terrified about the monster of Florence, as were all young lovers at the time, and she didn't want to risk it. But eventually, unfortunately, she acquiesced and soon after found herself in the remote Chianti countryside

just south of Florence near the castle of Papiano. They parked the car at the very end of a little dead-end road, so the front of it was facing the bushes. After she and Paolo finished having sex, Antonella hopped into the back to put her clothes back on. Reconstruction of the crime scene indicated that while this was happening Paolo who was sitting in the driver's seat must have spotted the killer standing in the bushes in front of the car. Because terrified he quickly shifted into reverse slammed on the gas. The killer unfortunately also quick and immediately started shooting into the windshield. Paolo was shot in the right shoulder. Antonella had flung her arms around his head. He managed to get,

despite like all the shootings, despite getting shot, despite you know kind of having his eyes covered by Antonella, he did manage to back out of the lane. Unfortunately he continued in reverse well past the main road and then the car slid backwards into a ditch on the other side and got stuck. And then the monster caught up with them. First Cooley fired two shots from his Beretta and blew out each headlight, then fired two more shots, one into each of the victim's heads. He then yanked Paolo's dead body out of the driver's seat, attempted for quite some time to get the car out of the ditch. Eventually gave up, departed the crime scene without cutting his usual trophy off of the female victim. So perhaps some

other lovers came along and spooked him since half of Florence was fucked in the woods back then. Perhaps he was just worried about the car being so close to a road. Prior to this fresh double homicide, a forensics team had constructed an identikit portrait, a composite sketch based on numerous witness descriptions of the possible killer, what the monster Florence might look like. The police had initially opted to keep the portrait out of the public eye for fear of arousing hysteria, but after these two murders, they decided to release it.

June 30, 1982, the identikit rendering of the monster's face is published on the front page of every major newspaper in all of Italy. Overnight, tips about the killer's identity, which have been steadily coming in daily since the Bartolini-Fields murders, increased tenfold. Everybody it seemed recognized his face. Men who shared vaguely similar features as the sketch were harassed in the streets, accosted by family members and friends, refused service at restaurants and grocery stores. The owner of a butcher shop near the Porto Romana of Florence had to close the store

for a full week because a crowd of people holding up newspaper clippings of the identikit and screaming that he was the killer kept congregating at his fucking door. Italians. They truly have a loud, expressive, very lively culture. A lot of passion, a lot of heart, a lot of volume. So very different from my Nordic ancestors. I grew up largely around Swedish and Norwegian. You don't show much emotion even when someone dies energy.

Italy has the opposite of that, it seems to me. My main memory of traveling to Italy for a week when I was 19 years old was wishing everyone would be quieter, stop waving their fucking hands around so wildly, and just kind of calm down in general. None of that hysteria surprises me in the least. Another man with a similar face also endured harassment, though he lost a lot more than just customers. This poor bastard worked at a pizza place.

Red Pony Pizzeria? And the day the identikit was released, a group of middle schoolers, a bunch of boys, kept coming in, started to mock him, then they would pretend to run out of the store in terror, and that same night he was so upset by all that he cut his own throat. Yai yai yai. Amongst a mountain of batshit, knee-jerk, paranoid accusations, a single envelope did stand out to investigators. Inside, the sender had enclosed a clipping of an old La Nazione article about the double homicide of Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Lochi in 1968.

Scrawled haphazardly across the yellow newspaper was, take another look at this crime. So they did, and investigators quickly discovered that the murder of Antonio and Barbara, which had taken place 14 years earlier, very similar to the current murders being committed by the so-called Monster Florence. Just like Pasquale and Stefania, Giovanni and Carmela, Stefano and Susanna, and most recently Paolo and Antonella, Antonio and Barbara were having sex in a car in the Florentine Hills when they were killed. Even more damning than that, just like the other victims, the killers shot Antonio and Barbara with a.22 Beretta using Winchester Series H rounds. However, most investigators felt that despite the monster's name being written all over

the 1968 murders, there was just no way the crimes could have been connected. After all, as we went over earlier in the timeline, Antonio and Barbara's murder had already been solved. Right? Stefano Mele, Barbara's husband, had confessed to and been found guilty of the murder of his wife and her lover. On top of that, Stefano could not possibly have gone on to be the monster of Florence as he had been living in a mental institution for ex-convicts since his release from prison.

Not totally surprised, he seemed like he needed some help. Still some investigators would explore the connection further and ran a lab on the shells collected from the 1968 crime scene. And then shockingly, or perhaps unshockingly, depending on how you look at it, they found that each of the shells bore the same unique marking. That firing pin bullet casing signature of the monster. So the murders were connected. And now the police immediately go to interrogate Stefano Mele.

But when they arrive at the small priest-run institution to question him, they're disappointed to find he is incomprehensible. Investigators leave empty-handed, and in their wake dozens of journalists from all over the country flock to the same institution hoping for an interview with Melee. The priest running the place, whoever, will not let that happen. He just is not mentally stable enough. He's gone mad. No one is allowed to enter the property, let alone permitted access to Melee. However, Mario, Mario, motherfucking a space here I will find a way to speak with him. A determined his interview specie reached

out to the priest told them he was a filmmaker that he wanted to make a documentary about all the good humanitarian work that they were doing. Flattered, this is pretty clever. Priest agreed to let specie come by shoot his doc. The journalist arrives the very next day with the cameraman after filming a very flattering interview with one of the priests and a few more with a couple of the other inmates to keep his ruse going, he is finally sitting face to face with Stefano Mele. In spaz he describes Mele as feeble, nervous, and odd.

He wrote, to move a chair was almost a superhuman feat for him. An expressionless smile frozen on his face revealed a cemetery of rotten teeth. Oh my god. He was hardly the picture of the cold-blooded killer who, fifteen years before, had murdered two people with deficiency and sang Freud. The interview at the beginning was difficult. Melee was on guard and suspicious. But little by little he relaxed and even began to warm up to the two filmmakers, glad to

have finally found sympathetic listeners to whom he could confide. He finally invited them back to his room where he showed them old photographs of his missus as he called his murdered wife, Barbara. As uh, or uh, yeah, that's not, whatever, Barbara as well as pictures of their son, Natalino. Uh, when asked about the night, Barbara and her lover were murdered. Melee immediately became incoherent and rambling and said nothing of any real value. But then right before Spezie and the cameramen departed, Melee grabbed Spezi's arm and said,

They need to figure out where the pistole is. Otherwise, there will be more murders. They will continue to kill. They will continue. Spezi now wondered, is it possible that Melee was not alone the night his wife and her lover were killed, like Spezi himself originally confessed shortly after his arrest? And if so, is it also possible that whoever his accomplice was, or his accomplices were, that they went on to become the monster of Florence? During his trial, Mellody told investigators that he threw a gun he used to shoot the two victims into a nearby ditch, but that gun was never found.

If that gun could be found, it would likely lead to capturing the monster of Florence, people thought. Now this became the primary focus of the investigation. Where was that Beretta? A famous and long-running stage of investigation known as the Pisa Sarda, aka the Sardinian Trail, now began. Would they be able to crack the Barbagian code and get any of the Sardinians to rat out one of their own, give up somebody they might think of as a Belente? As investigators dove deeper into who Stefano's potential accomplices were, they

honed in on Salvatore Pince and Francesco Vincci, both of whom, like Stefano, hailed from Sardinia and both of whom also had affairs with his wife Barbara. Of the two brothers, Francesco seemed like the real obvious choice. He was the real Belente of the two, an outlaw who had a history of assault, stealing, was known to beat up his girlfriends. Known to beat up his girlfriends but never really get arrested for that. This dude was hanging out with a real cool crowd. The investigators collected circumstantial evidence placing Francesco at or around each of the double homicides and on August 17th 1982 Francesco Vinci is arrested for being the monster of Florence. But again

not everybody convinced the right man is behind bars. Francesco was from a poor backwoods part of the country. He was brutish, cheap, rough around the edges, did not fit the portrait of the monster Florentines had concocted in their heads. Some hyper intelligent man from high society, a surgeon, some aristocrat. Mario Spezi, for one, absolutely sure Francesco was innocent, and wrote article after article proclaiming so. In addition to the fact that there was no hard evidence against him, Spezi wrote frequently about the fact that Francesco, being the monster of Florence, simply made no sense to him.

On the evening of September 10th, 1983, Spezi is having dinner with a young filmmaker named Cinzia Torini to discuss the possibility of making a film about the monster of Florence. During their meal, Torini asked Spezzi if he still thought Francesco was innocent. After all, there had been no killing since the Sardinian had been put behind bars a little over a year ago. According to his later book, Spezzi responded, All the police have against Francesco is that he was a lover of the first woman killed, that he beats up his girlfriends, and that he's a crook. In my view, these are elements in his favor. Francesco likes women. He's a big success with women and that's enough to convince me he is not the monster. He hits them but he does not kill them. The monster destroys women. He hates them because he wants them and can't have them.

That's his frustration, the thing that damns him. And so he possesses them physically in the only way he can, which is to steal the part most indicative of their femininity You know when spezi First said that francesco likes to women but beats them up I wasn't in favor of his arguments, but the part about wanting them, but not being able to have them It's not a bad argument However there have been plenty of guys like Ted Bundy and serial killer We just recently covered Randy Woodfield who did get plenty of attention from women but still killed them sometimes

Anyway, Toreini then asked Bezzi You know what he thought about the ritualistic aspect of the killings in the theory that the monster killed couples having premarital sex to punish them Specifically she was referencing the conspiracy theory that the monster had penetrated Stefania Petini in 1974 with the grapevine branch because the Bible Verse that says because of the Bible verse that says, every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away. In other words, the conspiracy theory was that the monster was punishing Stefania and other female victims for having sex for non-pro creative purposes aka not to bear fruit. Spezzi responded hilariously in my opinion, that's a

bunch of twaddle. You know why he used an old piece of grapevine? If you look at the crime scene photos you see that they were parked right next to a vineyard. He simply grabbed the closest stick he could find. To me his use of a stick to violate women seems to confirm that he is not exactly Superman. He didn't and probably can't rape his victims. So impotence, not a bad guess here. That's come up before in a lot of serial killer cases, right? They take out their rage over their impotence on their victims, violate them in ways

they can't with their own dick. Well, it's a big deal that that's how chica tildo. While still discussing Francesco's possible innocence and logistics of making a movie about the monster Florence, Spezie now gets a phone call. It was one of the journalists contacts at the police station calling to tell him that two more bodies had just been discovered. This pair were murdered in Gio Goli, a village in the Florentine countryside. And I'll share the details of these new

murders right after today's second of two mid-show sponsor breaks. I think you're listening to those sponsors. And now let's to September 10th, 1983, the day after another young couple in the woods gets murdered in their vehicle. Spezi and Toreini immediately get in this car, drive to the crime scene. Per usual the scene had not been blocked off. Even better this time, it was very crowded. All kinds of evidence just being destroyed. The medical examiner, chief investigators team, other police officials, they're all there fucking roaming about stomping on shit,

surveying the scene. Prosecutors working on the case against Francesco also present, looking irritated, disheartened. After all this fresh new killing proved that the man that they were trying to prove was a monster of Florence, Sir Flyby Knot. Yeah, just fucking crazy. The center of the commotion was a Volkswagen camper bus with German license plates. Over all the chatter outside, Spezzy could hear the Blade Runner theme song emanating from inside the camper and he learned that the two victims, Wilhelm Friedrich Horstmeier and Jens Eurusk, both 24 years old and both men, had been shot to death the previous night while watching Blade Runner and that since their death the recorder had been looping

the movie over and over and over again. The two men were from West Germany and had been vacationing in Italy to celebrate Meyer's reception of some prestigious scholarship. Spezzy wondered why the monster would target two men this time, but soon found his answer when he entered the Volkswagen bus. Again, just walks in the fucking bus. This is an active crime scene. They have not collected all the evidence from.

Just go every once. No one's stopping him. This is awesome. Inside he finds Meyer's body, splayed on the double mattress, his feet towards the rear of the van, his head just behind the driver's seat. At the very back of the van is a small crouched figure shrouded by long blonde hair, crown of his head covered in congealed blood. And at first Spezi thought that this corpse was a woman. However, it was in fact Jen's Rusk. On the floor of the van Spezi saw a magazine had been ripped apart, The pages thrown about the floor, the name of the magazine was Golden Gay. The monster had shot Meyer through the window of the van, which they estimated placed him

at at least 5 foot 10 inches tall, so we could do that with proper aim. Then came inside, shot Rusch while he crouched in the corner, likely thinking he was a woman. The monster then realized the two men were gay lovers and frustrated, ripped up the magazine and left. Despite this new double homicide, the police theorized that the monster Florence was the member of some Sardinian clan and that Francesco Vinci knew who it was. So despite this new evidence that he was innocent, the police refused to release Francesco from prison. Just nine days later on September 19th, 1983, current

incarcerated monster Florence Prime suspect, Francesco's nephew Antonio Vinci is arrested now for illegal possession of firearms. As a reminder, Antonio was the son of Salvatore Vinci and his wife Barbarina, who he had raped and gotten pregnant back in Sardinia. And though Barbarina's death had been ruled a suicide, many believed that Salvatore was responsible and that before he ended her life, he removed the little baby Antonio from her side. Salvatore and his son were never close, even when Antonio lived with him on the mainland for some time. However, Antonio and his uncle Francesco, thick as thieves, literally.

The two were known to hang out at the same Sardinian gangster hotspots and commit the same petty crimes together. So when Antonio was arrested for illegal possession of firearms, the police launched into action. They decided that both Francesco and his nephew knew who the monster of Florence was if one of those guys wasn't the monster themselves and now both men were being held at the Marat de prison in Florence and investigators tried to pit them against one another. They told Francesco that Antonio confessed that he was the killer. They told Antonio the same, just vice versa. Despite this, both men remained cool and calm and maintained their innocence. Antonio even acted as his own lawyer and pointed out that the guns had not been found at his house

but near it and that there was no evidence they actually belonged to him. While Francesco remained incarcerated, Antonio was now promptly released. He's right, they couldn't prove anything. Determined to keep Francesco in prison though, the examining magistrate himself, Mario Rotella, now goes to interrogate the mentally unstable Stefano Mele about who his accomplices were. Determined to keep Francesco in prison, though, the examining magistrate himself, Mario Rotella, now goes to interrogate the mentally unstable Stefano Mele about who his accomplices were the night his wife and lover were murdered. Rotella, of course, was sure Mele was going to name Francesco. But Mele was no help.

Over and over again, he just said that he'd forgotten what happened that night and who he was with, if anyone. However, Rotella did find something of value. A handwritten note tucked away in Mele's wallet. The note had been folded and unfolded over and over again, and on it was a list of talking points for Mele. It was written in a mix of Italian and Sardinian, and was also riddled with spelling errors. Translated to English, the note basically says, it's pretty sloppy, report of Natalino regarding Uncle Pieto, that you would have said the name after serving

the sentence. How was it shown from ballistic test if the shots were fired? Stefano Mele's brother, Giovanni Mele, had written the note two years prior when news of the monster of Florence's connection to the 1968 murder of Mele's wife and lover broke. After days of studying the message and the old case files, Rotella realizes what Giovanni was trying to instruct his brother to do in this note during the original investigation in 1968 Natalino who had been in the car with his mom Barbara and her boy toy when they were murdered

Kept saying that an uncle Pietro or Piero had been at the scene of the crime Investigators originally thought that Natalino was talking about his mom's brother Pietro. However, not only knows dad Stefano Mele also had a brother-in-law named Piero Muzierini. Rotella thought then that what the note was instructing Mele to do was to draw attention away from his sister's husband Piero and instead divert everyone's focus to deceased Barbara's brother Pietro. Rotella took this to mean that both Giovanni Mele, Stefano's brother, and Piero Mussiarini, Stefano's brother-in-law, must have both been Mele's accomplices in 1968 and then went on to commit the rest of the murders. It was just like a family affair. They're all in on it. So on January 24th, 1984, both Piero Mussiarini and Giovanni Mele are

arrested for being the monsters of Florence. The third and fourth men, now thrown behind bars for being the serial killer, based on nothing but wild speculation. No evidence. Yeah, just throw them in there. If this logic seems hard to follow, join the club, Spezzi would write and get another article on the murders. Hardly anyone except Mario Rotella pretends to understand this convoluted chain of deduction.

Mario Rotella was the examining magistrate on the case. His role was to supervise not only the police but the prosecutors and the public minister working under him as well. The public minister in the Monstro Florence case was a man named Piero Luigi Vigna. In Italy the public minister of a case also serves as the lead prosecutor. And now after the arrest of Piero Mussiarigna. In Italy, the public minister of a case also serves as the lead prosecutor. And now after the arrest of Piero Mussiarini and Giovanni Mele, tensions grow between the examining magistrate Rotella and his lead prosecutor Vigna. While Rotella was confident he had put the monster or monsters of Florence behind bars, Vigna and his team were certain the serial killer was still at large.

During an interview, Rotella told Spezi, I can tell you one thing at least. Florentines can now rest easy. But that same day, one of the prosecutors working under Vina told the journalist, I would cordially invite young people to find some other way of maintaining their health than taking air of the countryside at night. Like how he said that. Not going to say they're having sex, but you know what he means. Unfortunately, not all young couples heeded the warning, and while Stefano Mele, Francesco

Vinci, Piero Mussarini, Giovanni Mele are all incarcerated in some form, the monster strikes again. July 29th, 1984. 21-year-old law student Claudio Stefanici, an 18-year-old bartender, Pia Gilda Rotini, now murdered while having sex in a car parked on a grassy patch of countryside outside the town of Iquillo, near Florence. Claudio, like the other male victims, shot in the head, his body still inside the car. Pia had been shot inside the car as well, then her body was dragged a few dozen meters from the vehicle. The killer, in his typical fashion now, cuts out her vagina and also rips off her left breast. Ripped off is how it's described in a few sources, but I think it was cut off. I fucking hope so. Both are barbaric.

Ripping makes me feel less sick to my stomach than being cut. After the newest double homicide, the police and the newspaper are inundated with a fresh tidal wave of anonymous letters. Some letters accuse specific people of being the monster of Florence, include not only the accused names, but their address, phone number, place of work. Others are angry letters of advice telling the police how they should do their jobs. One letter read, he is certainly a bachelor of about 40. He lives with his mother who knows his secret but his priest knows about it from confessions as he attends church regularly. Okay, it's kind of specific. Another said the monster is a woman, a genuine

Virago of British origin who teaches in a Florentine school where there are children up to 13 years of age. I don't think whoever wrote that letter just doesn't like a certain teacher. It's hoping to somehow trick the police into arresting some random person they have a vendetta against. The monster of Florence is my older master teacher, Mrs. Ferrari. That bitch who gave me an F for it doesn't make her have to repeat her the sixth grade She's a monster. She has a no solar or she had to everyone. She said a button ahead We said button to the witch up a lot of all this bullshit One letter he received stuck out to spezi as potentially true. It was sent to his office at La Natsione

Addressed to the monstrologer. It was handwritten and it read, I am, this is so fucking creepy, I am very close to you. You will never take me away unless I choose it. The final number is still far away. 16 or too many. I don't hate anyone, but I have to do it if I want to live. Blood and tears will run soon. You will make no progress the way you are going. You have gotten everything wrong. Too bad for you. I will make no more mistakes but the police will. Inside me the night will last forever. I cried for them. Expect me." Because those last three sentences are especially creepy. Inside me the night will last forever. I cried for them. Expect me. Aye-aye- aye! August 19th, 1984, Prince Roberto Corsini found dead in the vast forest that surrounds

his family's estate. He had been shot in the face at point blank range. The Corsini is one of Florence's oldest, most influential families. Despite investigators never giving any indication that this aristocrat was remotely involved in the monster case, rumors now began to spread that Prince Roberto was the monster of Florence and killed himself out of guilt. September 22nd 1984. With no evidence connecting them to the crimes, no reason to keep them incarcerated, both Piero Mussarini and Giovanni Mele are released from prison. November 10th 1984 Francesco Vinci also released from

prison. So now no monster suspects are behind bars. Yeah, they have no evidence on these guys. Because Mario Spezi had been so vocal about his innocence, Francesco invited the journalist to attend his welcome home party and he did. At the end of the party, Francesco agreed to do an interview during which Spezi asked him what he imagined the real monster was like. And he said, he is very intelligent, someone who knows how to move at night in the hills, even with his eyes closed. Someone who knows how to move at night in the hills, even with his eyes closed. One who knows how to use a knife much better than most. And who, once upon a time, experienced a very, very great disappointment. Same year, a special police unit

is dedicated to, formed and dedicated to unmasking the serial killer. Squad anti-mastro, or SAM. The monster has now been active for 16 years if you count that first 1968 double homicide where the woman was not mutilated, you know, crimes for which Stefano Mele went to prison for 13 years for. Or the monster has been active for 10 years if the first murders he committed were the 1974 double homicide where the woman was stabbed 97 times but did not have her vagina removed from her body. Following year, the killer strikes again for the final known time. On the evening of September 7th, 1985, 25-year-old musician Jean-Michel Kravichevili and 36-year-old businesswoman Nadine Morioh are shot and stabbed while camping in a small tent in

Scolpetti. Both victims were from Adencourt, France. For the first time investigators finally actually secure the fucking crime scene. However, in the crowd of angry journalists begging to be granted access, one is allowed to take some notes and report back to the others what he has seen. And that journalist is Mario Spezi. Later, Sam investigators were able to recreate the crime scene and deduce what happened to the two French tourists. Jean-Michel and Nadine had been, not surprisingly, having sex in their tents when the monster found them. He first let them know he was there by slicing the outermost layer of the tent with the tip of his knife. He did not, however, pierce the inside of the tent. The monster was positioned directly outside of the tent's entrance, and when the victims unzipped

the tent to find the source of the noise he was making, they were both bombarded with a spray of bullets. Nadine was killed immediately. Jean-Michel, an avid sportsman, runner of the 100-meter dash, able to sprint away naked. However, he didn't get very far. The monster, someone who must have been capable of running pretty fast himself, reached Jean-Michel before he could escape to the main road and stabbed him in the back and stomach and then cut his throat. Yee! Montserrat then returned to the tent to cut out Nadine's vagina and also remove her left breast. Following Tuesday, a package arrives at the prosecutor's office. It's addressed to Sylvia

Della Monica, the only woman working on the case, and inside wrapped in some tissue paper is part of Nadine's left breast. God how much did that fuck her week up? You can't ever unsee that. Although Francesco Giovanni, Piero had all been released from prison, the examining magistrate Mario Rotella still certainly answered to who the monster case, you know, or the answer to the monster case, lay within that circle of Sardinians. So he adjusted his focus to the last suspicious Sardinian, left Salvatore Vinci. In addition to exploring the supposed suicide of his wife, Barbarina, back in 1961, investigators also started looking into

Salvatore's life after he integrated to Tuscany. The most striking thing they found was Salvatore's sexual tastes, which they found pretty untraditional. They tracked down Salvatore's ex-wife, Rosina, who he was married to briefly after leaving Sardinia. She told him that her husband frequently partook in orgies and forced her into threesomes. If she refused, Salvatore would beat her. Rosina also said, It was worse when his son Antonio arrived from Sardinia, who was only four years old. I was afraid that he would witness some of these perverse doings with other couples. Rosina eventually had enough of Salvatore's abuse and sexual escapades and ran away with

another man. This devastated her stepson Antonio, who had grown incredibly attached to her. Another one of Salvatore's girlfriends told police, I can say to you that Salvatore was the man, the only man who fully satisfied me in terms of sex. He had strange ideas, but what of it? He liked to make love to me while a man did it to him from behind. The mysterious circumstances of his first wife's death paired with his unusual sexual taste

was all the evidence investigators needed to prove he was the monster of Florence for sure! We got the guy, huh? He likein' to fuckin' the ladies in the buses while they takin' niggas in the bathtub. Case closed, huh? He is a monster of Florence, huh? We celebrate that time so much now, huh? Before arresting Salvatore, however, investigators decided to also briefly put Stefano Mele in jail for some ludicrous charges of obstruction of justice because they wanted to get him to talk again. Shockingly the examining magistrate Mario Rotella actually did get something out of

Mele this time. The feeble man asserted again that Salvatore da Vinci was one of the accomplices of his the 1968 murder of his wife Barbara Lochi and her lover Antonio Lo Bianco. Melee also revealed that the reason he protected Salvatore for so long was because Salvatore knew Melee's deepest darkest secret that he was gay. Bingo! Did you see that coming? I actually did not when I first went over all this. Now I understand why he let his wife fuck dudes in his mom and dad's house. Probably angry that his parents or I guess

he's just his dad at that point. Dad wouldn't accept him for being gay. You know maybe it's just fun for him to fuck with a fam like that. And she was his beard. Melee stated that if he confessed that Salvatore was involved in the murder, Salvatore was going to reveal to everyone that Melee was a homosexual. And that was how Salvatore was able to control Melee for so long. He was willing to go to jail for 14 fucking years just to make sure no one found out he was gay. How sad, but in such a heavily Roman Catholic nation, back when the Catholic Church was aggressively homophobic,

I guess I'm not totally surprised. While according to several studies, somewhere between 67% and 80% of the nation identified as being Catholic. Now, I would guess that, you know, back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, you know, the numbers were even higher. At the end of 1985, Mario Rotelli now served Salvatore Vinci with Inovisio. I noticed that he was an official suspect for the 16 homicides committed between 1968 and 1985. All of them.

Then the following summer, June 11th, 1986, Mario Rotella orders the arrest of Salvatore Vinci, not for being the monster of Florence, but for the murder of his wife, Barbarina, whose death in 1961 was originally ruled a suicide. Rotella's decision to arrest Salvatore for a crime he may have committed 25 years earlier was strategic if he was able to prove that Salvatore murdered his wife all those years ago. It would then be easier to prove he also went on to become the monster of Florence. On April 12, 1988, the trial of Salvatore Vinci begins in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia.

Mario Spezi covers the trial for La Nazione. Salvatore's son, now 27-year-old Antonio, was brought in to testify against his father. At the time, Antonio was also serving time for an unrelated offense and had to be brought into the courtroom in handcuffs. Antonio refused to speak. He sat silently stared daggers at his father. He later told Speezy that if the officers hadn't been there, he would have leapt across the courtroom and strangled his father to death. A little anger there. Much to Mario Rotella's dismay, five days after the trial begins, April 17th, 1988, Salvatore Vinci is acquitted. The crime had taken place too long ago. All the witnesses had either died or could

not remember significant details. After he was acquitted, Salvatore Di Vinci went to visit his birthplace in the interior mountains of Sardinia and was never seen in Florence again. August 2, 1989. FBI now creates a psychological profile for the monster of Florence, getting some help from America. Based on their analysis, the FBI stated that the killer was most likely some lowly Melvin continually getting dick, wrist, and skull-mogged in the hills that surround Florence when he tried to mind his own business and watch teenage couples fuck while beating his tiny little shrimp peeing in the bushes. I mean, the FBI thought the killer was most likely an impotent male that harbored a pathological

hatred of women and sought to punish them for his inability to perform. The FBI also stated that the monster of Florence was in all likelihood a loner and that he mutilated women as a way to satiate his deviant sexual desires. Part of the report read translated back into English from Italian, The aggressor in all likelihood effectuated the surveillance of the victims until they engaged in some form of sexual activity. effectuate the surveillance of the victims until they engage in some form of sexual activity. It is at this point that the aggressor chose to strike, with the advantage of surprise, speed, and the use of a weapon able to incapacitate immediately. This particular approach is generally indicative of an aggressor who has doubts about his own ability to control his victims, who feels himself insufficiently prepared to interact

with his victims alive, or who feels himself incapable of confronting them directly. The aggressor, using a sudden approach, discharged his weapon at close range, concentrating his fire first on the male victim, neutralizing in this way the greater danger to himself. Once the male victim is neutralized, the aggressor feels himself sufficiently secure to perpetrate his attack on the female victim. The use of many rounds indicates that the aggressor wanted to assure himself that both victims were deceased before initiating the mutilation post-mortem on the female victim. This is the real objective of the aggressor.

The man represents only an obstacle that must be removed. The FBI profile also stated that the monster of Florence was not a rapist, nor was he someone that had a history of violent crimes. He may have a rap sheet with petty crimes, but nothing serious or overly alarming. Some other parts of the very long report read, the aggressor is a person who is inadequate and immature in sexual matters, who has had little sexual contact with women in his own peer group. The aggressor is best described as a person of average intelligence. He would have completed his secondary studies or the equivalent in the Italian education system.

He would be experienced in work that required use of his hands. As for how and why the monster kills and maims his victims, the FBI profile said that the possession and the ritual are very important for this kind of aggressor. This would explain why the female victims are generally moved some meters from the vehicle containing their companion. The necessity of possession as a ritual enacted by the aggressor betrayed rage towards women in general. The mutilation of the sexual organs of the victims represent either the inadequateness of the aggressor or his resentment of the women. Despite how valuable and constructive the FBI's psychological profile appeared to be, the task force, SAM, refused to use it in their investigation. Why wouldn't they use it? Well, they chose not to

use it because the FBI's description of the monster Florence didn't sound at all like the investigators knew a suspect, a peasant farmer named Pietro Paciani. So rather than allow their authority to be challenged, investigators not only ignored the FBI report, they suppressed it. So that's cool. I'm sure whatever FBI profilers took time to put that report together were very happy about all that. Earlier that year, Sam had been taken over by a new chief inspector of police, a man named Ruggero Perugini.

Unlike Mario Rotella, Chief Inspector Perugini was under the impression that the monster's gun, though originating from within the Sardinian clan during the 1968 murder of Barbarochi and Antonio Lo Bianco, had somehow been passed outside of the circle of Sardinians and that continuing to look into the likes of Salvatore, Francesco Vin Vinci and Stefano Mele was useless. That is ludicrous. This high ranking law enforcement official thinks that the murder weapon from the first double homicide somehow ends up in the possession of a guy who now just thinks, you know what, I'm also just going to start committing double homicides. I'm also going to target young couples in cars who are fucking in the woods. Right? I mean, why not? I have this gun

now and the previous dude who had this gun he did that so I should probably do it as well. Like does Chief Inspector Perugini just think that the gun itself is pushing the guys to do this? Does he think it's possessed or cursed? He might actually. Perugini started searching for every man between the ages of 30 and 16 in Florence who had ever been picked up by police in a new Italian criminal computer database. So that part's good. Then filtered the long list down to those convicted of sexual crimes, then filtered it further down to those who were in prison the years the monster was not active and out of prison when the monster was. Then he asked the computer to identify each of these men

who lived in or around the areas that the monster had killed. And by the time he was done the only name that remained that fit all the criteria was Pietro Paziani. Investigators had previously been nudged towards Pietro back on September 11th, 1985 when they received an anonymous letter advising them to question our fellow citizen Pietro Paziani born in Vickio. In this way, author Douglas Preston wrote, the most advanced system of criminal investigation, the computer, was married to the most ancient system, the anonymous letter, both of which finger the same man. Looking deeper into Paziani's past, Chief Inspector Perugini found that right

after the monster's last killing in 1985, the peasant farmer had been sent to prison for raping his daughters. So he is a piece of shit. Chief Inspector Perugini took this as evidence that Paziani was the monster Florence that had explained why there hadn't been killings since. That's a weird rationale. He raped his daughter, so he must also shoot couples fucking in cars. And he must also cut women's vaginas out sometimes. Perugini also discovered that in 1951, Paziani had been convicted of murdering his girlfriend's

lover. Okay, that's more in line with the monster of Florence's crimes. Back in 51, Paziani had discovered that his girlfriend was having car sex with some other dude in the woods, as one does in Florence. Furious, the peasant farmer, ambushed the two of them, beat the man's head in with the rock and stabbed him in the stomach, then yanked his girlfriend out of the car and raped her right next to this guy's corpse. Holy shit, although this might sound like the work of the Monster of Florence, it was

actually the opposite. Paziani was uncalculated, messy, acted spontaneously, didn't kill the girl, didn't use a gun. His crimes were so poorly and impulsively executed that the police picked him up almost immediately. Still, Chief Inspector Perugini saw this as evidence that Paziani went on to become the Monster of Florence. What really sealed the deal for him was that when Paziani was first taken into police custody after the murder, he told him he did it because he had seen his girlfriend expose her left breast to the man. And the monster, if you remember, right, had removed the left breast of two female victims. With enough evidence to be suspicious of the peasant farmer, Chief Inspector Perrigini now

orders investigators to search Pietro Paziani's home and surrounding property. Let's just fucking go! Get in there! Run around! Stomp on stuff! Throw things around! Some of the incriminating evidence found at Paziani's house was a single round from a hunting rifle.

You know, he has a bullet in his house, and this guy had bullets in the crime scene, so same guy. Two World War II shell casings, one of which was being used for a flower vase. Five knives, none of which matched the used for a flower vase, five knives, none of which matched the kind of knife used in the killings, crude drawing in a sketchbook of an unidentifiable road, people were killed by roads, and a picture of Paziani as a teenager holding a machine gun. How the fuck is that evidence?

Investigators also discovered reproduction of Botticelli's Primavera, in which a pagan nymph is depicted with flowers spilling out of her mouth and that reminded Perugini of how one of the monster's first female victims was found with her necklace kind of hanging around her mouth. So that's hardcore evidence. The most damning piece of evidence investigators found was a painting hanging in Paziana's house that they found to be very disturbing. It was a strange centaur-ish creature endowed with both female and male sex organs. My God, arrest him at once!

In the background, the painting displayed a green snake wearing a hat. Seven little crosses. In the corner of the painting, the artist has signed his name, Pietro Pazziare. Perugini immediately took the painting to be representative of the monster's sexual deviancy and the seven crosses indicative of the seven double homicides committed. But Regini not counting the 1968 double homicide when he refers here to seven double homicides between 1974 and 85. Some crackpot psychologists he found later confirmed that this painting indeed was compatible with the psychopathic personality of the monster. All this evidence seemed to solidify that Pietro

Patiani was most definitely the monster of Florence. But it wasn't quite enough to arrest him yet. There was still another major issue. If Paziani was a serial killer, how the fuck did the gun used in the 1968 Sardinian clan killing and eighth double homicide end up in his hands? Chief Inspector Perrighini dealt with this issue in the simplest way possible. He accused Paziani of also committing the 1968 murders. Now, fuck it, he did it all. Stefano Mele served 13 years in prison for nothing. However, examining magistrate Mario Rotella refused to allow Perugini to accuse Pacciani of the 1968 double homicide without any evidence at all. Unfortunately for Rotella, he was not well liked. He was deeply unpopular with both the press and the public, with coworkers, very good at his job,

but who cares about that? He wasn't fun. He was logical, not superstitious. He was a fucking party pooper. And that along with his failed investigation into Salvatore Vinci, persuaded some of the higher ups to side with Perigini instead of him and allow a man to be arrested

for eight double murders, despite literally having no evidence. Rotella was forced to close all his files, remove himself from the monster Florence case, as well as write a report clearing all the Sardinians from any involvement in the monster killings. Spezi then wrote the author now wrote that Rotella's final report was over a hundred pages of logical exposition and that quote it laid out the case against the Sardinians. It detailed the

Klan killing of 1968, how it was executed, who was involved. It traced the probable arc of the 22 Beretta from Holland to Sardinia to Tuscany, placed it in Salvatore Vinci's hands. It built a persuasive case that the Sardinians who participated in the 1968 killings knew who took the gun home and therefore did know the identity of the monster of Florence and that person was Salvatore da Vinci. And then abruptly on the last page he wrote, for these reasons, this investigation shall proceed no further. I like that this investigator did write out this report as a fuck you to his higher ups.

100 pages presenting real evidence that Salvatore da Vinci was very likely the real killer, not Pietro Paziani, followed by one sentence that basically said, if you read the subtext, but because my bosses are fucking dipshits, even though Salvatore definitely did it, an investigation into him is over. Jumping ahead a couple years now to 1992. By 1992, Chief Inspector Perugini still had not gathered enough evidence to arrest Pietro Paziani for being the monster of Florence, but still thought he did it. Desperate, the chief inspector ordered another search of the peasant farmer's miserable home. He called it miserable home and property despite still having no evidence. He was behind the murders again. From 9 50 a.m. on April 27th to noon May 8th, an armed squad of elite investigators, can use the word elite loosely, conducted

the longest, most technologically advanced property search in Italian history. Looked like they weren't gonna find shit until 5 56 p.m. April 29th when Chief Inspector Perrigini quote, discovered something he thought was groundbreaking. He later described this moment in his book, A Normal Enough Man, saying, I caught in the light of the late afternoon an almost imperceptible gleam in the earth on the ground of Paziani's dying garden where Winchester series 8 was a Winchester series H cartridge it had not been fired so it didn't have the monster's signature mark but it had been inserted

into a gun before a ballistics team now runs an analysis on the cartridge and the experts determined it was not compatible with being inserted into the monster's gun. Wrong fucking gun. However, Perogini didn't give a shit about that. He didn't care about analysis. Much like he didn't give a shit about the mountain of evidence, you know, that clearly indicated Paziani of other pieces of evidence.

He was not the killer. So on January 16th, 1993, despite the ballistics tests actually not being good evidence and actually being evidence that he wasn't the guy, Pietro Paziani is arrested for being the monster of Florence. And the confusing logic or lack thereof of Italian law enforcement continues. This is the seventh guy they've put behind bars for being the monster of Florence with fucking no evidence. Eighth, if he counts Stefano Mele, serving 13 years in prison for the 1968 double homicide.

At least there was a little evidence there with the, you know, the nitrate powder in his hands. A few months later, April 14th, 1994, Paciani's trial begins. Throughout the entirety of the proceedings, a peasant farmer sobs in a Tuscan dialect. I am a sweet little lamb. I'm a sweet little lamb.

I'm here like a Christ on the cross. He just keeps saying that over and over again. Dude, you went to prison before for raping, you know your girlfriend after murdering her lover and again years later for raping your own Daughters, so maybe you should shut the fuck up. You might not have committed these murders But you're a long ways from being a sweet a sweet a little llama Four days into the trial spezi now breaks a monumental piece of news The journalists discovered that the primary piece of evidence against Paziani, I love that this is the primary piece of evidence, the bizarre painting of the centaur that he supposedly drew himself, was actually not done by him. It was actually done by a

50 year old Chilean artist named Christian Olivares. So all he was guilty of was just taking credit for somebody else's work. How the fuck with that painting ever evidence in the first place? Spezi reached out to Oliveres to confirm this and the artist told him yeah It was it was my work and he was horrified his work was being used to confirm that somebody was a serial killer He told spezi in this painting. I wanted to present the grotesque horror of dictatorship To say it is the work of a psychopath is ridiculous It would be like saying the disaster of war by Goya indicated he was a madman, a monster who needed to be locked up.

It is ridiculous to say that this is the work of a psychopath. Perogini is a ridiculous man. Chief Inspector Perogini responds to this news by claiming that the painting, you know, actually on second thought isn't the most important piece of evidence, even though it for sure was. And the shitshow sham of a trial continued for six months. At one point, Pazziani's daughters, one of whom had become a nun, brought in to testify against him on the stand they described in horrifying detail how their father raped them. However, neither daughter was able to recall a single thing that would implicate their father in the crimes committed by the monster of Florence.

One witness brought forth by the prosecution was a dim-witted ex-postman from San Cassiano, one of Paziani's friends and truly known as the Village Idiot. It was clear to anyone, who was also not an idiot, that this poor guy didn't know what the fuck was going on. Bonny responded to every question, including, what is your name, by frantically babbling about how he didn't actually know Paziani very well. He just kept repeating, we were picnicking friends. I guess like over and over, a preposterous amount of times. Inadvertently, with that phrase,

repeating it, he ends up throwing out a phrase that is still in the Italian lexicon today, the phrase picnicking friends, now used to refer to friends who pretend to do innocent things together when they're actually doing fucked up shit. Another witness was a man named Lorenzo Nessie, whose specie described as, thin and smarmy, with slick back hair and ray-bands, shirt unbuttoned, gold chains dangling

amongst his chest hair, a smooth talker and a small-time ladies man. Whether it was for love of attention or the desire to be on the front page, Nessie would become a veritable serial witness, popping up when most needed and suddenly recalling events buried for years. This was his debut appearance. There would be many more. On the witness stand, Nessie told the court that on the evening of September 8, 1985, the alleged night the two French tourists were killed. There's still a lot of debate on when that actually happened.

He'd been driving home from a trip when construction forced him to take a detour. But he's full of shit. Construction on the highway he said he was traveling down actually had occurred the following weekend, not this weekend. There was no detour on the weekend of September 8th. But you know, prosecutors doesn't give a fuck. Still Nessie claimed the detour took him past Scopetti, the Scopetti clearing where the French tourists were murdered, and on the road he saw a rosy reddish Ford Fiesta he

was pretty sure was being driven by Pietro Paziani. When the judge asked him why he didn't report that 10 years ago, Nessie said back then he wasn't sure of it, didn't want to report anything he wasn't 100% confident about. And the judge complimented Nessie for his you know scrupulousness. Oh boy. Nessie's testimony was the nail in the coffin on November 1st, 1994. Paziani is now convicted of being the monster of Florence. Right? Case closed. He's a rapist. He's murdered before. He has a weird painting. A bullet casing that was for sure planted was found on this property that matched the type of bullets the killer used even though it was definitely fired from a different gun. February of

1996, Mario Spezi now meets Arturo Minoliti, the Marshal of the Carabinieri barracks of San Caschiano. It has been almost two years since Pazziani was convicted and since then, Spezi has not stopped trying to prove this dirtbag peasant farmer's innocence. With this meeting, he finally hopes to accomplish just that. Marshal Minoliti had been present during the 12-day search of Pietro Paziani's house in 1992 and was the only one there who wasn't connected with Sam or the police to witness the miraculous recovery of the witness of the Winchester Series H cartridge. Spezi was sure the cartridge had been planted by someone on Chief Inspector Perugini's team and he believed Minoliti was the man who would prove him right. When he arrived at the barracks, Minoliti welcomed Spezi with open arms.

Unbeknownst to the Marshal, hidden in the journalist's oversized coat was a microphone and video camera. That must have been a fucking gigantic coat to hide those. They didn't have small video cameras back then. After a bit of congenial conversation, Spezi finally asked Minoliti if he had any grave doubts about the investigation against Paziani. With relief, the Marshal immediately confided in Spezi that there's only so many coincidences a man can abide by before getting suspicious, and during that search there were oh so many coincidences. In regards to the smoking gun of the Winchester bullet, Menoliti told Spezi that it really burned me the way that cartridge was found. I resented how Chief Inspector Perugini put us in such a difficult situation with the truth.

We were in Pazziani's garden, I Perugini and two other agents on the squad. Those two were scraping the soles of their shoes on a cement grapevine post that lay on the ground and going on about the fact that they were both wearing the same shoes. At a certain moment near the shoe of one of them, the base of the cartridge just appeared. But Spezi interrupted. Perugini described it quite differently in his book. Right, right, because he says the ray of light made the cartridge glisten. What ray of light?

Look, maybe he just wanted to dress up the discovery a bit. And now Spezi asked the big question, Meneliti, did they put it there? The Marshal paused for a moment before responding, that's one hypothesis. More than a hypothesis even, I'm not saying I'm certain. I have to consider this against my will. It's a quasi-certainty in light of the facts I can't find any other explanation. After a bit more prodding, the marshal said, in light of reason, yes, I must say it was planted. I arrived at that conclusion that certain evidence is dirty.

I am up against an extremely difficult situation. They've got my telephone tapped. I'm afraid. I'm truly afraid. The next day, Spezi anxiously sits down on the couch to watch the news. His meeting with Menoliti was scheduled to air on the national television channel that had arranged the taping, Raitray, that evening. I wonder if you give Minoliti a little bit of a heads up.

Hey, so Minoliti, I might want to watch the TV tonight. I secretly recorded a conversation yesterday and they're going to edit. I am very sorry if this gets you killed. On top of this airing, three other national news channels had caught wind of the scoop and asked Spezi for an interview about it those segments were scheduled to air that night as well But no one airs it not the video not the interview nothing Someone very powerful made sure this right so much corruption in the Italian judicial system anyone convicted to a life sentence is granted in appeal So on February 12 1996 Paziani appears before an appeals court with a new prosecutor, new panel of judges. Look at how corrupt all this shit is. The new prosecutor in charge of ensuring Pazziani's guilty conviction that's maintained

is Piero Tony. However, Tony, once he looks into the evidence or the lack thereof, he's so disgusted by the original trial that instead of truly prosecuting Paziani, he spends his entire time in court criticizing the tragic investigation and picking apart every piece of so-called evidence against the peasant farmer. The fucking prosecutor is doing this. He is saying that Paziani is innocent. This is a huge embarrassment, the original investigation, which is now under new leadership.

That's fucking crazy. I don't think I've ever heard of something like that where the prosecution's like what? This guy? No fucking way! He's innocent your honor. Prosecution rest. It's a bunch of bullshit. Six months earlier former chief inspector Paragini, that corrupt idiotic fuck, was promoted to work as a liaison at the American Consulate in Washington. The new chief inspector to take his place was a man named Michele Gittiare. I have no fucking clue how to say his name. So many. I don't speak Italian. I do. I do. I speak my version of Italian. He was determined to prevent Pazziani from being acquitted.

This new chief inspector. Also determined, as Spezi pointed out, to use the monster of Florence case as a means to advance his own career. So on February 13, 1996, the day the verdict of the appeals court was to be announced, Chief Inspector Giuttari now orders the arrest of another guy, Mario Vanni, for being the Monster of Florence's, aka Pazziani's, accomplice. The eighth man arrested for being the Monster, or connected to the Monster, ninth if he counts Stefano Mele from 1968. Vanni, the investigators claim, was the man that serial witness Lorenzo Nessi, the guy who lied about the construction detour, had seen in the car with Pazziani the night the French tourists were murdered in 1985. This arrest, a direct challenge to the appeals court,

that same day an officer sent by Giuttari burst into the courtroom, dramatically burst into the courtroom, announces that four new witnesses in the monster Florence case have suddenly emerged. He refers to these witnesses only as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, claims that each of them had seen Paziani commit the 1985 double homicide. This is big. Enraged at the interruption, the president of the Court of Appeals, Francesco Ferri, tells the officer either the anonymous witnesses come to court immediately and identify themselves and testify, or their existence will be ignored and no action will be taken.

And now the officer refuses to identify the witnesses and the trial continues as it had been. This whole investigation is a fucking circus. We must stop the presses!" The judge is like, Okay, tell me what it is. I cannot do that. I started for interrupting the things. I thought if I just said that, you might have made this all go away. And now I feel a little bit of stupid, and I'm just going to walk backwards out of the courtroom. Fucking insanity.

Later that afternoon, Ferry stands before the court, declares the unequivocal and unconditional acquittal of Paziani for being the monitor of Florence. And now we're back to square one. sanity. Later that afternoon, Ferry stands before the court, declares the unequivocal and unconditional acquittal of Paziani for being the monster of Florence. And now we're back to square one. No one's behind bars. Whoever the monster of Florence is, they're still likely free. Yet they're alive. Spezzi immediately gets to work identifying who those mysterious algebraic witnesses were, if they existed.

And it doesn't take him long to find out they did. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, he wrote in his I'm not gonna fucking hold back or be worried about being politically correct style, turned out to be quote, quite a collection of half wits and low lives. Alpha was a mentally retarded man named Pucci. Gamma was a prostitute named Ghirabelli in the final stages of alcoholism, known to turn a trick for a 25 cent glass of wine. Delta was a pimp named Gali. Jesus Christ. Beta was a man named Giancarlo Latti, a mentally handicapped alcoholic from the same village as Vanni, who spent his days, as described in the source, drinking two liters of wine loitering around town, strangely grinning at and bemusing his fellow citizens. These are their fucking

all-star murder witnesses. Spezzi found out that Lotti was often subjected to pranks by local school boys. This poor bastard, they would chase him around, call him some racist Italian slur of jungle bunny, tell him things like the Martians have landed on the soccer field, run! And then they would laugh while he would run to go look for the Martians. Jesus. No one had Delta aka Lotti, uh, not only excuse me, had Delta aka Lotti claimed to have seen Paziani murder the French tourists, he also confessed to helping commit those murders, even though he wasn't there. He would confess to anything that you wanted him to confess to because he didn't know

what he was saying. He just wanted to make people happy. This is just fucking sad. As Spezi pointed out and investigators actively ignored, Lottie's confession was very unconvincing. His description of the 1985 crime scene also contradicted literally all of the fucking evidence. He had no idea what he's talking about. For example, he told investigators he had seen Vanni slice the hole in the tent. He watched Pazziani crawl right through that hole. But there was no hole. Right? The cut made in the French tourist

tent only pierced the outermost layers we've talked about. He also claimed he saw Vanni shot and wound the female victim, Nadine, while she was still in the car, that he watched as Vanny dragged a screaming woman out of the vehicle. Then he stabbed her to death in the nearby field, but she wasn't stabbed to death. The medical examiner established that Nadine was killed by the shot, by the one shot. She got shot in the fucking head, went right into her brain. And all the mutilations for sure done to her body after she died. More than that, there was no evidence at any of the crime scenes that more than one killer was actually definitely present. Oh boy, February 22nd, 1998. Paziani dies of a heart attack.

Having been acquitted, he was technically a free man, but the investigation into who his alleged accomplices were proved too stressful for the sweet little lamb. He was afraid of getting retried. Rumors quickly spread that Paziani had been murdered by someone who wanted to keep him from telling the world what he knew. had been murdered by someone who wanted to keep him from telling the world what he knew. Chief Inspector Jutari, for one, fully believed this conspiracy and had the peasant farmer's body exhumed and tested for poisoning. If he knew some crazy secrets, why wouldn't he just share them while he was, you know, fucking falsely imprisoned? As it turns out, Potsiani kind of was poisoned by his own heart medicine that he took himself. Most likely, most people or many people do when they're having a heart attack, he panicked and he just took too many pills.

However, Chief Inspector Giutari did not buy this. He was certain Paziani had been poisoned, which in his mind further demonstrated his guilt. May 20th, 1997. Now the trial of Giancarlo Lotti, the mentally handicapped alcoholic, mentally handicapped alcoholic, mentally handicapped alcoholic, and Mario Vanni, the guy Lotti said did it based on no evidence begins. Both men accused of being the monster of Florence, aka Paziani's accomplices, even though Paziani was found fucking innocent of being the monster. Holy shit. That was a trial where even the prosecutor

thought he was innocent. Spezzi described the proceedings as, quote, a sad spectacle. Everything is a sad spectacle with the Italian judicial system in these fucking cases. Four days later, March 24th, 1998, Lotti and Vanni are convicted. Ah, 14 of the monster killings. So not the 1968 killings, but the other ones. Because you know what? Fuck it, why not? Even though they don't know anything about the crime scenes, even though there's literally

no evidence connecting them to fucking anything. You know what? It's Tuscany. When in Rome. When in Tuscany, you just throw people in jail and it doesn't matter if you have evidence or not. Bonny's given a life sentence. Lottie's given 26 years. Spezzi wrote, neither the press nor Italian public opinion seems skeptical of the idea

that three quasi-illiterate inebrits, this is how he wrote it, of marginal intelligence could have successfully killed over 14 people over a period of 11 years with the goal of stealing the women's sex organs. Jesus Christ. Despite these new convictions, investigation is still not over. It never ends. The question of why Apatiani and his picnicking friends stole the women's sex organs still remained and Chief Inspector Gattari was already hard at work pulling shit out of his ass to find the answer. His new theory, this is even better, this is better than anything we've talked about. His new theory, of course based on literally no evidence because

this is Tuscany, was that a top secret cabal of ultra elite and uber wealthy satanists from around the world Had hired these fucking three alcoholic Manly handicapped men To kill couples and obtain women's vaginas to use as communion wafers and satanic black masses I'm not even joking Damn you illuminati And the general public fucking completely accepts this How the fuck did the culture that built a fucking Roman Empire that produced a Renaissance? The culture that gave us Leonardo da Vinci and Mike Michelangelo Marco Polo and Galileo

Delved into this fucking clown car of a society at this time to investigate his new theory Jatari creates new police unit called Grupo investigative Delethi serial the serial killing investigative group aka creates new police unit called Grupo Investigative, uh, the Lethe Serial, uh, the Serial Killings Investigative Group, AKA, uh, Gideas, G-Days. I don't fucking know. G-I-D-E-S. Their sole mission was to unmask the masterminds, the Satanic masterminds.

Behind the so-called Monster of Florence, they were tasked with finding these global Satanists and bringing them to justice. It's about time! Enough's enough! Fuckin' get up! Get your torches and bitch for us! To do this, Tartari and his team relied heavily on insight provided by Gabriella Carlesi, a woman living in Rome who was a complete fucking idiot lunatic. She's even more superstitious than anyone we've met so far. She ran a conspiracy website at the time, was a self-proclaimed expert on the alleged secret

satanic sect she believed was behind literally all of the major crimes committed in Europe and America in the past 100 years. West Memphis 3 investigation vibes. Did you guys know that there was a secret satanic sect behind literally all of the major crimes committed in Europe and America in the 20th century? Nicole Brown. Yeah, maybe killed by OJ. Definitely killed by a direct order of secret Satanists. JK, JFK, assassinated by Satanists. Bonnie and Clyde, prohibitionary gangsters working on behalf of Satanists. John Bonet Ramsey, sacrificed to Satan.

Lindbergh baby, fucking devil got him. Oklahoma City bombing. Thanks, Beelzebub. Like in this lady's mind, this is real. This is the reality she's living in. And the police are like, oh, let's talk to her. Let's let her, let's pay her to consult. Gabriella will soon claim that the secret sect whom she called the School of the Red Rose, she just fucking made this shit up, was not only behind the monster of Florence killings, but also behind 9-11. Damn you, devil! August 1st, 2000. American

thriller writer Douglas Preston arrives in Florence. A friend of his encouraged him to meet with journalist Mario Spezzi who could tell him more about this fucking shit show. So much to talk about. During their first meeting, Spezzi tells Preston the ongoing story of the monster of Florence, which the author had never heard of. Immediately he's hooked. The two agree to set about finding the real monster themselves.

I mean, the police are certainly never going to do it. Jumping ahead a jumping ahead a year one day in the spring of 2001 spezi and Preston come to A new conclusion regarding who the monster Florence is still working on this case. Well, at least spezi is after nearly three decades Douglas Preston thought it was likely Salvatore Vinci But the old FBI profile on the monster Florence didn't match Salvatore The profile was insistent on one crucial point. The monster Florence was impotent. Salvatore Vinci was the opposite of impotent. Salvatore didn't match the rest of the FBI report very well either.

Preston asked, but if Salvatore Vinci isn't the monster, then you still have the problem of how the Beretta passed from him to the monster. He then asked, was it stolen from him? Spezi thought maybe it was, but by who? By his son, perhaps, Antonio Vinci. When they really looked into him, now they find what they felt was overwhelming evidence that he was the guy.

In 1974, four months before the monster's likely first killings, as far as that's new style that was not in the 1968 killings, Salvatore da Vinci filed a complaint to the police that his son Antonio had broken into his house. When police asked him what was stolen, he wouldn't say. Spezie believed that Salvatore actually did know what was stolen, but telling the police what was stolen would have gotten him into trouble from the 1968 murders. He thinks it was his gun, the monster of Florence Killings murder weapon.

Antonio Vinci, the journalist, also found matched the FBI profile almost to a tee. The report said the monster would not have a history of extremely violent crimes, but a rap sheet of minor infractions. Antonio had been charged with legal possession of weapons, break-and-entering, arson, auto theft. The report said the killer most likely would try to mislead investigators. On multiple occasions, Antonio had offered himself up as an informant for the police. The report said the killer would strike in places he knew well. When Spezi mapped out Antonio's life, he found that during the period each double homicide was committed, Antonio did live in the area. The report said the killer was most likely in his twenties.

At the time of his first killing, Antonio was younger than that, just fifteen. But he was man-sized. The report said the killer had his own car. Antonio had been a car owner since he was a teen. The report and the evidence indicated that the killer was impotent. Well, Antonio had never had a girlfriend that anybody really knew about, but he was married just one time between 1982 to 1985, and then that marriage was annulled for non-consummation, as in they never fucked,

which definitely points towards very likely impotence. Finally, Spezi told Preston studies of serial killers often turn up a history of maternal abandonment and sexual abuse within the family unit. Antonio's mother was murdered when he was a year old. He suffered a second traumatic separation from a mother figure when his father's longtime girlfriend left, and he may have been exposed to his father's bizarre sexual activities. He was living with his father in a small place while his father presided over sex parties involving men, women, perhaps even children.

Did his father force him to participate? There's no evidence that he did or didn't. Few days later, Preston and Spezie are sitting in Antonio Vinci's living room. Mario tells Preston, uh, Mario tells him that Preston, excuse me, is a journalist writing an article about the monster for the New Yorker and that he is acting as his translator. They chat amiably about the case slowly as he starts to ease into the subject of Salvatore, daring to ask Antonio about the robbery complaint his father filed against him in 1974.

That's not quite right replied Antonio. Since he couldn't say if I had taken anything, I was only charged for violation of domicile. Another time we had a fight and I pinned him, planting my scuba knife in his throat, but he managed to get away and I locked myself in the bathroom. Well the scuba knife revelation was incredible since that was the specific kind of weapon used to cut out the women's vaginas in several cases and stab that one woman 97 times. The chief medical examiner Dr Dr. Maro Mari, who'd examined every single one of the monster's victims, had concluded since the very beginning

that the monster used a blade with a very specific type of notch in it, most likely a scuba knife, to stab victims. At the end of their conversation, Nonchalantly, Spezi asked Antonio, If your father owned the.22 caliber Beretta, you were the person in the best position to take it, perhaps during the violation of domicile in the spring of 1974. I have proof I didn't take it, responded Antonio smiling. If I had taken it, I would have fired it into my father's forehead. Spezi pressed on. You were away from Florence from 1975 to 1980, precisely during the time there was no killings. When you returned, they began again. Antonio responded, those were the best years of my life. I had a house, I

ate well, all those girls, and then Antonio made a gesture like he was fucking someone, trying to prove he's you know not impotent. So you're not the monster of Florence? No, I like my pussy alive Antonio answered and grinned. Throughout the entire interview, Antonio never stopped smiling until he was walking Spezzi and pressing out the door. Then he abruptly stopped in front of the journalist, leaned into his face until he was just inches away from Spezzi's face, and then said in a threatening tone, listen carefully, I don't play games.

Creepy? Not necessarily, you know, hard evidence that he's the guy, but they're making a good case. Preston and Spezi immediately get to work writing an article about their interview with Antonio, submitted to the New Yorker. It was scheduled for publication in the third week of September 2001. The article also outlined with striking logic how it was impossible that Pazziani and his picnicking friends were the monsters of Florence, and that it was even more impossible that a satanic sect was behind the killings as chief inspector Giuttari still strongly believed. Spezi knew that despite Rotella removing himself from the case, the Carabinieri that worked for him were still secretly investigating the circle of Sardinians that Salvatore ran in, which was tricky because they did not like to cooperate with authorities thanks to that Barbarian code. Still one of the journalists, Carabinieri informants had told him they discovered something huge and that they were simply waiting for the right moment to reveal the results of

this secret investigation. Spezzi hoped the publication of the New Yorker article would be the right moment they were waiting for. But before that could happen, Al Queda struck. And in the wake of 9-11, the New Yorker decided to scrap the Italian monster story. Preston and Spezzi tried to get their article published elsewhere, but were shut down now each and every time. And now that informant who's going to share this secret revelation goes quiet.

Jumping ahead several months to April 6, 2002, the body of a, oh yeah, we're going to get real weird again, the body of a Perugian doctor named Francesco Narducci, who committed suicide by drowning himself in Lake Trasimeno in 1984, is exhumed at the behest of Chief Inspector Giotari. For two years Giotari had been investigating his theory that the mysterious satanic order of the Red Rose was behind the monster killings but had made little to no progress because it's ridiculous. That was until he received a call from the public minister of Perugia, Giuliano Mignini. Mignini told the chief inspector that he had on good authority that Narducci had been murdered

by the Order of the Red Rose Satanists, which the doctor himself was a member of. The good authority from which Mignini received this vital information? None other than batshit crazy conspiracy theorist Gabriella Carlesi. Carlesi informed him with a straight face, I assume, that Narducci's role in this Satanic sect was to guard the severed vaginas the monsters of Florence aka Pacciani and his picnicking friends had removed from female victims. However, the doctor was becoming unreliable. I guess he was like you know napping when he was supposed to be like on severed puss watch or

something. So the order has him killed and to cover it up they swap out Narducci's body with a fucking decoy corpse. If this reads as confusing to you, that's a good thing. It should read as confusing because this is gibberish. But Menini and Jutari take this as fact. When Narducci's body is exhumed, medical examiners confirmed that, you know, it was his body. It's not a decoy, obviously. Menini immediately concludes that this meant that the decoy body had now been replaced. There was a decoy body, for sure, and now they fucking swapped it back with Narducci's real body, which for some reason they've been carefully preserving for 17 years,

he said, because that's how satanic sex um uh they they do things when they when they know something is uh i don't know do you remember the name Giuliano Manini we met him in the Amanda Knox episode five years after his involvement here in this case in 2007 Manini will lead the prosecution against former suck subject Amanda Knox an American girl who was long-flee convicted of murdering her roommate while studying abroad in Perugia, Italy, Manini argued that Knox was demonically motivated to kill her roommate. In the end, Italy's Supreme Court finally said that the case was marked by culpable omissions of investigative activity, contradictory

evidence, and stunning flaws in the investigation. In the end, right, this guy was just shown to be a wildly corrupt official who was fucking terrible at his job, always looking for satanic involvement in the crimes, right, this guy was just shown to be a wildly corrupt official, who was fucking terrible at his job, always looking for satanic involvement in the crimes he investigated, and yet he worked as a highly regarded public prosecutor in Italy for 41 fucking years. Dear God, now remember that granite doorstop, that little pyramid doorstop commonly sold around Tuscany, founded the scene of the October 21st, 1981 double homicide, I ask you to remember. Well, around the same time in 2002,

Jutari's G-I-D-E-S squad discovers a similar looking doorstop near a villa where Pazziani had previously worked as a gardener. And this, according to Jutari and Mignini, undeniable proof of involvement of a Satanic sect linked to who like to eat severed vaginas. They told the press that the door stops were not actually door stops. These are highly regarded officials that said they're not door stops. They're esoteric objects used to communicate between this world and the infernal regions. Holy fucking shit. These public officials are saying that that not only

is there a vagina eating satanic sect behind the monster of Florence murders, but they have these little communication portals scattered around so they can I like I don't know talk to demons, or maybe like fucking teleport back and forth from hell. I mean, you would think, wouldn't you, that if they had these kind of portals, they would be powerful enough to just kill the investigators who were on to them. These people are so fucking stupid, it drives me crazy. I hate that people this fucking crazy are in positions of power.

Like they're getting paid well for jobs that they shouldn't... Ah! January of 2004. The they're getting paid well for jobs that they should... January of 2004. The fucking A-Team. Genius G-I-D-E-S squad. Now searches the home of an ex-pharmacist in Santa Castellano, named Francesco Calamandre. Yes, he is also a puss-hungry, satanic fuck. The investigators believe that this guy is a member of the Order of the Red Rose. And one of the masterminds behind the monster killings.

He's also one of Spezi's oldest friends. Coincidence? In 1991, this poor bastard's ex-wife, who had tragically succumbed to a severe case of schizophrenia and was living in a sanatorium for the mentally ill, wrote to the police accusing her ex-husband of being the monster of Florence. Back when everyone was accusing people of being the monster of Florence constantly. At the time, investigators checked out the letter and deemed it was absurd. It was the ramblings of someone with, you know, severe

mental illness. However, when Gittari stumbles across it over a decade later, because he is also insane, he finds it to be very legitimate. Almost immediately afterwards, Gittari miraculously produces three witnesses claiming to have seen Francesco Narducci, the doctor who died by suicide, drowning himself in Lake Trasimeno in 1984, and Calamandre who was hanging out together with these guys back in the early 80s. Author Douglas Preston will later write, when Spezi first heard the names, he thought it was a bad joke. They were the same algebraic witnesses, alpha and gamma, who had been the surprise witnesses

at Paciani's appeal trial many years before. Pucci, the mentally handicapped man who claimed to have witnessed Paziani killing the French couple and Ghirabelli, the alcoholic prostitute who would turn a trick for a glass of wine. And then a third witness popped out of the woodwork, none other than Lorenzo Nessi, the same fine fellow who had so conveniently remembered Paziani and a companion in a reddish car a kilometer from the Scopetti clearing on Sunday night the alleged night of the murder of the French tourists. That's the guy who you know had to take a detour because of road construction that wasn't actually there. It feels like they just have these

fucking three stooges they just keep in a fucking closet and they're like hey we need some witnesses fucking get them and then they just play this music and the guy just run out and just like what do you want me to say I say it so just give me some wine I tell you what I want to say. May 14th 2004 on an episode of Who Has Seen Him about the history of the monster Florence. This episode airs on Italian television. In this episode Spezzi discusses all the errors made during the investigation, dismantles conspiracy theories being spun by Giuttari, by Mignini, makes him look like the fucking idiots they are. At one point during the show, Spezi holds up a granite doorstop, identical to the ones

Jutari claimed were esoteric objects, these portals. And it's like, this is just a doorstop! This is a commonly sold doorstop! Like you could get at the fucking equivalent of Target over there. The episode also features an internationally renowned expert in forensic entomology named Francesco Introna. Spezi had reached out to him a year prior to help solve some of the lingering questions about the monster's killings. On the show Francesco Introna explains that based on the developmental phase of the larvae and the victims bodies those French tourists absolutely had to have died on Saturday September 7th 1985 not Sunday September 8th which just fucking blows away their whole case. Right those guys they weren't

there but even if they were there on Sunday, they wouldn't have seen the murder because the murder didn't happen on Sunday. So more evidence that Lorenzo Nessi did not witness shit. As you went over earlier in the timeline, self confessing eyewitnesses, Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, the four stooges, all claimed to have seen, or in Lottie's case, helped Pacciani kill the French tourists on Sunday, September 8th. Spezi now explains, the entomological evidence proved, as if more proof were needed, that Pacciani's alleged accomplices had nothing to do with the

monster Florence Killings. It also therefore demolished the Satanic sect theory, which had been built entirely on the guilt of Pacciani, the false confession of Lottie, and the testimony of these other algebraic witnesses. They will say anything anybody wants them to say. Unfortunately, after the episode was aired, nothing happens. The press does not write about it. Both prosecutors, offices, police ignore it. The only impact that Spezzi's episode seemed to have

was that it really pissed off Chief Inspector Giuttari. On June 25, 2004, Douglas Press and his family moved back to Maine. Through phone and email, he and Spezzi continued co-writing their book on the monster of Florence. At 6.15 the morning of November 18th 2004, Spezzi's home is searched by seven police officers now. Before he answers the door, he grabbed the floppy disk containing he and Preston's book, shoved it down into his underwear. One of the officers, a commander from Jutari's GIDES squad, I'll just call him GIDS I guess, handed him a piece of paper

that read, search warrant information and guarantee to the accused on the right of defense. The person named above is hereby under official investigation for having committed the following crimes. Literally reads off so many letters. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, then stops. None of the lettered crimes were specified. And when Spezi asked the officer, well, what were they? He replied that information was under judicial order of secrecy. This is a bunch of bullshit. The warrant's letter had read, Office of the Public

Prosecutor in the Tribunal of Perugia. The warrant stated that Spezi was being searched because he evinced a peculiar and suspicious interest toward the Perugian branch of the investigation and that he demonstrated a zealous effort in attempting to undermine the investigation through the medium of television. So that fucking idiot Giuliano Mignoni, the public minister of Perugia, just blatantly abusing his power to arrest his journalist for making him look bad on TV. Officers now took Spezi's entire archive of almost 30 years of research into the Monster of Florence, as well as all the material he was using to write his book with Preston. They didn't get the book itself, however.

During the search, while Spezi gave his wife Miriam a hug goodbye, he slipped the diskette into her jacket pocket and whispered for her to hide it. That morning, the police left Spezi's house relatively intact. However, later that day, Miriam calls her husband at the police barracks and speaks to him in French. It was an innocent thing to do. They habitually spoke French in their trilingual household. But the investigators that had tapped Spezi's phone found it suspicious. Of course, he did.

Now that afternoon, the police returned to Spezi's home, conduct a second search with a vengeance. This time, they fucking destroy the place. For the first time, Spezi loses his cool while the officers search his library. For a second time, Spezi gestures to his granite doorstop destroy the place. For the first time Spezzi loses his cool while the officer searched his library for a second time. Spezzi gestures to his granite doorstop on the floor the one he used in the TV special. He said you see that? It's like the truncated pyramid found in the scene of one of the crimes which you insist on claiming is an esoteric object. There it is take a good

look. Can't you see it's just a doorstep? You find them everywhere in Tuscan country houses. The officer doesn't say a thing. Just simply sees it's a doorstop, packs it away as evidence. Few months later, news hits the papers. Mario Spezi is being investigated for being the monster of Florence now. He is one of the puss eating Satanists. They found a doorstop that proved it.

His little fucking telecom that you could talk to the devil with. According to Mignini and uh, Chutari Spezi Chutari excuse me, Spezi owned owning a doorstop identical to the ones found at the 1981 Bartolini Field's crime scene and at Paziani's former workplace was proof that the journalist was indeed connected to those crimes. Definitely couldn't just be a doorstop. Man the conspiratorial mind so good at making connections don't exist. January 24, 2005, Mario Spezi's home searched by the police again. February, they don't find anything important because there's nothing there. February 13, 2006, author Douglas Preston now

returns to Italy for a little meeting with his co-author. For two years now, Ciutari and Minnini had been investigating Spezi about the exact charges being levied against the journalists still never made clear because those ass clowns are corrupt as fuck. While researching a story unrelated to the monster of Florence, Spezi had recently come into contact with one of Antonio Vinci's former friends named Luigi Ruocco. Antonio being the child of the 17 year old Barbarina, likely murdered in 1961 in Sardinia by Antonio's dad Salvatore Vincci. Salvatore, one of the lovers of Barbara Lochi, wife of Stefano Mele, who went to prison for Barbara's murder in 1968. She was the woman killed in that car that year while having sex with another lover while her son, Natalino, was also in the car. Salvatore also thought to be the monster of

Florence at one point, one of the biggest suspects, as was his brother Francesco, Antonio's uncle. And Antonio was the man that Mario Spezi and Douglas Prescott ended up thinking was most likely the monster of Florence. The man with the scuba knife, the man who kind of threatened him when they left his apartment. The man who could have stolen a gun his dad used to kill Barbara and her lover in 1968, then used that gun for future killings beginning in 1974. And Luigi informed Spezi that during the period the monster was active,

Antonio had set up a safe house and an abandoned property in the countryside. Luigi also said that his other friend, Ignacio, had even visited the safe house with Antonio the month prior. Inside, he saw six locked metal boxes and three pistols. Six boxes for six female victims, Spezi wondered. The FBI report said that the killer probably took souvenirs from each of the women he killed, even if it wasn't their severed vaginas. A few days after he arrived in Italy, Preston, Spezzi, and Zaccaria, the man who had introduced Spezzi to Luigi, were on their way to a sprawling thousand-acre public estate called Villa Bibiani. They drove to the far end of the

park until they found a little muddy dirt road with an abandoned structure at the end of it, Antonio's alleged safe house. Although Preston wanted to take a closer look, Spezi forbid it, feeling like it was too dangerous, worried that it might get them killed. So they turned around and left. They feared what Antonio might do to them if he found out that they were the ones who turned him in. So Spezi and Preston hatched a plan to give the police an anonymous letter with information about the safe house. A few days later, after they visit the villa, Spezi calls calls Preston and tells him we did it, we did it all. Preston knew what that meant. Spezi successfully handed off the anonymous letter to the police. But now on February 22, 2006, Douglas Preston, not Antonio Vinci, now receives a legal summons to appear before the public minister

of Perugia, Judge Giuliani Mignini, for an interrogation. At the beginning of the interrogation, Mignini seemed mostly interested in how well Preston knew Spezi and what their theories about the monster of Florence were. But a few hours into it, Mignini's tone turns accusatory. He starts hurling questions at Preston about his visit to Villa Bibiani with Spezi and Zachariah. The judge also played for press and recording of Spezi telling him over the phone, we did it, we did it all. Right? What did that mean? What exactly did you guys do? Is that code? What's it code for? Is this a confession to the murders? Are you also members of the Satanic Order of the Red Rose? Over and over and over again, Menini plays the cell phone conversation for press until he finally proclaims,

you and Spezi either planted or were planning to plant a gun or other false evidence at the villa in an attempt to frame an innocent man for being the monster of Florence, to derail this investigation, and to deflect suspicion from Spezi himself. That is what you were doing. The comment, we did it all, that's what he meant. Well, Preston denies all this vehemently. At the end of the interrogation, Manini now informs Preston he's officially being indicted for the crimes of reticence and making false statements.

The investigation into Preston will be suspended though for a few days to allow him to leave Italy if he should so choose, but if he ever comes back, he will be immediately arrested. So that's a not so subtle way to get Preston to get the fuck out of the country and stop making Mignone look like the corrupt moron he is. Preston and his family on the next flight out of Florence. On April 7, 2006, Mario Spezi now arrested for obstructing the investigation of the murder of Francesco Narducci, taken in handcuffs to a prison in Perugia. Mignini and Giuttari made it clear to the press that Spezi was also suspected of planting

false evidence at Villa Bibiani to divert attention away from their investigation, linking Spezi to the Satanic sect, and to being the monster of Florence. Before Mario's arrest, Preston wrote, we would later learn Villa Bibiani and its grounds were searched by the men of Gidd's, guides, whatever, looking for the gun, objects, boxes, or documents we were supposed to have planted. Nothing was found. To the ever resourceful Giuttari, this was not at all a problem. He had acted so promptly, he said, that we didn't have time to carry out our nefarious plot. He had stopped it dead in its tracks. Against Spezzi, Mignini invoked a law that denied him access to a lawyer and ensured he was kept in isolation. In Italy, this law is typically reserved for terrorists or mafia kingpins. The purpose of it is to prevent the incarcerated criminal from ordering a hit on somebody from

inside their cell. To use it against a journalist here is just more evidence of how corrupt these assholes are. April 12, 2006, after five days in isolation, during which he was never told what the specific charges against him were or why he was even being kept in isolation, Spezi is now allowed to meet with his lawyers. Later that day, he attends a hearing in front of Judge Marina de Robertis. Purpose of the hearing to determine if Spezi's arrest and incarceration are justified, and if he poses a danger to society.

Public Minister Giuliano Menini also appeared before the judge and argued that Spezi was not only obstructing the investigation, but that the journalist was, quote, at the center of a genuine disinformation campaign, not unlike that which might be undertaken by a deviant secret service, wink, wink, deviant as in satanic order. The disinformation campaign Menini was referring to with all the articles in the book Spezi had been, had written critiquing Menini's investigation into the supposed satanic

sect behind the killings. It should be noted that during Manini's long speech he presented not a single piece of forensic evidence. When it was Spezi's turn to take the stand the judge asked him just one question. Can you guess what it is? Have you ever belonged to a satanic sect? They just won't fucking quit! Why is the judge asking this question? What would that even prove? How is this happening in 2006? Feels like 1306. Spezzi laughed. He said, the only order I'm a member of is the order of journalists. In the end, Judge De Robertis ruled that Spezzi must remain in prison because he was a danger to society. Yeah, that'll teach him. That'll

teach him for laughing at him about the fucking devil question. This is just ridiculous. April 28, 2006, Spezi now appears before the Tribunal of Re-Examination. He's been in prison for three weeks. For nothing. His hearing lasts seven hours and 40 minutes. They like a long hearing. After Menini recites the judges a long and rambling speech about Spezi's enormous dangerousness and at one point even claims that even though Spezi denied being in the Satanic sect behind the monster killings, he had recently come to possess extremely delicate and sensitive

material that proved the journalist was lying and was indeed a member of this fictitious order. When Spezi finally took the stand, he later told Preston it was one of the single most glorious moments of his life. He proceeded to dismantle every single one of the idiot Mignini's bullshit accusations, quote, bulldozing his rickety conspiracy logic and pointed out that Mignini lacked any physical evidence at all to back up his theories. The journalist ended by saying, I am only a journalist who tries his best to do what is right in his job, and I'm a good person." Next day, April 29, 2006, Mario Spezi released from prison.

The tribunal had ruled that he was absolutely and unconditionally free. But because they're corrupt, vindictive pieces of shit, Mignini and Giuttari immediately send an appeal to the Supreme Court, and then they reject it. September 27, 2007, the trial of Francesco Calamandre, that ex pharmacist and old friend of Spezzi's, it begins. He stood accused of being one of the Satan worshipping masterminds behind the monster killings. Mm-hmm. And his trial lasted eight months. Even though the prosecution had literally no evidence, he did anything.

Check this out. May 21st, 2008, the judge announced his verdict. Francesco Calamandre was acquitted for the reason that the allegation is non-existent. In other words, not only was Calamandre innocent, but the crime he was accused of committed never occurred in the first place. Meaning, the judge felt that the Satanic sectanic sect right masterminding of the monster of Florence killings was a bunch of just nonsense It took the court eight fucking months. So to figure that out 2010 chief inspector

Mika Michelle Jutari and public minister or Michelle a Sorry, I don't have to say his first name and public minister And Public Minister Giuliano Menini are now convicted of abuse of office. Finally, it looks like maybe some actual justice is getting served, but not really because they'll win on appeal and not get in trouble for doing anything wrong. And they'll just, in the meantime, just continually fuck over other people's lives thanks to their weird hard-ons for hidden saneness. September 9, 2016, Mario Spezi dies after a long battle with an unknown illness. On his memoriam for Spezi, Preston will write, Long after Mario's arrest and release, Giuliano Mignoni and Michele Giuttari

continued to file criminal charges against him. The Italian courts repeatedly dismissed those charges only to have the prosecutor and police file new and slightly revised charges. This judicial vendetta went on for almost a decade and caused Mario and his family severe economic distress. His doctors say this unrelenting harassment contributed greatly to his ill health and I have no doubt hastened his death. Not a single one of those charges ever led to a conviction. Giuliano Minnini now retires as a public prosecutor years later in 2020.

He'll continue though to work as a special investigative consultant for the Italian court systems. That's cool. And actually just two years ago in 2022 he submitted a 120 page report on the monster of Florence. Still, still concluding that a secret order of Satanists, the mysterious order of the red rose was behind the murders and used removed vaginas for black mass sacraments. Also still believed that the Peruvian doctor named Francesco Narducci, who committed suicide by drowning himself in Lake Trasimeno in 1984, was a member of that order, that his job was to guard the seven vaginas, and that the doctor was becoming unreliable so the order had him killed. And to cover it up, they swapped Noduchi's body with a decoy corpse body

Mm-hmm, so he's still dumb as shit and the real monster of Florence, whoever they are Maybe Antonio Avinci fucking maybe you know what? Why not? Let's say the monster of Florence I'm gonna say that Mike my guess for the monster Florence is Giuliano Manini Just cuz I hate him Yeah, but the look for the real killer, you know, goes on. His identity is still officially unknown. And that'll take us out of this timeline. Good job, soldier. You've made it back. Barely. The Monster of Florence. Crazy murders, but a crazier trial, right?

Remember when I said that I know that there are many smart, logical, decent, and kind of people, just like there are smart, logical, decent people in every nation, every culture, every race, but that not many of those people would show up in this episode? Holy shit, I hope you understand what I was talking about now. Remind me to never, ever get arrested for anything in Italy. Oh my god. If I ever get accused of anything while I'm in Italy, I'm just gonna flee immediately, never return. And how about them hill peepers, right? An entire community of men dedicated to watching young couples fucking their cars outside the city of Florence. Some dudes even worked as guides, like tour guides.

I was talking about how crazy that is to my son, Kyler, who is home from college on summer break. And he actually brought up a great point that I hadn't thought of. Some of those pervs had to have known who the monster of Florence was. He preyed on couples fucking in cars in the hills around Florence, and those hills were littered with dudes watching couples fuck all the time. Some pervs had to have seen at least one of the couples get murdered and then just they just wouldn't say anything I guess to the authorities

because they don't want to publicly reveal themselves to be a perv you know beaten off in the bushes. Talking about this guy I don't know we're picturing like a really cartoonish scene unfolding directly after the monster of Florence you know leaves each of his crime scenes. Just as soon as like the killer drives away or like like walks away, whatever, so many dudes come out of their hiding places, like crazy hiding, they just like step out of hollow decoy tree stumps, lower themselves by rope out of trees, literally crawl from underneath rocks, sneak out from underneath the car, you know, suddenly move after staying completely frozen like a statue disguised as a bush for, you know, an hour, just gather together, smoking some cigarettes, talking about what a shame it was you know the another hot

couple got murdered What the west of a Saturday night? All of the other good hottest spots are already taking now. What am I gonna do? How am I gonna beat off for tonight? I got the blue with the balls. Now with that nonsense over, let's recap. Time shock, top five takeaways. Number one, between 1974 and 1985, the monster of Florence murdered 14 people, all of whom were unmarried couples having sex in their vehicles in the woods that surround Florence. Number 2. In 1981, after the murder of Giovanni Foggi and Carmela de Nuccio, investigators re-examined two previous double homicides. One from 1968, supposedly committed by a man named Stefano Mele. One from 1974 that was never solved.

A ballistics lab later will reveal that the shell casings collected from each of the crime scenes all bear the same distinct mark, meaning all six people were killed with the same gun. Whoever killed the 14 couples between 1974 and 1985 likely also killed that couple in 1968, or at least the same gun was used. Number three, in two decades, almost a dozen people were arrested for, convicted or officially suspected of being the monster of Florence based on little to no evidence. The most significant of these was Salvatore Vinci, who was acquitted and disappeared in 1988,

and Pietro Paziani, who was convicted, then acquitted on appeal, then looked like he was gonna probably stand trial again, and then he died. Number four in 2006 Mario Spezi was arrested for obstructing Giuttari and Minnini's investigation into the Satanic cult. They believed to be behind the monster killings. They suspected Spezi openly criticized their investigation because he himself was part of this powerful cult and could be the monster of Florence.

Number five new info. How about some nice info about Sardinia? I talked earlier about the Barbagian code and the exalting of the Belente, the wily outlaw, the man of cunning, skill, and courage who takes care of his own. That is not what Sardinia is most known for. It's mostly known now, I would say, for longevity. Sardinia is one of the world's five blue zones. Places around the world where an unusually large number of people lived to be a hundred or older. As of August 2021, Sardinia had 534 people who were a hundred years old or older, which is 33.6 centenarians per a hundred thousand people, which puts Sardinia in a tie with Okinawa, Japan, for the highest ratio of centenarians in

the world, nearly ten times more per capita than the U.S. For these vibrant Sardinian senior citizens, what they eat plays an important role in their longevity. Meat is used sparingly. Much of the food in Sardinia is locally grown, free of pesticides, hormones, dyes, and sugars. Here's what you'll find in a typical Sardinian menu. Vegetables, greens, salads, bean soups with fennel, fava beans, chickpeas, and sugars. Here's what you'll find in a typical Sardinian menu. Vegetables, greens, salads, bean soups with fennel, fava beans, chickpeas, and tomatoes. Goat and sheeps milk products which have anti-inflammatory properties and have been

found to lower bad cholesterol. Sardinian red wine from the mountain top regions which has higher levels of polyphenols than most other wines. Polyphenols are antioxidants that can protect against ailments like diabetes and heart disease. Their signature flatbread made out of high protein, low gluten whole grain, also the main ingredient in their pasta. Milk thistle tea, thought to clean the liver, is enjoyed daily. Reverence for and inclusion of elder generations, also thought to play a big part, and people live longer lives there.

Unlike in the U.S. where elderly people live separately in retirement or nursing homes, Sardinians do not dismiss their elders if anything they promote them. Not only are older people revered for their hard-earned, long-lived wisdom, they're also put to work if able, like everyone else in the family. They're given, as a call back to last week, a purpose. Sebastian Piras, a photographer and filmmaker from Sardinia, who now lives in New York City, but maintains a home there and visits often, says that commonly older family members live with their own grown children.

Usually there will be two or three generations of a family living in the same household. If older people do move out, they're checked on every day by their family, the family connection is extremely tight, and there's an effort to keep the family together. Another big component contributing to the longevity of Sardinians may be the amount of exercise people do every day. Because of the steep mountainous nature of the landscape and the active lifestyle, they're getting low intensity and medium intensity exercise all the time. There are dozens of periods of physical exertion throughout the day and people are not driving for the most part they're walking. And another big part of longevity

supposedly is a lower stress level from a different focus on careers. They don't really focus on careers. Having a big career and making lots of money is not valued in Sardinia like it is in America. They place a lot more value on balance. You're not expected to work yourself to the point of burning out just to get ahead. A lot of people work just enough to pay their bills, maybe save a bit and then that's it. They're trying to, they're not trying to build an empire. They're trying to spend as much time with family and friends as possible. Rather than waking up thinking about how to advance in their career, they're waking up thinking about how their children, grandchildren, and great

grandchildren are thriving. So despite how fucking crazy this episode was, I do still want to get back and visit Italy and Sardinia now. High on my list for that. Ding. Yippee. I will just make sure not to joke at all about Satan over there. Maybe wear a cross necklace. Probably cover up most of my tattoos to avoid I will just make sure not to joke at all about Satan over there. Maybe wear a cross necklace. Probably cover up most of my tattoos to avoid getting arrested for some shit I did not do. The Monster of Florence has been sucked.

Thank you to the Bad Magic production team for the help of making Time Suck starting with Queen of Bad Magic Lindsay Cummins. Thank you to Logan Keith recording this episode designing merch for the store at BadMagicProductions.com. Thank you to Molly Box for initial research this week. Also thank you to the All Scene Eyes moderating the Culturally Curious private Facebook page. The Mod Squad making sure Discord keeps running smooth and everyone over on the Time Suck subreddit and Bad Magic subreddits. And now let's head on over to this week's Time Sucker Updates. I have three pretty meaty Larry Nassar updates today. Started with marvelous meat sack Matthew Choma,

who wrote them with the subject line of, I've come to well, I've come to, well actually, talk to you about kiddie porn, but not in the way you think. Yeah, sorry, I think I maybe misread that there. Dan Cummins, you sexy sucker, you. I've been listening for about four years

and a space for almost the entire time. I would change one oh yeah three to five stars but I would change one thing. I believe this one is important especially after hearing it brought up frequently in the Larry Nassar and the US Gymnastics scandal suck. While the legal term child pornography is correct child advocates and those working with victims use different language. My fiance and Annabelle, thank you, Kyla the Y sounds like the I in kite so it's Kyla, works for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, NCMEC,

and wanted me to share that they advise people to refer to child pornography as child sexual abuse material, or CSAM. She constantly corrects you out loud as she is listening to your backlog, and I'm doing this for her future sanity. I think this distinction is important. The word porn implies that there is consent and children cannot give their consent. As you hate pitos as much as I do, I thought you might enjoy a better phrase to emphasize how sick these fuckers are. Yeah, since this centers around Kyla, I'd like to lighten the mood now by sharing how you've traumatized her with your lies.

One, I started binging the suck right before we made a major move to DC from Texas. With the 24 hour drive ahead of us, I downloaded several episodes to pass the time. I had listened to the Marilyn Monroe Suck weeks before this and was already aware of Bojangles. Kyla was not. As we neared our destination, he began to describe our one-eyed, three-legged anti-communist mascot and her eyes lit up. I paused the episode, detailed his entire mythos. Halfway through, her excitement faded as she

realized Bojangles was not a real pitbull. She is still depressed by this fact. And I constantly remind her. Two, Kyla has enjoyed Scared to Death for some time and I finally converted her to the cult this year as well. Hail Nimrod. After I finished listening to your harrowing tale of old Dicky Bird, I told her she needed to listen to it next with no additional context. Kyla put all music and other time suck backlog listening on pause, focused on sucking on Hairbrush and the Ass Bird. As soon as she finished, she called me to let me know her displeasure. With my insistence that she listen, there was a lot of swearing and yelling involved.

If this isn't too long, I'm not apologizing, I'd like to once again shout out to my amazing Annabelle Kyla. She is the most loving, empathetic, and brilliant meat sack I've ever met. Her only flaw is her lack of submission. But hopefully you can give me advice on this. Preferably before we get married next March. If only I knew. I also want to shout out some awesome suckers on the Discord channel.

And lastly, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and NCMEC. Again, with all the awful pieces of shit we learn about, especially those who target the most vulnerable, NCMEC does so much good for the survivors, victims, and their families. If you've never looked into NCMEC, it all started with the OG true crime man John Walsh and it is a fantastic, if not devastating, at times story that might be a good future suck topic. Thank you to you, the Queen Queen all the other members of Bad Magic for what you do. Having this podcast as an escape week to week helps me during hard and stressful times. Well thank you Matthew. Honestly escaping into the research of these topics helps me de-stress a lot as

well. So it's mutual escapism often. Thank you for the correction regarding child sexual abuse material. I will do my best to try and remember to use that term. Yeah there is no consent in videos of naked kids. There can't be. Even if they were to say yes, they don't realize what they're agreeing to. I hope Kyla keeps fighting the good fights. There really are so many good people in the world. So easy to forget. Especially these topics, but so true. Now another email sent in with the very direct subject line of simply Larry Nassar episode sent in by a great man of the first name of Greg. Load the Greg! Aim the Greg! Fire the Greg! Hey there

Dan Dan the Time Sucked Man. I started to listen in 2020 after my mom passed away. The job I had at the time had me working by myself and it was tough to work while going through the loss. Your podcast helped me focus got me laughing again so thanks for that. The Nassar episode hit close to home for me. I hope all parents take this episode as a warning to listen to their kiddos. I became friends with the Jiu-Jitsu instructor in my hometown before my wife and I had kids. We did a few months of training ourselves but soon were unable to continue. I stayed friends with the instructor for many years. He was ex-military, former law

enforcement. He would train the local sheriff and city police, asking with while doing training as well as doing training at the local Air Force base. He would go to schools and do self-defense sessions with tons of kids. When I had a daughter, I looked forward to the day she would be able to train with him. When the time came, I started taking her to classes. The day she started, she was nervous, didn't want to get on the mat to do any of the exercises. The instructor, this guy, came and talked to her and convinced her to just come sit by him as they finished class from that day on she was all about the classes even made it a point to give the instructor a high five after each class

I was lucky enough in many ways as it turns out to be able to help her in training since the instructor was a friend I was the one that would help her and the other kids she was paired with demonstrate moves after he first showed the class as time went on she excelled at her training. She would get stripes on her belt she was extremely proud of. That's fucking awesome. Anytime someone asked about self-defense classes for their kids I would praise this guy's gym, push for parents to take their kids to his gym. But after three years of training my daughter decided she didn't want to do what you did to anymore. I was extremely

disappointed. Tried all I could to try and get her to get back into it. Thankfully she never went back to train. Fast forward a couple years. She tells me she wants to go to class to just watch. I was beyond excited. Hell yeah, she's ready to start training again. Few days later, another parent messages me a mugshot of that instructor. He had been picked up for child pornography. Right? For these sexual abusive material. I was devastated. I couldn't. Wouldn't believe it. There was no way this man that has such a remarkable standing in the community did any of this. Then his police interview came out. He admitted to everything. Every fucking thing. The police found videos, pictures on his computer. They had Facebook messages of him talking to the

types of girls he liked and the things he liked to do. He bragged about being able to molest girls in front of their parents while he did private lessons. I beat myself up for quite a while after everything came out. I had put my daughter in a place where that could happen. She was never alone with him. And like I said before, I did most of the demonstrating with her. She still doesn't know why his classes were stopped.

She was nine at the time. I felt so bad for championing him to all these other parents that were looking for classes for their young daughters I couldn't bring myself out of a funk for quite a while My wife being the great woman she is finally sat me down Explaining to me that I was duped by the instructor just as much as everyone else was That I wasn't at fault for the things he had done. He had the wool over everyone's eyes. I couldn't beat myself up over it There were multiple charges against him

I hoped he would rot in prison for all he had done But after one one and a half years, he ended up just getting three charges that equaled 10 years. If you read this on air, and then in quotes, parents be mindful of what's going on with your kids. If your kid tells you something is off, believe them, listen to their concerns. Don't force them to go back to some place if they are uncomfortable with that person. Thanks for all the work you put into these podcasts sir. They make my days easier, Greg. Well, thank you, Greg. That was a fucking great message. You're right.

For starters, it was not your fault. These bastards are typically highly, highly skilled manipulators. They do parents just like they do minors, like they do law enforcement often, you know, as I often, which is why sadly, you know, without getting as paranoid as some of the investigators I talked about today, you know, you shouldn't trust anybody with your kids. Not implicitly. And talk to your kids often. Listen to your kids. Trust your gut. That's great advice. I have to speak in code now, not to break somebody's trust. I know, but I spoke recently with some type of authority figure, let's just say, about somebody in the periphery of an underage family member of mine. And I just spoke about somebody who creeps me the fuck out.

Somebody I've been taking mental notes on for a little while. Things that bother me about this person. Things I've heard and seen, you know, hearsay. Nothing illegal, but behavior of true indicative of somebody who is likely a predator. And when I spoke with this person in authority, I found that others have also been calling in and talking about them as well. So I'm gonna keep watching. I'm gonna keep listening.

And if this fucker ever does anything I hear about that I can prove, they're gonna go down. In the meantime, this family member of mine will never ever be alone with them. Not fucking ever. I'll keep shooting them looks. This person, when I see them, you know, they'll probably have them worrying about me being a maniac that might try and kill him. And that's the best you can do, right? Be skeptical parents, be skeptical, listen to your kids. Again, listen to your gut. Be very, very fucking careful about who you leave your kids along with. And now one more from a kick-ass anonymous sucker who caught my attention

with the subject line of Larry Nassar was my doctor for 11 years. And they write, Hey Dan, I've always wanted a reason to write into the show. I've been a listener since my husband turned me on to the Nexium episode as I'm obsessed with cults. Me too, as you know. I hoped I would have had a much more charming reason to write in than Larry Nassar be my doctor for 11 years, but here I am. I want to be upfront and clear that Nassar did not sexually assault me, but I wanted to write in to provide clarity and further information as I'm sure the chances of another gymnast who saw him being a listener are close to none. While I express victimization at being Nassar's patient I will never try to compare my experiences to those of his

assault survivors. I know this message might be too long to read as an update feel free to squeeze in if you can. I was a gymnast for 16 years. I saw Nasser from age 11 to age 22 for hip and back injuries. I'm now 30. I often think back about how allegations date back to before I was born, his allegations, and how many girls could have been saved in that span of my life. To this day I wonder why he never assaulted me. Maybe he thought my parents or I would speak up. Maybe I wasn't his type. I will never know but will be grateful for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean I wasn't also mishandled and mistreated in his care. Nasser diagnosed me in 2010 with three back fractures, treated me accordingly for the next six years. 14 years later, I still have a great deal of

back pain and have found no other doctor that will confirm his diagnosis of a fracture. This has led me to a haunting thought that he was misdiagnosing gymnasts in addition to his mistreating to keep them coming back. While he never assaulted me vaginally, he did touch me inappropriately at every visit, not only in front of my parents but while addressing them. First he would make a change into a leotard so he could see our bodies better. We thought that made sense at the time, but now I know the real reasoning. After his exam and adjustments, he would debrief with my family while resting his hands on my stomach, upper thighs or butt while still in a

leotard. I will always remember the icky feeling this gave me but I chalked up to him being super comfortable with the human body as a doctor and I don't think my parents noticed as those were the places the adjustments had just taken place. You mentioned many quotes where Jim has talked about feeling lucky to be in his care and I truly cannot express this enough to people. We were taught to worship him and be so grateful to live near his practice. When you entered his office at MSU, he had pictures all around him with Olympic Jim Nis and it gave you a feeling of greatness like you would hit the jackpot, like everything would be okay. And the worst part was he was a great doctor. He treated and healed many

complex injuries which only propelled his reputation and continued to allow him access to thousands of young girls. I often look back and think he wasn't just a pedophile who used his job as a reason to be close to girls. He was truly great at what he did in between and that makes it so much more bitter to me because he could have maintained fame for helping people, but he chose to hurt them. Now for a little insight into John Gettert. Yeah, this other piece of shit. John's gym was about 45 minutes from my gym So we were always hearing experiences of being a twist stars gymnast I can tell you that almost every gymnast in the state was afraid of John He was known for producing the best athletes

But in the harshest conditions if you had hopes of being a college gymnast or better you went to twist stars One day when I was in middle school I was competing in a gymnastics meet and was in a rotation with twistars. During the competition one of John's girls slipped off the bar and fell. John nearly lifted her off the ground by the neck of her leotard while screaming in her face. Crying and shaking she had to finish her routine in front of the audience, the judges, and him. That moment was all my parents talked about on the drive home. Wondering how a parent could see

that and continue to send their daughter there. Years later, I went to a multi-day camp at Twistars. I wasn't afraid of going to it because I meant nothing to John, but I left telling my parents that if I came up missing, John Gettert did it. It was partially a joke, but partially a realization of the true monster he was. He made me do skills I was not ready for, made me practice on an injury I got while I was there, tried to hype us up by having us watch Jordan Weber and Cammie Moore practice their elite floor routines. We all sat around the floor to cheer them on, but the cheers faded as they fell, limped, and literally sobbed through their routines with him screaming from the corner of

the floor. We idolized them and what they had until he paraded their torture in front of us as inspiration. When the allegations first started to come out, my family and I did not know what to think. I remember checking Nassar's Facebook because every doctor friends you on Facebook and messages you about their treatments, right? And his wall was flooded with support comments, supportive comments. Hours later, his Facebook was gone. I will never be able to unsee my parents' faces when they asked me if he ever touched me asking dozens of times not believing that He didn't I will never forget their sheer panic and disgust as they reflected on how many of my teammates they referred to him When they owned my gymnastics gym

I will never forget watching the victim impact statements and seeing childhood teammate after teammate step up to the podium to speak Never knowing they went through what they did. I will never forget the doctor's appointment I went to months later where the male doctor asked my mom to step out of the room so he could perform a pelvic exam and the sheer panic that came out in my objection as a 24 year old woman. I will never forget the summer I went to the Carolee camp and how my teammate and I worshipped the ground Bella walked on, feeling so lucky to be there. I will never forget how this world I grew up in for 16 years, 25 hours a week,

came crashing down in a matter of hours, wrecking the lives of my best friends. I was a patient of MSU, seeing Larry Nassar for 11 consecutive years, never received notice from them of what he did. I will never forgive him for tainting the memories of 16 years of my life, ruining my favorite sport for hundreds of girls. I will never forgive him for the survivors guilt and empathy for my friends that I will carry for the rest of my life, let alone the trauma they will carry. And I will never forgive John Gettert for being too cowardly to face what he did. He took his own life if you forgot.

P.S. He was found in the back of the rest area by the dumpsters, just like you hoped. Sorry not sorry for the long email, but this has weighed heavy on my mind for six years and I couldn't believe you covered the topic. Anyways, thanks again for taking the time to read this anonymous sucker. Man, what a message. I felt like an idiot when I was so fucking wrapped up in your message when I read it earlier today.

I literally just started clapping, like by myself, when you told me John's body was found by the dumpster. Like I was listening to you give this amazing presentation in front of an audience audience instead of just being alone with my computer. I don't think anybody caught me doing that or if they did they didn't acknowledge it. It was just me and Kyler. He didn't acknowledge it. I never thought of the survivor's guilt angle how these fucks you know victimized even more people than all the girls they abuse and all the friends and families of those

girls. I am so glad you have awesome protective parents and you know what if you want your fucking mom to still come in for your exams when you're 40 and she's okay with that, you know what? Bring your fucking mom. It's your body. Whatever makes you comfortable. She's not hurting anything. I hope you are able to at least enjoy watching gymnastics today. I mean, it is so full of, as you know, being a former, well, I don't know, you might be a current athlete yourself still, but just being such an amazing athlete. It is so impressive. It is so beautiful. I hope like scandals like this don't ruin it. So many people in that sport who are definitely, you know, I'm sure not dirtbags. Thanks for sending in your story. Yeah, it hit me and I'm sure it'll resonate with a lot of others.

Next time, suckers, I needed that. We all did. Thanks for listening to another Bad Magic Productions podcast. Scared to death, Time Suck each week. Short Sucks and Nightmare Fuel on the Time Suck and Scared to Death podcast feed some weeks. Thank you for the great feedback, many of you Time Suckers, about Nightmare Fuel. Please don't take up a new hobby of hiding in the hills at night outside the city and jerking off while you watch people fucking cars. We have a lot of porn online now where you can indulge in your voyeuristic fantasies and you can watch it ethically. Exploitation free on porn sites like belisa.com. So just

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