The case known in Italy and internationally as The Monster of Florence involved the ritualistic serial murder of eight young couples accompanied by the horrific mutilation of the sexual organs of the female victims. Cover ups and evidence tampering have muddied the case so badly that more than five decades later utter confusion reigns.
Three major investigative leads have failed to close the case once and for all. First, a farm laborer, a postman and a quarry worker dubbed “The picnicking friends” were convicted as the killers, revealing a terrifying subculture of Satanism and sexual perversion. Then the chilling phone call opened a whole new lead: “You will be sacrificed in the name of Satan, like the great doctor Narducci.” The threat refered to the mysterious death of Perugian gastroenterologist Francesco Narducci, whose body was fished out of Lake Trasimeno exactly a month after the last of the official monster of Florence murder. The prosecutors believe that the Narducci murder and the monster of Florence case overlapped. Dr. Narducci, Francesco Calamandrei, a pharmacist, also a suspect along with ‘The picnicking friends’ – Pietro Pacciani, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti. The Narducci trail went cold after judicial delays caused it to lapse under Italy’s statute of limitations. However, a third line of investigation took shape when investigators turned their attention to a former French Foreign Legion paratrooper named Gianpiero Vigilanti. Identified as a suspect right after the last murder, but ignored for more than 30 years. He had a history of violence, already had been convicted for murder. He was a small arms collector who owned a gun like the one used in the monster killings and was a friend of Pietro Pacciani.
Documents that were found by investigators were kept hidden and those documents were one of the proof of the miscarriage of justice, purposeful pursuit of false leads and cover ups. Reportedly, that investigation troubled someone in the upper levels of the criminal organization. At least 15 other people in some way associated with the case were silenced before they could speak, suggesting that the monster of Florence murders were much more than a series of ritual killings or the work of a single assassin. Luciano Malatesta’s sister was a witness to the satanic orgies and shared the terrible secret with her brother before she too was killed, as well as four other family members: “My sister told me this… She told me straight up that in this whole story, that involves our uncle and aunt, that also was connected to the monster of Florence to the murders was made possible with the involvement of a magistrate in Florence, and she also mentioned his name. She mentioned several names. But the name of this magistrate was prosecutor Vigna.” For 40 years the instigators of these horrific crimes and their friends in high places, reportedly, have been protected by a code of guilty silence.
The network of clients that commissioned and paid for the murders and protected the material killers has been kept secret. Photographs and documents never seen before shed new light on the shocking truth. Michele Giuttari is a decorated cop who fought the mafia in the most dangerous dark corners of southern Italy from 1995 onwards. He headed the Florence criminal investigation squad (1995-2003) and studied the massive documentation gathered in the case files over the years: “I received serious death threats, not least one morning I found that all four tires of my private car had been slashed. I received death threats that I have to say I had not received even in previous years when I had investigated and distinguished myself personally as a witness in trials against Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra, the Sicilian Mafia. I asked myself, who did my investigation of possible masterminds threaten?”
Florence, central Italy, 1981, young couples still found moments of intimacy on the backseat of their cars in the shady and cool hills around the city. But for some of these couples the country roads and paths became a place of terror and death in the hands of a band of hired assassins. The sky was pitch black as there was a new moon on the night of the 6th of June, 1981 in Mosciano di Scandicci. The country road was close to the famous Anastasia disco at Moso was the place where Carmela de Nuccio and Giovanni Foggi met a horrific end. Their bodies were found the next day by the police, riddled with a hail of 22 caliber bullets whose cartridges have an ‘H’ etched on their casing bottoms. Carmela’s vagina was cut out and took away. The murder hit the headlines. Investigators found a Peeping Tom who knew a bit too much about what happened and arrested him, but his wife got an anonymous phone call and was told that he would soon be freed.
Four months later, while ‘the Peeping Tom’ was still in jail, Stefano Baldi and Susanna Cambi were murdered in a park in the vicinity of Calenzano on October the 22nd 1981. Susanna’s genitals were mutilated and took away from the crime scene. The killer left a size 44 boot print. The Peeping Tom was released from prison.
It was another new moon on June the 19th, 1982, the monster made his first mistake. Antonella Migliorini and Paolo Mainardi were making out in the back of their car on a provincial road in Montespertoli. They had just finished and Paolo moved to the driver’s seat when he saw something that scared him. He put the car in reverse, but drove into a ditch on the other side of the road. The killer shot out his headlights, then murdered Paolo and Antonella. The car was exposed to passing traffic, so the killer melted into the night without completing his macabre mutilation of the woman’s genitalia. The murder of Antonella Migliorini and Paolo Mainardi was the third monster of Florence murder.
Someone working on the case remembered a similar killing 8 years prior in 1974. It took place in the Mugello Hills, northeast of Florence. The couple, Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini, were killed in the Fiat 127. The man was shot with five 22 caliber bullets and she was finished off, stabbed with a screwdriver and ice pick. Her sexual organs were not cut out, but a vine branch was inserted into her vagina. Her lower abdomen and left breast were stabbed no less than 90 times. A local farmer found the bodies. Investigators thought there could be more than one attacker. An anonymous letter, one of dozens that would condition the work of detectives, suggested the investigators look at another case, a crime of passion in 1968. Miraculously what was left of the rounds of ammunition used in the murder, a found clipped to the case file. Experts said the bullets match the monsters weapon. Someone wanted detectives to link the 1968 crime of passion to the monster of Florence serial murders. Normally the rounds should have been destroyed as the case was closed.
The man convicted for the 1968 murder of his wife and her lover, Sardinian Stefano Mele, was already in jail. A Sardinian Shepherd named Francesco Vinci and his brother Salvatore Vinci were also implicated in the 1968 murder, so investigators assumed the gun was theirs.
Francesco Vinci was arrested on the assumption that he owned the weapon used in those murders which investigators thought was the same gun the monster used. It was the beginning of what came to be known as the Sardinian thread, focusing on a gang of Sardinians, also involved in kidnapping for ransom. However, Francesco Vinci would soon be released as the monster struck again on the 9th of September1983, while Vinci was sitting in jail.
Carefree German tourists, Meyer and Rusch parked their Volkswagen camper. Their bodies were found the following evening by a fellow German who had told them the night before not to park their van there near the Villa, Infamous for its wild parties. They had been shot through the rear window and torn up gay porn magazines were strewn around the van. Investigators thought that the killer could have confused them for a man and woman. The trajectory of the shots fired provided a key clue about the killer, suggesting he had to be taller than 180cm. If the monster was a lone assassin, he couldn’t be Francesco Vinci who was released from jail, but would continue to be part of that story together with a German who found victims. The elusive monster of Florence was spreading terror throughout the community, especially among young people who no longer felt safe. There was a general atmosphere of fear both in the city and the countryside. Wherever the monster struck, young people changed their habits and going to secluded places in the country became dangerous.
It was the 29th of July 1984, Pia Rontini and Claudio Stefanacci were massacred in Fiat Panda parked in a woodland area near Vicchio. They were shot with the usual 22 caliber rounds, but Pia managed to get away. She ran a few meters, before being shot again and then mutilated. Her left breast was sliced off along with her vagina, and taken away. A new clue came to light. She worked at the train station bar, where according to the bar owner a man with a large ring on his finger had watched her and her boyfriend.
The last murder opened a painful and complex chapter in the monster of Florence case. It was the 6th of September 1985, French couple, Nadine Mauriot and Jean Michel, had set up their tent in a woodland in area, in Scopeti, near San Casciano. They arrived in Italy on the 4th and on the 6th were seen at the local country fair. They were attacked while they were making love. The coroner would establish she was shot dead immediately, but Jean was an athlete and got out of the tent despite being wounded and ran a few meters barefoot. But he was shot again and then caught by the killer and stabbed to death. For the first time, the killer hid the body. There were no signs that he dragged it. He then returned and mutilated Nadine just outside the tent, taking breast and vagina away and then hiding her back in the tent. The bodies were found on the 9th of September by mushroom hunters. The many mistakes made by forensic experts would haunt the case for years to come. Two bullet heads were left behind, one in the pillow and one in the duvet, only to be discovered more than 30 years later. The woman’s body was moved before the forensic squad arrived. The police missed a blood stained paper tissue and surgical gloves found later, creating friction among police and prosecutors. The time and even the day of death were questioned. The crime scene was irrecoverably contaminated and the investigation compromised. These were the 16 murders officially attributed to the monster of Florence, but many other people associated with the case were also murdered.
Luciano Malatesta’s sister was a witness to the satanic orgies and shared the terrible secret with her brother before she too was killed, as well as four other family members: “Mirva (his sister) died a terrible death, poor girl. There’s no death penalty for the mistakes you make. I can’t bear to remember… The kid too. All these young people died violent deaths. Someone has to get the truth out. But I can say that a powerful machine for mystification and manipulation has been set in motion.” In the days following the discovery of the bodies of Nadine and Jean, the monster began to go the police. He sent a sliver of Nadine’s left breast to Silvia Della Monica, an investigating magistrate who, however, is no longer on the case. The envelope was sent from San Piero a Sieve. Three Anonymous letters were sent to the investigating magistrates, Pier Luigi Vigna. They contained a surgical glove with a single 22 caliber H series bullet in it, and a frightening typewritten threat. A similar bullet to the ones used in the murders was found in the car park of a hospital.
Then, the murders suddenly stopped, although the investigation continued. The Carabinieri military police meanwhile gather thousands of pages of information and created a list of 250 suspects. Two of these had their homes searched within a week of the last murder in 1985.
Standing at number 31 on the list was Pietro Pacciani, a native of Ponte a Vicchio, but resident in Mercatale. He was violent, a sex maniac. And later would be jailed for repeatedly raping his daughters. The monster murders were very different from anything Pacciani might have might have done. If we analyze how the monster treated the victims, we see that he was completely detached. There was neither mental nor physical contact with them. Pacciani was called vampire or flush face, because he would get all red. He was a sex maniac. He would have touched, he would have raped, he would have taken advantage of the situation, even if he went on to murder.
38th on the list of suspects was another native of Vicchio, then resident in Prato, Gianpiero Vigilanti, a multi murderer. His home was searched just 8 days after the Scopeti clearing murder and that note was written by the Carabinieri with handwritten comments by the commander of the Prato station who found ammo that matched the monster’s weapon. This document held by the interior Ministry Secret Service was only discovered in 2018. As a young man, Vigilanti sought sex in male public toilets. He was jailed for public acts of homosexual obscenity, murdered two Arabs in Marseilles after serving in the French Foreign Legion. And he was also presumed as involved in a previous murder by Pietro Pacciani of his love rival back in 1951. He kept newspaper cuttings of the monster of Florence murders in his home, and his mother’s, including the one dating back to the 1974 murder. Why was he a suspect? Because he knew how to handle weapons. He was violent. He spent many years in the French Foreign Legion, but above all he was born and raised in Vicchio.
At number 181 was another name that would occupy the crime pages of newspapers for years to come, Francesco Narducci was a gastroenterologist and gynecologist. A brilliant doctor and a Freemason. He died apparently from drowning in Lake Trasimeno, exactly a month to the day from the last murder. A later probe into his death revealed a shocking secret. We have documents showing that the special branch in Perugia assigned its most senior inspector, the criminal investigation unit’s most senior inspector to investigate the Scopeti clearing murder, the monster of Florence murders and specifically Francesco Narducci in the days following the murder at the Scopeti clearing, without being specifically requested to do so by the Florence investigators.
The names of Pacciani, Narducci and Vigilanti would dominate the 40 years of Investigations that followed, but without a Smoking Gun. None of the leads ever brought the case to a close.
August 1989, the investigators received the results of an FBI analysis of forensic evidence sent to them by the Italian Interior Ministry, who had requested the Americans help. The FBI used the most sophisticated technologies to study serial murders, adopting computer analysis to find common threads between murder cases and to better understand the minds, motives and methods of killers. They said that the monster of Florence is an Italian male, likely native to the area as he is comfortable on and around the crime scene and acts alone. He may have military experience, shows signs of sadism and hates women. He suffers from sexual dysfunction and never rapes the woman, rather eliminates the male member of the couple to avoid interference in his macabre rights. The FBI experts gave their response saying it could be a solitary serial killer who lived in the area, the lone assassin was a hypothesis that many in Italy followed, but they correctly noted that their analysis was just partial and in their explanation very properly they said: “We express this judgment based on our experience gained on cases in the United States, but our analysis could change if we were to become aware of other facts,” and so they were inviting Italy to keep them informed of any new developments. The FBI profilers described the weapons, the knife and the gun, as ritual tools conserved religiously, just like the body parts kept as fetishes. They believe he revels in his fame, clipping and conserving newspaper articles that describe his crimes and taking perverse pleasure in goading and challenging investigators. The investigation ignored a number of details reported by the FBI, that would later become useful.
7 years after the last double murder, Pietro Pacciani was in jail for having raped his daughters. Another anonymous letter claiming he was the monster reopened the case in 1992, and his house was searched. Again, miraculously an intact 22 caliber round of ammunition was found in a vine trellis in his garden. Pietro Pacciani was eventually charged with murder in a high-profile televised trial that stirred up a massive media. During the trial in the Florence Law Courts, people pushed and shoved to get to see the so-called monster. All the people who spoke at the trial described the squalid reality, although the trial did have its light moments, because some of the witnesses were quite funny. Although, obviously some of the testimony was terrible and sad, such as when the daughters of Pacciani took the stand. It was a very sad moment. One of the witnesses confirmed that he saw Pacciani with another man in Pacciani’s car on the night of the murder, the 8th of September 1985, close to the crime scene. The evidence brought against Pacciani included anonymous letters, the unspent bullet, the skits and a sketchbook that might have belonged to the young Germans, a camping soap box, violent pornography and satanic images. Defense Council tried to prove that the bullet which he denied belonged to him did not necessarily link him to the murders. Later the satanic paintings deposited as evidence against him were discovered to be the work of a Chilean refugee artist. Pacciani said that he had found the watercolor pad and the soap box, possibly belonging to the German victims, in a rubbish. He claimed he was innocent and was framed, a scapegoat. Pacciani: “Why are you investigating me, instead of famous doctor?”
Law Officers were swamped with anonymous letters – threats from people who said they were the monster or who knew who the monster was, people who were trying to help in their opinion. Defense lawyers’ lives were in danger.
It was 1st of November 1994, 9 years after the last murder attributed to the monster of Florence. Pietro Pacciani was handed a life sentence for seven out of the eight crimes.
The new head of the Florence crime Investigation Unit convinced that there was a wider conspiracy, asked for more forensic tests of evidence that had been overlooked and took a fresh, more clinical look at the documentation.
It was very strange that the case files of the 1968 trial that had already been held and had already produced a sentence, so a closed case, that the files still contained bullets used in the crime when the law says that the bullets used in a crime should be kept in the specifically designated evidence store room and not in a case file folder, and furthermore that when a case is closed and a man sentenced, the law says that the bullets should be destroyed together with the weapon. Maybe this is the first great anomaly of this case. The original ballistics report from 1968 described a swelling at the base of the cartridge shells and the almost total absence of the extractor marks. Two signs of an old and worn out percussion chamber. The bullets clipped to the case file did not show either of these signs of wear and tear, but that went overlooked in later reports. In all these cartridges found at crime scenes, as well as in the case file extractor marks were clearly visible and no swelling at the base of the cartridges was mentioned. Either the false cartridges found in the folder were planted evidence, the investigator Michele Giuttari thought, or there were two weapons. According to the investigator Michele Giuttari, there was no certainty that the rounds were fired by the same weapon nor that they came from the same pack. The H series wasn’t a brand that belonged to a unique batch of ammo. At that time all 22 two rounds had an H etched on the base of the cartridge in honor of Henry Winchester. It was also said later that the rounds all came from the same pack. Another piece of false information. Because some of the bullets were copper sheath and some were pure lead. If there was no certainty with regards to the rounds used, then a key piece of evidence against Pacciani, the 22 caliber bullet found in his garden, had no significance.
The investigator thought that he had accomplices. He followed the money which the farm laborer from Mercatale had too much of. In those years he bought two houses, a car and he bought postal bonds in several post offices sometimes on the same day and even shorty before and after a murder. Despite the huge amount of paperwork, not all the documentation was delivered to the investigator Michele Giuttari.
Secret report was dated November 1985 and lists all the crimes and the resulting criminal record of Gianpiero Vigilanti. Michele Giuttari knew nothing about that note, one of hundreds like it, and continued to search for Pacciani’s accomplices. Michele Giuttari identified Pietro Pacciani’s best friends who spent time with him in the bar. His strongest ties were with Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti.
Investigator Michele Giuttari asked for authorization to tap the phones of Mario Vanni and of the bar Giancarlo Lotti spent time. Because the place where Lotti lived was a sort of hostel managed by a priest had no phone. Pacciani, Lotti and Vanni all went to that bar. They visited prostitutes together, they were ‘peeping Toms’ together. Luciano Malatesta’s sister was a witness to the satanic orgies and shared the terrible secret with her brother before she too was killed, as well as four other family members, as a young child knew them for what they were – beasts: “Vanni was the postman. Vanni had a sexual relation with my mother. Many times I was a witness to it. I said so in the Pacciani trial. I was five or six years old, I saw it all. She had sex with Pacciani too. She said so herself. Pacciani was famous for being violent. He beat my dad together with my uncle, Antonio, who played an active part in this whole business, and had a role in the death of my father. My uncle held my dad and Pacciani beat him. And said to him – As soon as I find you alone, I’ll kill you. – he said. It was a gang, you see.” Vanni and Pacciani raped Luciano Malatesta’s mother. According to him, they were part of a gang of criminals, working for a coven of devil worshippers, led by his aunt and uncle. Several prostitutes who worked in Florence and lived in the area began to collaborate, telling detectives what they knew.
While commissioner Michele Giuttari pushed forward on the investigation, the Italian justice system delivered a shock verdict. The judge in the Pacciani appeals trial, refused to hear the new witnesses and on the 13th of February 1996, declared Pacciani not guilty.
Giancarlo Lotti was a quarry worker who had sexual relations with Pacciani and went to prostitutes with him. Under pressure from investigators he made key, albeit confused confessions. Questioned by three prosecutors, he began to confess. He spoke of the 1982 murder and then of the 1984 murder in Vicchio, stating that he was the one who identified the couple to Vanni. He provided a number of details that were important, such as the fact that the 1983 murder of the two young Germans he said was to get Francesco Vinci out of jail. Giancarlo Lotti confessed to killing the two Germans himself, blackmailed by Pacciani, because he had sex with him. Lotti made many mistakes that led to criticism of the investigation. He didn’t know where in the van two Germans actually were when he allegedly killed them. However, Lotti provided some unknown details, such as how they washed the knife in the river after the 1984 murder. His description of the last murder did, however, contain contradictions. Lotti confessed that he was the lookout on the 8th of September. The controversial date of the murder established by the investigators while Mario Vanni cut into the tent and Pietro Pacciani shot through the front of the tent. Everything he said had been known, published in newspaper in detail. Investigator Michele Giuttari said that he described the cutting of the tent from the bottom up, a new detail which made him reliable and credible. The investigators thought there could be a fourth man, the famous doctor. The famous doctor that many witnesses spoke about, including Pacciani, who said in his first trial “Why don’t you investigate the famous doctor?”
There were many people who mentioned that doctor who was seen in the area. Some of those people identified the doctor as Francesco Narducci. Investigator Michele Giuttari listened to Lotti and the telephone intercepted for hours and hours. Lotti’s story was confirmed by other witnesses.
The picture that emerged from on the testimony was an entirely new scenario of satanic rights and orgies that take place in the Villas surrounding San Casciano or the decrepit Farmhouse, belonging to a new protagonist of this story Salvator Indovino. The investigator connected the black masses to the murders and believed the fetishes were used for magic rituals. Malatesta came to live in the house next door to the crumbling farmhouse where Salvador Indovino lived. He found out what was going on inside the house from his sister who became a member of the coven with her husband. According to Malatesta the black masses were held elsewhere. Places where his sister met Florentine high society powerful people, who owned Villa surrounding San Casciano. She told him that among those present was the future anti-mafia commissioner Pier Luigi Vigna. They were untouchable. They wore black hoods, pass a cup full of blood around and held orgies. There were children too. The conclusion was that all of them, together with prostitutes, worked for a network of rich Florentines who participated in sinister magic rituals. Several witnesses describe Luchano Malatesta’s aunt as the priestess and Salvator Indovino as the high priest who also took care of the practicalities. Other investigators found that idea laughable. The villa was searched and nothing was found.
It was 1998, 13 years after the last double murder, Pietro Pacciani died in mysterious circumstances on the eve of going back on trial. Terrified he would be silenced, he stayed locked up in his home but death found him anyway. His lawyer thought he was murdered. His lawyer asked for forensic report and never received it. According to forensic experts, hypostatic pools showed Pacciani’s body had been moved. The Carabinieri found a strange piece of fabric soaked in bleach attached to his shirt by three safety pins and covering his genitals.
Franchesco Vinci who was arrested in 1982 as the monster of Florence and then released was found hog tied and burned in the boot of his car.
Malatesta’s brother in law was hanged in his cell the day before he was to be released.
When they began investigating Pacciani and he was about to be indicted, within 10 days of each other, Franchesco Vinci and his shepherd assistant were found hogtied and burned in the boot of his car. Milva Malatesta and her three-year-old son were also burned in her car. Florence prostitute who was a witness and participated in orgies, according to her words, turned up dead. All these deaths are connected to the case. Young Luchano Malatesta found out that the man investigating his sister’s death was in fact the man she saw at the black masses and shared it with him.
Prosecutors managed to get ‘the picnicking friend’ guilty verdict, confirmed by Supreme Court in 2001, 16 years after the last double murder. Still collateral deaths and series of anonymous letters suggested that the conspiracy was far wider than just the three middle-aged men.
In 2001 the threatening phone call is recorded by a beautician from Folino near Perugia. Her son was the target of a Satanist sect operating in the area. For the first time, Pacciani and Narducci were mentioned in the same criminal scenario. The caller claiming both were murdered by a Satanic sect. The death of the young doctor Francesco Narducci goes back to October 1985. Handsome, a member of Perugia’s high society and popular with his patience, Narducci died in strange circumstances, exactly a month after the last monster of Florence murder. Francesco Narducci was already the subject of gossip in the 1980s, but the creepy call triggered a new investigation which was handed to Perugia prosecutor. The telephone calls referred to the monster of Florence murders. “We will have you end up like Pacciani,” then the name Pacciani joined by the doctor in the lake who was later called the Great Doctor Narducci. The woman caller seemed insulted. The calls were recorded by a beautician. Prosecutor opened a murder investigation.
Police searched the home of pharmacist Francesco Calamandrei, after a declaration of his wife, who had accused him in 1988 of being the monster of Florence and keeping the fetishes in their freezer. She suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. The police didn’t find the fetishes, but what they did find in the raid was disturbing all the same. Francesco Calamandrei came out of the previous investigation of the monster of Florence. Police hypothesized during the investigation into the instigators that the murders had some esoteric meaning, that lay behind the removal of the intimate parts of the female victims and they found that there was in fact a certain sense of perversion in the documents, magazines and other material they found in the home of the pharmacist. They started believing that there was a group of rich and powerful individuals, living around San Casciano who held black masses and orgies, sometimes with children present. Once in a while someone paid the group of killers to murder the couples in order to obtain the fetish body parts from the murdered women. There was a case in the 1980s between 1982 and 1984 in the United States known as The Case of the Chicago Rippers. It was unknown in Italy at the time and involved a number of women being taken, one at a time, to a house, in a closed house, where they were murdered and parts amputated in a way that was similar to The Murders around Florence. Undeniable signs were found that the murders happened in that house and that they were accompanied by a satanic cult.
Prosecutor Guiliano Mignini took the case. Lake Trasimeno – dozens of photographs taken on the 13th of October 1985 by a photographer from the paper La Nazione had never seen all in sequence before, proved fundamental in the investigation into the death of Dr. Francesco Narducci. It was the 8th of October 1985. He went to work as usual and the day seemed normal, but the Doctor received a telephone call and he went down to Lake Trasimeno where his family had a villa. He took a boat that he kept at the jetty at San Feliciano and headed towards island. He disappeared. The body found in the lake was identified as Francesco Narducci, a Perugian doctor, whom many suspected of being linked to the monster of Florence killings. A body is recovered at 7:20 in the morning on Sunday, the 13th of October, and it is recognized as Dr. Francesco Narducci. The body was partially undress and it was not taken to the morgue. There was no autopsy, no examination. A coroner was not called, rather a young and inexperienced woman doctor was called, who declared that the cause of death was drowning, following a probable, but not certain fainting fit. 16 years later, examination of death certificate showed errors. The photographs showed the body black and swollen. Investigators found out that the body recovered from the lake was shorter than Narducci. An unknown man was thrown in the lake to be recovered and put in the coffin. That corpse was later exchanged with the real Narducci who was then buried while the unknown man’s body was disposed. As soon as they opened the coffin, they realized that the body found in the lake could not have been the same one the body recovered in the lake. The body recovered from the lake was bald, had a big head, had a big belly, while Narducci had all his hair, a narrow skull, a 48 small size trousers. Dr. Narducci was throttled to death and the body found in the lake passed off as his. Like Pacciani, he had a piece of cloth covering his lower abdomen. The meaning of the strange apron has never been completely clarified. Police research determined it was linked to Freemasonry. The apron was part of an archaic Masonic right inspired by Egyptian symbology and was punitive as though that person had been degraded in a ritual context according to their expert. Dr. Narducci was often at San Casciano. His father-in-law owned a cake factory where the whole Malatesta family worked before moving away. A pharmacist Francesco Calamandrei denied that he ever met Dr. Narducci. Dr. Narducci was never accused of anything. In 2088, Francesco Calamandrei was found not guilty. His friendship with Salvator Indovino was confirmed.
Prosecutor Mignini was convicted of prosecutorial misconduct for his abuses committed during the Monster of Florence case. He received a sixteen-month sentence for abuse of office and bugging journalists in connection with the Francesco Narducci (Monster of Florence) case. The same prosecutor was the lead prosecutor in the Amanda Knox and Raffaele Sollecito murder trial. Mignini was quick to take complete control over the investigation. Mignini had a vision of how this crime took place. He believed the crime started out as a sadistic sex game that turned into a brutal murder when Meredith refused to participate. His fantasy of a group sex game gone wrong was based on nothing more than his imagination. This is not the first time Mignini has had these visions. He already had a history of dreaming up satanic ritualistic murder fantasies. The whole world knows for him now.
With this being said, there is a rule that detectives should follow the evidence and form a theory. Here we see the opposite, the inquisition-like prosecutor, looking for witches and Satanism everywhere, formed a story and fitted in the evidence to prove his theory, looking for connections sometimes relevant for the case, sometimes irrelevant. The tragedy of this investigation is even if there was involvement of some groups (Freemasonry, Satanism), we will never know.
Let’s try to put this case in historical context and specific society. Italy had been extremely religious society. Thinking process was shaped by The Church. Many in modern, secular Italy who don’t consider themselves religious have the same thinking process. Generally, in Europe something so evil our mind defines as the devil, the Satan, so it must be Satanism. The Amanda Knox case showed that people were susceptible to belief that some Satanists murdered the girl, despite the evidence who did it. In the UK, people speculated that ‘Jack the Ripper’ was actually Freemasons who performed experiments on prostitutes. In the US there was Satanic Panic during 80’s and young girls reported witnessing ‘child sacrifice’ and being victims themselves, giving birth, until it was proven false. We are interested in mysterious stories, where some secret group with masks sacrifice people, without realizing that human brain is the biggest mystery. We just need to understand that some people are evil and sick and they don’t need any idea or religion to do evil things. They use it to justify their evil acts. It is possible that Freemasons did it. It could be some group with other beliefs. Everything is possible, but everything isn’t probable. Organized crime in Italy at that time was huge. Gangs were killing members of other gangs. They led prostitution rings. Unfortunately, it seemed that it was all about incompetent police work and corruption. Organized crime made it hard to solve.
Research in serial murders showed that mutilating female sexual organs are most likely sexually motivated. Some of the perpetrators are schizophrenic. Attacking couples may be the result of sexual frustration, sexual impotence or even desire to instill fear among people who, during sexual liberation, were breaking the social norms and had sex prior to marriage. It’s rare that there are more than one perpetrator. The perpetrator had a gun, victims were caught off guard during intimate moments at night, so maybe the perpetrator didn’t have a military training. The perpetrator had both strong religious views and some sort of sexual frustration, dysfunction. It led to splitting. Or there was a group who did it for ritualistic purpose. Why did they bother to murder men, if they only needed female sexual organs for their rituals? So, couples had to be important even in that scenario.
