The Monster Of Florence Part 5

Around the time of the Vicchio killing, another serial killer appeared to strike Florence. Six prost.i.tutes were murdered in quick succession in the city center. Even with the Monster killings, homicide was still rare in Florence and the city was shocked. Although the MOs of the crimes were different from one another and from the Monster killings, certain elements led the police to think they might be connected. All the prost.i.tutes were murdered in their apartments where they conducted business. The killings were markedly s.a.d.i.s.tic and the killer or killers never took jewelry or money. Robbery was not a motive.

The medical examiner, Mauro Maurri, who had been in charge of the autopsies of the Monster's victims, was perplexed when he examined the wounds of one of the murdered women, killed with a knife after having been tortured. To Dr. Maurri, the knifework on the victim resembled the wounds on some of the Monster's victims, and was perhaps done with a scuba knife.

Was it possible that the Monster was killing in other ways, choosing different victims?

"I don't know," said Maurri when Spezi posed the question. "It would be worth the trouble to do comparative examinations between the knife wounds on the cadavers of the prost.i.tutes and those of the Monster's victims."

Investigators, for unknown reasons, never requested the comparative examination.

The last prost.i.tute killed lived in a hovel in Via della Chiesa, then a poverty-stricken street in the Oltrarno district of Florence. The apartment was furnished with a few shabby pieces of furniture, the walls covered with simple drawings done by her daughter, whom the state had taken away a few years earlier. They found the prost.i.tute stretched on the floor, next to the window. The killer had used a sweater to tie her arms as in a straitjacket, and had suffocated her by pushing a cloth down her throat.

The police combed every inch of the apartment for clues. They noted that the water heater had been repaired recently and that the firm, Quick House Repair, had affixed its label to the work. One of the detectives, seeing the name and making an important connection, returned to the room where Chief Inspector Sandro Federico was still examining the body of the murdered prost.i.tute.

"Dottore," he said excitedly, "come into the next room; there's something very interesting."

The Quick House Repair outfit, he knew, was owned by Salvatore Vinci.

CHAPTER 18.

This discovery prompted the investigators to finally take a closer look at Salvatore Vinci. He was the man whom Stefano Mele had first named as his accomplice in the murder of 1968. Rotella believed that Salvatore was the fourth accomplice in the 1968 killing, who partic.i.p.ated along with Piero Mucciarini, Giovanni Mele, and (perhaps) Francesco Vinci. Since three of them had been in prison during the last Monster killing in 1984, Salvatore was the only remaining possibility.

When investigators began looking into Vinci's background, they quickly heard the rumors that he had murdered his wife, Barbarina, back in the town of Villacidro. Rotella reopened the investigation into her death, this time treating it as a homicide, not a suicide. In 1984 investigators traveled to Sardinia where, amid the wild beauty and grinding poverty of Villacidro, they began to uncover the past of a person who seemed quite capable of being the Monster of Florence.

Barbarina was just seventeen years old when she died in 1961. She had been dating a boy named Antonio whom Salvatore detested, and Salvatore had ambushed her in a field and raped her, possibly as a way to humiliate Antonio. She became pregnant and Salvatore had "done his duty" and married her. Everyone in town said that he mistreated her, that he beat her and 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.

That name and the baby were a thorn in Salvatore's pride; it was said he doubted he was even the father. With the pa.s.sing of the years, a hatred would grow between father and son, between Salvatore and Antonio, that would become pitiless and absolute.

The murder of Barbarina-if it was one-had its origin in November of 1960, when someone surprised her and her lover Antonio in the countryside and took pictures of them. The betrayal became common knowledge in town. Salvatore, in that ancient land of Sardinia ruled by the Barbagian code, had two ways to recover his honor-he could either throw his wife out or kill her.

At first it seemed he would take the former way out. He told her she had to leave, and she began looking for work that would take her away. At the beginning of January 1961, she received a letter from a nun at an orphanage offering to take her and her child in if she, in exchange for room and board, would wait on tables at the orphanage. She had to present herself on January 21.

She never arrived.

On the evening of January 14, 1961, Barbarina was alone with her baby in the tiny house she occupied with Salvatore. He was out as usual, at the local bar drinking vermentino vermentino and playing billiards. and playing billiards.

At dinnertime Barbarina found that the propane tank was empty and she couldn't scald milk for the baby. She asked a neighbor if she could use her stove. It was an insignificant episode, but a few hours later this would become important in refuting what would become the official version of the death of Barbarina-suicide by propane gas. If the tank was empty three hours before she died, and there had been no way to fill it up, how could there have been enough gas in it to kill her?

That evening, just before midnight, Vinci left his brother-in-law at the bar and returned to the house. He later said that he had found the door locked from the inside and had opened it with a hard shove. He turned on the light to see that Antonio's cradle, with the eleven-month-old baby sleeping inside, which would normally have been in the bedroom, had been moved into the kitchen. The door to the bedroom was closed from the inside, and this, he said, worried him. Especially because, he added, he could see light under the door despite the late hour.

"I knocked once and called out to Barbarina," he said several hours later to the carabinieri, "but no one answered. I immediately thought that she was with her lover and so I ran out of the house, fearing an attack."

If this pusillanimous behavior, running away in terror from a man who was cuckolding him in his own bed, seems unlikely today, it appears even more absurd when applied to a twenty-four-year-old Sardinian male in 1961. Salvatore ran to his father-in-law's house and went with him to get his friend at the bar, who happened to be Barbarina's brother. Together they went back to the house.

Years later, one townsperson reflected the general view: "He was only looking for witnesses to his staged suicide."

In front of his father-in-law and brother-in-law, Salvatore opened the door with a simple light shove, the door not offering the slightest resistance. Salvatore promptly shouted that he could smell the odor of gas, although no one else could. The propane tank had been moved next to the bed, the valve open, the tube snaking into the pillow on which Barbarina's head lay. It seemed that Barbarina had killed herself with the tank of propane that, a few hours earlier, had not even contained enough to scald milk. But n.o.body at the time took note of this discrepancy, not the carabinieri, the medical examiner, or her friends. Nor did the medical examiner treat as significant the bruising around her neck or the faint scratches on her face, as if she had struggled before succ.u.mbing to suffocation.

In reopening the case, investigators uncovered all these clues and more that convinced them Salvatore had murdered his wife.

Rotella tried to determine if Salvatore had brought a .22 Beretta with him from Villacidro to Tuscany when he emigrated. Investigators in Villacidro were able to determine that in 1961 there were eleven .22 Berettas in the town, and one of them had indeed been stolen just before Salvatore Vinci left for Tuscany. It belonged to an aged relative of Vinci's who had brought it back from Holland after a stint working there. An investigation conducted in Amsterdam by Interpol could not find the original source of the gun.

At the same time, investigators on the mainland looked into Salvatore Vinci's life after he had arrived in Tuscany in 1961. They found even more evidence that made them think he might be the Monster. It turned out that Salvatore Vinci was a man who, in his s.e.xual tastes and activities, would have aroused envy in the Marquis de Sade.

"We were newly married," Rosina, his new wife, told the carabinieri, "when one evening Salvatore arrived home with a couple of friends and said they would be guests for the night. Fine. Later, when I got up to go to the bathroom, I heard whispering from the room where the couple was sleeping and I recognized my husband's voice. I went in and what did I see? Salvatore in bed with those two! Of course I got mad. I said to the woman and her husband-if he even was was her husband-to get out quick. And do you know what Salvatore did? He erupted in a terrifying fury, grabbed me by the hair, and forced me to kneel in front of those two and beg their forgiveness! And," she went on, "it wasn't at all over. Another time he introduced me to another young couple, who had just married, and we began to see them. One evening we stayed and slept in their house. And so, that night, I felt a cold hand touching me and I heard a strange sound, as if something fell down. I went to light the lamp and heard my husband's voice telling me not to do it, that nothing had happened. Another hour pa.s.sed and I felt the same touch again, on my leg, and this time I jumped up and turned on the light. Well, in my bed, in addition to my husband, was also his friend Saverio! I jumped up and went into the kitchen all dazed, trying to understand what was going on. It was then that Salvatore joined me. He tried to calm me down, he said that there was nothing surprising, nothing at all strange, and he invited me to come back to bed. And then, a day later, he began talking about it some more, telling me that he had already had a threesome with Gina, the wife of his friend, and he said for me to do the same thing, that it would be fun, and that on the continent it was the thing to do. So anyway, in the end I found myself in bed with Saverio and Salvatore, who first had s.e.x with me and then with his friend. This went on for a while. If I protested, he hit me. He forced me to have s.e.x with Saverio while he watched, and then we made a foursome. And when it was this way, Salvatore and Saverio were touching each other, caressing each other, each taking their turn as first the man and then the woman, in front of me and Gina! And from that time on Salvatore began to bring me to the homes of his friends, even casual acquaintances, and I had to be with them. He took me to p.o.r.n films, he'd have his eye on someone, and then he'd introduce me and then perhaps I'd have to have s.e.x with them in the car, but especially at home. And it was worse for me when, in that period, his son Antonio arrived from Sardinia, who was only four years old. They called him Antonello then. I was afraid that he would witness some of these perverse doings with other couples, and our fights, and when he mistreated me." her husband-to get out quick. And do you know what Salvatore did? He erupted in a terrifying fury, grabbed me by the hair, and forced me to kneel in front of those two and beg their forgiveness! And," she went on, "it wasn't at all over. Another time he introduced me to another young couple, who had just married, and we began to see them. One evening we stayed and slept in their house. And so, that night, I felt a cold hand touching me and I heard a strange sound, as if something fell down. I went to light the lamp and heard my husband's voice telling me not to do it, that nothing had happened. Another hour pa.s.sed and I felt the same touch again, on my leg, and this time I jumped up and turned on the light. Well, in my bed, in addition to my husband, was also his friend Saverio! I jumped up and went into the kitchen all dazed, trying to understand what was going on. It was then that Salvatore joined me. He tried to calm me down, he said that there was nothing surprising, nothing at all strange, and he invited me to come back to bed. And then, a day later, he began talking about it some more, telling me that he had already had a threesome with Gina, the wife of his friend, and he said for me to do the same thing, that it would be fun, and that on the continent it was the thing to do. So anyway, in the end I found myself in bed with Saverio and Salvatore, who first had s.e.x with me and then with his friend. This went on for a while. If I protested, he hit me. He forced me to have s.e.x with Saverio while he watched, and then we made a foursome. And when it was this way, Salvatore and Saverio were touching each other, caressing each other, each taking their turn as first the man and then the woman, in front of me and Gina! And from that time on Salvatore began to bring me to the homes of his friends, even casual acquaintances, and I had to be with them. He took me to p.o.r.n films, he'd have his eye on someone, and then he'd introduce me and then perhaps I'd have to have s.e.x with them in the car, but especially at home. And it was worse for me when, in that period, his son Antonio arrived from Sardinia, who was only four years old. They called him Antonello then. I was afraid that he would witness some of these perverse doings with other couples, and our fights, and when he mistreated me."

Eventually Rosina had had enough and ran away to Trieste with another man.

"I can say to you," another of Salvatore's girlfriends told the police, "that Salvatore was the man, the only only man, who fully satisfied me in terms of s.e.x. He had strange ideas, but what of it?...He liked to make love to me while a man did it to him from behind..." man, who fully satisfied me in terms of s.e.x. He had strange ideas, but what of it?...He liked to make love to me while a man did it to him from behind..."

Salvatore Vinci picked up the players for his orgies where he could, with the help of his girlfriends, luring them from truck stops on the autostrada, in the red-light districts, and in the Cascine Park on the outskirts of Florence. His s.e.xuality, according to those who knew him, knew no bounds. He would have s.e.x with almost anyone, man or woman, and employed a wide range of accessories, including vibrators, zucchinis, and eggplants. If a woman was reluctant, he slapped her around a bit to get her in the mood.

When Barbara Locci arrived, everything became easier. Salvatore had finally found a woman who fully shared his appet.i.te and tastes. She was so effective at attracting men and boys to orgies that Salvatore began calling her the "Queen Bee."

In the middle of all this, in the same small house, Salvatore's son, Antonio Vinci, was growing up. The young boy heard the rumors that his mother's death wasn't a suicide but a murder, and that his father had done it. Antonio had become deeply attached to Rosina, the second wife of Salvatore. When she fled to Trieste, for Antonio it was like losing his mother all over again. And once again it was his father's fault. He eventually left home and spent much of his free time with his uncle Francesco who became a subst.i.tute father to him. This same Antonio would later be arrested on weapons charges, in an attempt to get his uncle Francesco to talk.

The dual investigations in Villacidro and Tuscany convinced Mario Rotella and his carabinieri investigators that they had finally found their man. Salvatore Vinci had been the fourth accomplice at the killing of Barbara Locci. He probably owned a .22 Beretta. He had the only car among the conspirators. He brought the gun to the murder scene, he was the main shooter, and he took the gun home with him. The investigation confirmed he was a cold-blooded killer and s.e.xual maniac.

Salvatore Vinci was the Monster of Florence.

CHAPTER 19.

In the middle of all the sound and fury, certain facts stood above the fray, unshakably true, obtained by solid police work and expert a.n.a.lysis.

The first of these was the a.n.a.lysis of the pistol. No fewer than five ballistics a.n.a.lyses were done, and the answer was always the same: the Monster used one gun, a .22 Beretta that was "old and worn," with a defective firing pin that left an incontrovertible mark on the base of each sh.e.l.l. The bullets were the second fact. They were all Winchester series H rounds. All the bullets fired in the crimes had been taken from the same two boxes. This was demonstrated by an examination with a scanning electron microscope of the "H" stamped on the base of each sh.e.l.l-all had the same micro-imperfections, indicative that they were stamped by the same die. The die, which was regularly replaced when it began to wear out, also proved that both boxes were put on sale before the year 1968.

Each box contained fifty cartridges. Counting from the first crime in 1968, after the gun had shot fifty sh.e.l.ls from one box, the killer opened a second box. The first fifty were copper-jacketed rounds, and the second were lead. Nothing was ever found that suggested a second gun had been used at the scenes of the crimes or that there was more than one killer. Indeed, the bodies of the victims had all been moved by dragging, which suggested there was no second person around to help lift.

It was the same for the knife used by the killer. Every expert a.n.a.lysis concluded that a single knife had been employed, extremely well honed, with a particular mark or notch in it, and three sawteeth below that of about two millimeters in depth. Some experts speculated it was a pattada pattada, the typical knife used by Sardinian shepherds, but the majority of experts spoke, with some uncertainty, of a scuba knife. The experts agreed that the excisions were so nearly identical that they had been made by the same right-handed person.

Finally, the Monster avoided touching his victims, except when necessary, and stripped them by cutting their clothes off with the knife. There was never any sign of rape or s.e.xual molestation.

The psychological experts all agreed on the Monster's psychopathology. "He always works alone," wrote one expert. "The presence of others would take away all flavor from the author of these crimes, which are fundamentally crimes of s.e.xual sadism: the Monster is a serial killer and he only acts alone....The noted absence of any s.e.xual interest not connected to the excision, makes one think of an absolute impotence, or a marked inhibition of coitus."

In September 1984, Rotella finally freed the "Double Monsters" Piero Mucciarini and Giovanni Mele, who had been in prison during the Vicchio killings. Two months later, he released Francesco Vinci, who had also been in prison during the last Monster killings.

The pool of suspects had been reduced to one: Salvatore Vinci. They put his house under observation twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. His telephone was tapped. When he left his front door, he was often followed.

As the winter pa.s.sed and the next summer neared-the summer of 1985-a huge feeling of dread built among the investigators and the Florentine public. Everyone was certain that the Monster would strike again. The new elite unit charged with investigating the Monster, the Squadra Anti-Mostro, worked with feverish activity but continued to make little progress.

When Francesco Vinci was released from prison, Mario Spezi, who had often maintained his innocence in his articles, was invited to the homecoming celebration at Vinci's house in Montelupo. Spezi accepted the unusual invitation, hoping to snag an interview on the side. The tables were heaped with spicy salami, strong Sardinian sheep cheese, vermentino di Sardegna vermentino di Sardegna, and fil'e ferru fil'e ferru, the potent grappa of the island. At the end of the party, Vinci agreed to an interview with Spezi. He answered the questions with reserve, intelligence, and excessive caution.

"How old are you?"

"Forty-one. Or so I believe."

The interview was unenlightening, except for one answer that stayed with Spezi for many years. Spezi asked him what he imagined the real Monster to be like.

"He is very intelligent," Vinci said, "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. One," he added, fixing his glittering black eyes on Spezi, "who once upon a time experienced a very, very great disappointment."

CHAPTER 20.

The summer of 1985 was one of the hottest in recent memory. A serious drought gripped Tuscany, and the hills of Florence lay stunned and prostrate under the sun, the ground cracking, the leaves turning brown and falling from the trees. The city's aqueducts began to dry up, and priests led their congregations in fervent prayer to the Lord for rain. Along with the heat, fear of the Monster hung over the city like a stifling blanket.

September 8 was another hot, cloudless day in what seemed like an endless string of them. But for Sabrina Carmignani it was a fine day, the day of her nineteenth birthday-a day she would never forget.

That Sunday, around five o'clock, Sabrina and her boyfriend pulled into a small clearing in the woods just off the main road to San Casciano, which was called the Scopeti clearing after the name of the road pa.s.sing it. The dirt clearing was hidden from Via Scopeti by a curtain of oaks, cypresses, and umbrella pines, and it was well known to young people as a good place to have s.e.x. It lay in the heart of the Chianti countryside, almost within view of the ancient stone house where Niccol Machiavelli spent his years of exile writing The Prince. The Prince. Today this area of villas, castles, beautifully tended vineyards, and small towns forms one of the most expensive stretches of real estate in the world. Today this area of villas, castles, beautifully tended vineyards, and small towns forms one of the most expensive stretches of real estate in the world.

The two young people parked their car next to another, a white VW Golf with French plates. In the center of the rear seat, attached by the seat belts, they noted a child's car seat. A few meters in front of the Volkswagen stood a small dome tent, of a metallic blue. The light struck it in such a way that it was possible to see a human outline in its interior.

"A single person," said Sabrina later, "who was stretched out and perhaps sleeping. The tent seemed shaken up, almost collapsed; the entrance was dirty and there were a lot of flies, and there was a foul dead smell."

They didn't like the look of things and turned around to leave. As they eased out of the clearing, another car was just turning in from the main road. The driver backed up to allow them to pa.s.s. Neither Sabrina nor her boyfriend noted the make of the car or saw the person inside.

They had just missed discovering the Monster's new victims.

A day later, at two o'clock in the afternoon on Monday, September 9, an avid mushroom forager drove into the Scopeti clearing. As soon as he stepped out of his car, he was a.s.saulted by "a strange odor along with a loud buzzing of flies. I thought that around there somewhere was a dead cat. Around the tent I didn't notice anything. Then I went toward the thicket of bushes on the opposite side. And in that moment I saw them: two naked feet sticking out of the greenery...I didn't have the courage to go any closer."

The newly created squad, SAM, launched into action. The victims were two French tourists who had camped in the Scopeti clearing. For the first time the scene of a Monster crime was properly secured. SAM sealed off not only the Scopeti clearing, but an area one kilometer in diameter surrounding it. The discovery of a child's seat in the back of the car caused investigators great anguish for some hours, until inquiries to France established that the little daughter of the murdered woman was back in France in the care of relatives.

A helicopter landed at the sealed crime scene carrying on board a famous criminologist who had earlier prepared a psychological and behavioral profile of the Monster. Journalists and photographers were grudgingly allowed in but had been corralled behind a red-and-white plastic fence strung between trees a hundred yards away, under the watchful eyes of two policemen in a ready stance, armed with machine guns. The journalists were angry at not having their usual access. Finally, the a.s.sistant prosecutor allowed one, Mario Spezi, to examine the scene and report back to all the others. Spezi climbed over the plastic barrier under the furious gaze of his colleagues. When he saw the Monster's most recent horror, he felt envy for those he had left behind.

The female victim was Nadine Mauriot, thirty-six years old, who owned a shoe store in Montbeliard, France, not far from the French-Swiss border. She had separated from her husband and for some months had been living with Jean-Michel Kraveichvili, twenty-five years old, an enthusiast of the hundred-meter dash, which he practiced with the local athletic squad. They had taken a camping trip through Italy, and on Monday would have had to be back in France for Nadine's daughter's first day of school.

On hearing the news of the murders, Sabrina and her friend immediately went to the carabinieri to report what they had seen on Sunday afternoon, September 8. The girl recounted exactly the same story years later, in front of a judge of the Corte d'a.s.sise. Twenty years later, in an interview with Spezi, Sabrina was still certain that she had not mistaken the date, given that that Sunday was her birthday.

Her testimony related in a critical way to the date the crime had been committed. It had direct bearing on whether the French couple had been murdered Sat.u.r.day night, as the evidence suggested, or Sunday night, as investigators would later insist. Her testimony was inconvenient to them, so it was completely ignored-then and now.

There was another weighty clue that the two were killed on Sat.u.r.day night: if the French couple expected to be home in time to see Nadine's daughter off to her first day of school, they would already have to be driving back to France on Sunday.

The condition of Mauriot's cadaver on that Monday afternoon was frightful. Her face, grotesquely swollen and black, was unrecognizable. The heat had had devastating effects, amplified by being enclosed in a tent, and the body was covered with maggots.

SAM investigators reconstructed how the final killing took place. It was, in a word, horrifying.

The killer had crept up to the dome tent of the two French tourists, who were nude and making love. He advertised his presence by making a seven-inch cut in the fly of the tent with the tip of his knife-without, however, piercing the inner tent. The noise must have frightened the two lovers. They unzipped the door to see what it was. The Monster had already positioned himself, gun at the ready, and as soon as they peered out they were struck by a hail of bullets. Nadine was killed immediately. Four rounds struck Jean-Michel-one in a wrist, one in a finger, one in an elbow, and one grazing his lip, leaving him relatively unscathed.

The young athlete leapt up and charged out the door, perhaps bowling over the Monster in the process, and tore off running in the dark. If he had turned left, a few steps would have taken him to the main road where he might have been saved. But he ran straight ahead, toward the woods. The Monster ran after him. Jean-Michel vaulted a sort of bushy hedge that divided the clearing in two, pursued by the Monster. The Monster reached him in twelve meters, stabbed him in the back, chest, and stomach, and then cut his throat.

Observing the cadaver still under the bushes, Spezi noted that the lowest leaves of the tree above the dead body, six feet up, were splattered with blood.

Having killed Jean-Michel, the Monster returned to the tent. He pulled Nadine out by the feet and performed the two mutilations, removing her v.a.g.i.n.a and left breast. Then he dragged the body back into the tent and zipped it up. He hid the man's body under trash he collected around the clearing and put the plastic lid of a paint bucket over his head.

Despite diligent evidence collecting in the Scopeti clearing, SAM came up almost empty-handed. It appeared to have been an almost perfect crime.

On Tuesday, a letter arrived at the prosecutor's offices, addressed with letters cut from a magazine.

Inside the envelope, wrapped in tissue paper, was a piece of breast cut from the French tourist.

The letter had been mailed sometime that weekend in a little town near Vicchio, and it entered the postal system on Monday morning.

Silvia Della Monica was the only woman investigator in the Monster case. The arrival of this missive changed her life. It completely terrified her. She immediately resigned from the case and was a.s.signed two bodyguards, who remained in her locked office even at work, for fear that the killer might be a person who could mingle with the people entering the Palazzo di Giustizia and gain access to her office. It was the end of her involvement in the case.

The letter, reproduced in the papers, caused a storm of speculation, because the killer had misspelled the Italian word "REPUBBLICA," using only one "B" instead of two. Was it merely the spelling error of an ignorant person, or did it indicate that the Monster was a foreigner? Among the Romance languages of Europe, only in Italian is the word "Republic" spelled with two "b"s.

For the first time, the Monster had made an effort to hide the two bodies. That, combined with the mailing of the note, would have forced a desperate search by the authorities for the victims, if the bodies hadn't already been found. This suggests a reason why the Monster changed his MO-it was a carefully designed plan to humiliate the police.

It almost worked.

CHAPTER 21.

After the Scopeti killing, the mayors of Florence and the surrounding towns launched a campaign of prevention. Although the young people of Florence were so thoroughly traumatized that the idea of parking outside the city walls after sunset was now unthinkable, there were still millions of foreigners who poured into Tuscany every year with campers and tents who were unaware of the risk. Throughout the areas where people often camped, signs in multiple languages were posted warning of the danger of remaining there between dusk and dawn. But the mention of a serial killer was carefully avoided, so as not to scare away tourists completely.

The city of Florence printed thousands of posters, designed by the famous graphic artist Mario Lovergine, who drew a staring eye surrounded by leaves. "Occhio ragazzi! Watch out kids! Attention! Jeunes gens, danger Jeunes gens, danger! Atencion chicos y chicas Atencion chicos y chicas! Pericolo di aggressione Pericolo di aggressione! Danger of violence!" warned the poster. Using the same design, tens of thousands of postcards were printed up and pa.s.sed out at tollbooths, railroad stations, campsites, youth hostels, and on public buses. Television spots reinforced the point.

Despite their most diligent efforts, SAM investigators emerged from the Scopeti clearing with few fresh leads or new evidence. The pressure on them was enormous. Thomas Harris, in his novel Hannibal Hannibal, recounted some of the techniques SAM used to try to catch the Monster. "Some lover's lanes and cemetery trysting places had more police than lovers sitting in pairs in the cars. There were not enough women officers to go around. During hot weather male couples took turns wearing a wig and many mustaches were sacrificed."

The idea of offering a reward had earlier been rejected, but now it was resurrected by the prosecutor Vigna, who was convinced that the Monster enjoyed the protection of omerta omerta, which could only be broken with a very large sum. It was a controversial idea. Rewards and bounties were never part of Italian culture, being something they knew only from American Westerns. Many feared it might incite a witch hunt or bring out a bunch of crazy bounty hunters. The decision was so controversial it had to be made by the prime minister of Italy himself, who set the reward at half a billion lire-a large sum at the time.

The reward was posted, but no one stepped forward with information to claim it.

As before, SAM was plagued with anonymous accusations and unfounded rumors that had to be followed up, no matter how unlikely. Among them was a letter the police received, dated September 11, 1985. It suggested that the police "question our fellow citizen, Pietro Pacciani, born in Vicchio." The note went on, "This individual is said by many to have been in prison for having killed his own fiancee. He has a thousand skills: a shrewd man, cunning, a farmer with big clumsy feet but a quick mind. He keeps his entire family hostage, the wife is a fool, the daughters are never allowed out, they have no friends."

Investigators looked into it. It wasn't true that Pacciani had killed his fiancee, but in 1951 he had killed a man he caught seducing his fiancee in a parked car and had served a long prison sentence for it. Pacciani lived in Mercatale, a half dozen kilometers from the Scopeti clearing. The police conducted a routine search of his house and found nothing of interest.