The Monster Of Florence Part 6

Still, the old farmer's name remained on the list.

A few weeks later, a rumor made the rounds, this one from Perugia, a hundred and fifty kilometers away. A young doctor, Francesco Narducci, the scion of one of the city's richest families, apparently committed suicide by drowning himself in Lake Trasimeno. Immediately rumormongers began speculating that Narducci had been the Monster, who, overcome with remorse, had done away with himself. A quick investigation showed there could be no truth to it, and investigators shelved it along with the other false leads that plagued the case.

Meanwhile, in 1985, the investigation, under relentless pressure to show results, began to crumble. A rift between the lead prosecutor, Piero Luigi Vigna, and the examining magistrate, Mario Rotella, was widening.

The disagreement centered on the Sardinian Trail investigation. Rotella was convinced that the gun used in the 1968 clan killing had never left the circle of Sardinians, and that one of them had gone on to become the Monster. His suspicions had settled on Salvatore Vinci, and he was painstakingly building the case against him with the help of the carabinieri. Vigna, on the other hand, felt the Sardinian Trail had reached a dead end. He wanted to throw everything out and start the investigation anew. The polizia polizia, the police, agreed with Vigna.

The special unit known as SAM was composed of both polizia and carabinieri allegedly working together. The problem was, the carabinieri and the police rarely got along and were often antagonistic to each other. The Polizia di Stato are a civilian agency and the carabinieri are a branch of the military; both are charged with domestic law enforcement. When a major crime occurs, such as a murder, often the two agencies will rush to the scene and each try to claim the crime as their own. One story, perhaps apocryphal, tells of a bank robbery in which both carabinieri and police chased down and caught the escaping criminals. An argument broke out in front of the robbers about who should get the collar, finally settled when they divided up the spoils, the police getting the robbers and the carabinieri hauling away the getaway car, cash, and guns.

The disagreement between Vigna and Rotella, which became increasingly bitter, was kept a deep secret among the investigators for many years. Outwardly, the Sardinian Trail continued to be the major line of inquiry, but criticism of it, and of Judge Mario Rotella, began to grow.

In 1985 Rotella briefly jailed Stefano Mele on trumped-up charges in a final effort to get him to talk. The move caused a chorus of complaints that Rotella was needlessly torturing a broken-down old man whose ravings had already caused untold damage to the investigation and to the individuals he accused. Rotella found himself out on a limb, isolated and under constant attack by the press. The largest newspaper of Sardinia, the Unione Sarda Unione Sarda, savaged him on a regular basis. "It's always the case," the newspaper wrote, "that whenever the investigation of the Monster of Florence becomes stuck in the mud, they always resurrect the so-called Sardinian Trail." a.s.sociations of Sardinian residents of Tuscany also took up the issue of racism, and a chorus of outrage from all sides a.s.sailed the investigation. Rotella's pontifications and circ.u.mlocutions only made matters worse.

But Rotella, who as examining magistrate in the Monster case held considerable power, plodded on. His brief arrest and interrogation of Stefano Mele, so roundly criticized, finally revealed one of the central mysteries in the case: why Stefano had protected Salvatore Vinci for so long, even at the cost of going to prison for fourteen years. Why had Mele acquiesced so meekly in being framed for the murders of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco, when the crime had been plotted, organized, and executed by Salvatore? Why had he remained silent during the trial, when Salvatore had the impudence to wear his wife's engagement ring when taking the witness stand? Why, even after serving fourteen years in prison, did Mele refuse to tell investigators that Salvatore was one of his accomplices?

The reason, Mele finally broke down and admitted, was shame. He had partic.i.p.ated in Salvatore Vinci's s.e.x circus and was fond of s.e.x with men, most especially with Salvatore himself. This was the terrible secret that Salvatore Vinci had held over Mele's head for almost twenty years, enforcing his silence. This was how Vinci, back in 1968, had been able to reduce Mele to groveling and weeping with a single hard stare. He threatened to expose him as a h.o.m.os.e.xual.

The double homicide of the French tourists in the Scopeti clearing would be the last known crime committed by the Monster of Florence. Although it would be a while before Florentines realized it, the string of murders that had terrorized them for so long had finally come to an end.

The investigation, however, was just getting started. As time went on, it would become a monster in its own right, consuming all in its path, engorged and distended with the many innocent lives it had ruined.

Nineteen eighty-five was only the beginning.

CHAPTER 22.

By the end of 1985, Judge Mario Rotella was firmly convinced that Salvatore Vinci was the Monster of Florence. As he examined the files on Vinci, he became more and more frustrated with the many missed opportunities to nail him. For example, Vinci's house had been searched right after the 1984 killing in Vicchio, and the police had found a rag in his bedroom, stuffed in a woman's straw purse, covered with powder residues and spots of blood. Thirty-eight spots of blood. Rotella looked back through the records and saw that the rag had never been a.n.a.lyzed. Furious, he held it up as an egregious example of the incompetence of the investigation. The prosecutor in charge of that evidence tried to explain: it was impossible to believe a man who already knew he was on the list of suspects would keep in his room such an obvious clue.

Rotella demanded an examination of the rag. The lab it was sent to could not establish if the blood came from one or two blood groups, and the experts were unable to compare the blood on the rag to the blood of the victims of the 1984 crime because, incredibly enough, investigators had not conserved any blood from those victims. The rag was sent to the United Kingdom for further a.n.a.lysis, but the lab reported back that it had deteriorated beyond salvation. (Today, DNA testing might still recover important information from the rag, but so far we know of no plans to test it.) Rotella had another reason to feel frustration. For more than a year the carabinieri had been keeping Salvatore Vinci under tight surveillance, particularly on weekends. Knowing he was being followed, Salvatore had sometimes amused himself by running red lights or pulling other tricks to lose his trackers. And yet the very weekend of the double homicide in the Scopeti clearing, the carabinieri had inexplicably suspended the surveillance. Vinci suddenly found himself free to go where he pleased, un.o.bserved. If the surveillance had continued, Rotella felt, perhaps the double killing might never have occurred in the first place.

At the end of 1985, Rotella served Salvatore Vinci with an avviso di garanzia avviso di garanzia, a notification that he was the official suspect for sixteen homicides-all the killings from 1968 to 1985.

Meanwhile, the main prosecutor, Piero Luigi Vigna, was becoming fed up with the officious, methodical Rotella and his obsessive pursuit of the Sardinian Trail. Vigna and the police were itching to start afresh, and they were waiting, quietly, for Rotella to make a false move.

On June 11, 1986, Mario Rotella ordered the arrest of Salvatore Vinci for murder. To everyone's great surprise, it was not for the Monster's killings, but for the murder of his wife, Barbarina, on January 14, 1961, back in Villacidro. Rotella's strategy was to convict Vinci of murder in a case that seemed simpler and easier to prove, and then to leverage that into a conviction against him for being the Monster of Florence.

For two years, with Salvatore Vinci in prison, Rotella methodically prepared the case against him for the murder of his seventeen-year-old wife. The Monster did not kill again, which further persuaded Rotella that he had the right man.

Salvatore Vinci's trial for the murder of his wife began on April 12, 1988, in Cagliari, the capital of Sardinia. Spezi covered it for La n.a.z.ione La n.a.z.ione.

Vinci's behavior in the dock was astonishing. Standing all the while, his tight fists wrapped around the bars of the cage in which he was locked, he responded with scrupulous care to the questions of the judges in a courteous, high, almost falsetto voice. During the breaks he conversed with Spezi and the other journalists on such themes as s.e.xual freedom and the role of habeas corpus in a trial.

His son, Antonio, who was then about twenty-seven years old, was brought into the courtroom to testify against his father. He was serving time for an unrelated offense, and he arrived with his hands shackled, his strong, extremely tense presence noted by all. Seated to the right of the judges, on the side opposite his father, the youth never once took off the huge black sungla.s.ses that hid his eyes. His lips remained compressed, and the nostrils of his aquiline nose were dilated with hatred. Even protected by dark lenses, his face always remained fixated on his father, never once turning elsewhere in the courtroom. Throughout this his father remained immobile as he returned his son's stare with a closed and enigmatic face. The two of them remained that way for hours, the courtroom filled with electricity from their taut and silent interaction.

Antonio Vinci refused to speak a word. He just stared. Later, he told Spezi that if there hadn't been carabinieri officers sitting between him and his father in the van as they were driven away, "I would have strangled him."

The trial came to a disastrous end. Salvatore Vinci was unexpectedly acquitted. The crime had taken place too long ago, witnesses had died and others couldn't remember, physical evidence had disappeared, and very little could actually be proved.

Vinci walked out of the courtroom a free man. He paused on the steps to speak to the press. "It was a very satisfying conclusion," he said calmly, and walked on. He went into the interior mountains to visit his birthplace of Villacidro-and then, like a Sardinian bandit of old, he disappeared forever.

The acquittal of Salvatore Vinci raised a firestorm of complaint against Rotella. It was the false move Vigna and his prosecutors had been waiting for, and they moved in like sharks, silently, with no fuss or publicity. For the next few years, a slow parrying with long knives would take place between Vigna and Rotella, the police and the carabinieri, so quietly conducted that it never came to the attention of the news media.

After the acquittal, Vigna and the police went their own way, ignoring Rotella. They decided to throw out everything and start the Monster of Florence investigation all over again, from the beginning. Meanwhile, Rotella and the carabinieri kept the Sardinian Trail investigation going. The two investigations slowly became incompatible, if not mutually exclusive.

Eventually, something would have to give.

CHAPTER 23.

The Squadra Anti-Mostro was taken over by a new chief inspector of police, a man named Ruggero Perugini. A few years later, Thomas Harris would create a fictional portrait of Perugini in his novel Hannibal Hannibal, giving him the thinly disguised fictional name of Rinaldo Pazzi. While researching the book, Harris had been a guest in Chief Inspector Perugini's home in Florence. (It was said that Perugini was not pleased with Harris's return on his hospitality, by having his alter ego gutted and hung from the Palazzo Vecchio.) The real chief inspector was more dignified than his sweaty and troubled counterpart in the film version, played by Giancarlo Giannini. The real Perugini spoke with a Roman accent, but his movements and dress, and the way he handled his briar pipe, made him seem more English than Italian.

When Chief Inspector Perugini took over SAM, he and Vigna wiped the slate clean. Perugini started with the a.s.sumption that the gun and bullets had somehow pa.s.sed out of the circle of Sardinians before the Monster killings began. The Sardinian Trail was a dead end and he had no more interest in it. He also viewed the evidence collected at the crime scenes with skepticism-and perhaps rightly so. The forensic examination of the crime scenes had been, in general, incompetent. Only the last was actually secured and sealed by the police. In the others, people came and went, picking up the sh.e.l.ls, taking pictures, smoking and throwing their b.u.t.ts on the ground, trampling the gra.s.s, and shedding their own hair and fibers everywhere. Much of the forensic evidence that was collected-and there was precious little-was never properly a.n.a.lyzed, and some, like the rag, was lost or allowed to spoil. Investigators had not generally kept samples of the victims' hair, clothing, or blood, to see if their presence might be a.s.sociated with any suspects.

Instead of plodding once again through the evidence and rereading the thousands of pages of interrogations, Perugini was smitten by the idea of solving the crime in the modern way-with computers. He was in love with the scientific methods used by the FBI to hunt serial killers. He finally dusted off the IBM PC given to SAM by the Ministry of the Interior and booted it up.

He ran through it the names of every man between the ages of thirty and sixty in the province of Florence who had ever been picked up by the police, asking it to spit out all those persons convicted of s.e.xual crimes. Then Perugini matched up their periods of incarceration with the dates of the Monster's homicides, identifying those who were in prison when the Monster didn't kill and out of prison when he did. He winnowed the list down from thousands to a few dozen people. And there, in the middle of this rarefied company, he found the name of Pietro Pacciani-the peasant farmer who had been denounced in an anonymous letter after the Monster's final killings.

Perugini then did another computer screening to see how many of these suspects had lived in or around the areas where the Monster had struck. Once again Pacciani's name surfaced, after Perugini generously expanded the definition of "in or around" to swallow most of Florence and its environs.

The appearance of Pacciani's name in this second screening again reinforced the anonymous message that had arrived on September 11, 1985, inviting the police to "question our fellow citizen Pietro Pacciani born in Vicchio." In this way, the most advanced system of criminal investigation, the computer, was married to the most ancient system, the anonymous letter-both of which fingered the same man: Pietro Pacciani.

Pietro Pacciani became Perugini's preferred suspect. All that remained was to gather the evidence against him.

Inspector Perugini ordered a search of Pacciani's house and came up with what he considered further incriminating evidence. Prime among this was a reproduction of Botticelli's Primavera Primavera, the famous painting in the Uffizi Gallery, which depicts, in part, a pagan nymph with flowers spilling from her mouth. The picture reminded Perugini of the gold chain lying in the mouth of one of the Monster's first victims. This clue so captivated him that it became the cover of the book he would later publish about the case, which showed Botticelli's nymph vomiting blood instead of flowers. Reinforcing this interpretation, Perugini took note of a p.o.r.nographic magazine centerfold pinned up in Pacciani's kitchen, surrounded by pictures of the Blessed Virgin and saints, showing a topless woman with a flower clamped provocatively between her teeth.

Right after the Monster's last double homicide, Pietro Pacciani had been sent to prison for raping his daughters. This, for Perugini, was another important clue. It explained why there had been no killings for the past three years.

Most of all, it was the 1951 murder that attracted Perugini's attention. It had taken place near Vicchio, Pacciani's birthplace, where the Monster had struck twice. On the surface it looked like a Monster crime: two young people making love in a car in the Ta.s.sinaia woods, ambushed by a killer hidden in the bushes nearby. She was just sixteen, the town beauty and Pacciani's girlfriend. Her lover was a traveling salesman who went from village to village selling sewing machines.

But on a closer look, the crime was quite different-messy, furious, and spontaneous. Pacciani had beaten the man's head in with a stone before knifing him. He then threw his girlfriend into the gra.s.s and raped her next to his rival's dead body. Afterwards, he slung the salesman's corpse over his shoulders to carry it to a nearby lake. After struggling for a while he gave up and dumped it in the middle of a field. Criminologists would have called it a "disorganized" homicide, as opposed to the organized ones of the Monster. So disorganized, in fact, that Pacciani was swiftly arrested and convicted.

The murder in the Ta.s.sinaia woods had an antique flavor to it, a crime of pa.s.sion from another age. It may have been the last tale of love and murder to be immortalized in song in the traditional Tuscan manner. At the time, there was one man left in Tuscany who practiced the ancient profession of cantastorie cantastorie, or "story singer," a sort of wandering minstrel who set stories to song. Aldo Fezzi walked about Tuscany dressed in a bright red jacket, even in the heat of August, going from town to town, from country fair to country fair, singing stories in rhyme while showing drawings ill.u.s.trating the action. Fezzi composed most of his own songs based on stories he collected in his travels; some were hilarious, racy, and off-color, while others were tragic tales of jealousy and murder, desperate love, and savage vendettas.

Fezzi composed a song about the murder in the Ta.s.sinaia woods that he sang across northern Tuscany: I sing to you of a great and tragic tale,In the town of Vicchio in the Mugello,At the Iaccia farm of the Paterno estate,There lived a young man, brutal and cruel.Stay and hear, and your tears will flow,His name was Pier Pacciani, twenty-six years old,O, listen to the story I am about to tell,To speak of it will freeze your blood...

Perugini considered it a crucial piece of evidence that Pacciani, spying on the two lovers from the bushes, told investigators he had gone into a frenzy of rage when he saw his girlfriend bare her left breast for her seducer; that was the moment when he had snapped. The story reminded Perugini of the left breast taken from the last two victims. The baring of the left breast, Perugini argued, was the event which first unleashed Pacciani's homicidal fury; it had settled in his unconscious to reappear years later, every time the same circ.u.mstances arose-when he saw two young people making love in a car.

Others pointed out that the left breast would be the one most likely seized by a right-handed killer-as the Monster was known to be. But this was far too simple an explanation for Perugini's taste.

Perugini discounted the earlier reconstructions of the Monster's crimes, which seemed to argue very much against Pacciani as the killer. For example, it was difficult to place a fat, short, alcoholic, thickset old peasant, barely five feet three inches tall, at the scene of the crime in Giogoli, in which the killer took aim through a strip of window that was five feet ten inches off the ground. It was even more difficult to put this doddering peasant at the scene of the last crime, in the Scopeti clearing, in which the killer outran a twenty-five-year-old who was an amateur champion of the hundred-meter dash. At the time of the Scopeti crime, Pacciani was sixty years old, had suffered a heart attack, and had undergone a bypa.s.s operation. His health records showed he had scoliosis, a bad knee, angina pectoris, pulmonary emphysema, chronic ear infections, multiple slipped discs, spondiloarthrosis, hypertension, diabetes, and polyps in his throat and kidney, among other ailments.

The other incriminating "evidence" Perugini and his team recovered from Pacciani's house included a round from a hunting rifle, two World War II sh.e.l.l casings (one of which was being used as a flower vase), a photograph of Pacciani as a young man posing with a machine pistol, five knives, a postcard sent from Calenzano, a register book that on its first page had a crude drawing of a road that could not be identified, and a package of p.o.r.nographic magazines. He also interviewed a series of witnesses who described Pacciani as a violent man, a poacher, a man who at town festivals couldn't keep his hands in his pockets and annoyed all the women.

But the crown jewel of evidence found in Pacciani's house was a disturbing painting. It depicted a large, uncovered cube, inside of which was a centaur. The human half of the centaur showed a general with a skull in place of a head who brandished a saber in his right hand. The animal part was a bull whose horns became a lyre. This strange creature had both male and female s.e.x organs and huge clown feet. There were mummies that looked like policemen, one of which was making a vulgar gesture. A hissing snake was coiled in the corner wearing a hat. And in front of all this, most significantly, were seven little crosses planted in the ground, surrounded by flowers.

Seven crosses. Seven crimes of the Monster.

The painting was signed "PaccianiPietro," and he had given it a misspelled t.i.tle: "A science-fition dream." Chief Inspector Perugini submitted the painting to an expert for psychological examination. The conclusion: the painting was "compatible with the personality of the so-called Monster."

By 1989, Perugini was closing in on Pacciani. But before he could hang the sign of "Monster" around Pacciani's neck, the chief inspector had to explain how the gun used in the 1968 clan killing ended up in Pacciani's hands. He dealt with the problem in the simplest way possible: he accused Pacciani of committing the 1968 murders too.

Judge Mario Rotella, as the examining magistrate, had watched Perugini's investigation with dismay, viewing it as an effort to construct a monster out of thin air, using as a starting point the conveniently brutal person of Pietro Pacciani. But the attempt to accuse Pacciani of the 1968 double homicide, without a shred of evidence, was going too far. It was a direct challenge to the Sardinian Trail investigation. As examining magistrate, Rotella refused to sanction it.

Inspector Perugini was backed by two powerful supporters for his investigation of Pacciani: Vigna, the prosecutor, and the police. The carabinieri backed Rotella.

The struggle between Vigna and Rotella, the police and carabinieri, finally came to a head. Vigna led the charge. He argued that the Sardinian Trail investigation was nothing more than the sterile result of paying heed to the ravings of Stefano Mele. It was a red herring that had sidetracked the investigation for more than five years. Rotella and the carabinieri found themselves on the defensive, protecting the Sardinian Trail investigation, but they were on the losing side. They had allowed their primary suspect, Salvatore Vinci, to slip through their fingers after his acquittal in Sardinia. Rotella, with his condescending pontifications and lack of charisma, had become deeply unpopular with the press and the public. Vigna, on the other hand, was seen as a hero. And finally, there was Pacciani himself-brutal murderer, daughter rapist, wife-beater, alcoholic, a man who forced his family to eat dog food-a monstrous human being in every way. To many Florentines, if he wasn't actually the Monster himself, he was close enough.

Vigna won. The carabinieri colonel in charge of the Monster investigation was transferred from Florence to another posting, and Rotella was ordered to close his files, prepare a final report, and remove himself from the case. The report, he was instructed, must clear all the Sardinians of any involvement in the Monster killings.

The carabinieri were furious at this turn of events. They officially withdrew from the Monster investigation. "If one day," a colonel of the carabinieri told Spezi, "the real Monster came to our barracks with his pistol and perhaps even a slice of a victim, our response would be: 'Go to the police station, we've got no interest in you or your story.' "

Rotella prepared the final report. It was a curious doc.u.ment. In more than a hundred pages of crisp, logical exposition, it laid out the case against the Sardinians. It detailed the clan killing of 1968, how it was executed, and who was involved. It traced the probable arc of the .22 Beretta from Holland to Sardinia to Tuscany, and placed it in Salvatore Vinci's hands. It built a persuasive case that the Sardinians who partic.i.p.ated in the 1968 killing knew who took the gun home and, therefore, knew the ident.i.ty of the Monster of Florence. And that that person was Salvatore Vinci.

And then, abruptly, on the last page, he wrote, "P.Q.M. [Per questi motivi, For these reasons] this investigation shall proceed no further." He dismissed all the charges and indictments against the Sardinians and officially absolved them of any involvement in the Monster of Florence killings and the 1968 clan killing. Mario Rotella then resigned from the case and was posted to Rome.

"I had no other way out except for this," Rotella told Spezi in an interview. "This ending is a source of the greatest bitterness to me and many others."

It was clear then-as it is today-that Rotella and the carabinieri, despite all their missteps, were in fact on the right trail. The Monster of Florence was very likely a member of that Sardinian clan.

The official closing of the Sardinian Trail meant that the Monster investigation could now proceed in any direction but the right one.

CHAPTER 24.

The carabinieri pulled their men out of SAM, and the special anti-Monster unit was reorganized under Chief Inspector Perugini as an all-police force. Pacciani was now the only suspect, and they pursued him hammer and tongs. The chief inspector was convinced that the endgame was near, and he was determined to force it to a conclusion.

The year was 1989, and the Monster had not killed for four years. Florentines began to think that maybe, finally, the police had gotten their hands on the right man.

Perugini went on a popular television show and became an instant celebrity when, at the end, he fixed his tinted Ray-Bans on the camera and spoke directly to the Monster in firm but not unsympathetic tones: "You're not as crazy as people say. Your fantasies, your impulses, have taken your hand and govern your actions. I know that even in this moment you are trying to fight against them. We want you to know that we will help you overcome them. I know that the past taught you suspicion and silence, but in this moment I am not lying to you and never will, if you decide to free yourself from this Monster who tyrannizes you." He paused. "You know how, when, and where to find me. I will be waiting for you."

The speech, which seemed wonderfully spontaneous to millions of listeners, had actually been written in advance by a team of psychologists. Perugini had memorized it. It was specifically directed at Pacciani himself, who they knew would be at home watching the program. In the days preceding the show, the police had bugged his house in hopes of getting some incriminating reaction from him when Perugini made his carefully crafted speech.

The tape recording from the bug was collected from Pacciani's house after the program and listened to with great interest. There had been, in fact, a reaction. When Perugini concluded his statement on television, Pacciani erupted in a torrent of profanity in a Tuscan dialect so antique, so forgotten, that it would have brought joy to a linguist. He then wailed, still in dialect, "They better not name names, because I'm just a poor, innocent, unfortunate man!"

Three years pa.s.sed. Between 1989 and 1992, Perugini's investigation against Pacciani made little headway. He could not find a smoking gun. The loot from the searches of his property and house had yielded just enough to satisfy the fantasies of the investigators, but not enough to actually arrest the man for murder.

When Pacciani was interrogated, he responded very differently from the cool and collected Vinci brothers. He loudly denied everything, told lies even about things of no importance, contradicted himself continually, broke down sobbing, and wailed that he was a poor innocent, unjustly persecuted.

The more Pacciani lied and bawled, the more Perugini became convinced of his guilt.

One morning in the early nineties, Mario Spezi, now a freelance writer, dropped by police headquarters and looked up an old friend from his days on the crime beat, hoping to rustle up a story. He had heard rumors that Perugini and SAM, years before, had asked the American FBI for help. The result had been a secret profile of the Monster prepared by the famed Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico. But no one had ever seen the report-if there even was one.

Spezi's contact disappeared and returned a half an hour later with a sheaf of papers. "I'm not giving you anything," he said, handing them to Spezi. "We haven't even seen each other."

Spezi took the file to a cafe in the loggia of Piazza Cavour. He ordered a beer and began to read. (The report had been helpfully translated into Italian; I have translated it back into English, being unable to get the original report.) FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia, 22135. Request for collaboration by the Polizia di Stato Italiana regarding the investigation of THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE, FPC-GCM FBIHQ 00; FBIHQ. The following investigative a.n.a.lysis was prepared by Special Agents John T. Dunn, Jr., John Galindo, Mary Eileen O'Toole, Fernando M. Rivera, Richard Robley and Frans B. Wagner under the direction of Special Agent in Charge Ronald Walker and other members of the National Center for the a.n.a.lysis of Violent Crime (NCAVC).

It carried a date of August 2, 1989: "THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE/Our file 163A-3915.

"Please be informed," began the cautionary preface of the American experts, "that the attached a.n.a.lysis is based on an examination of materials furnished by your office and is not to be considered a subst.i.tute for a complete and well-conceived investigation and it should not be considered conclusive or comprehensive."

The report stated that the Monster of Florence was not unique. He was a serial killer of a type known to the FBI, on which they had a database: a lone, s.e.xually impotent male with a pathological hatred of women, who satisfied his libidinous cravings through killing. In the dry language favored by law enforcement, the FBI report catalogued the Monster's likely characteristics, explained his probable motive, and speculated as to how and why he killed, how he chose his targets, what he did with the body parts, and even included such details as where he lived and whether or not he owned a car.

Spezi read with growing fascination. It became clear to him why the report had been suppressed: it painted a portrait of a killer very different from Pietro Pacciani.

The report stated that the Monster chose the places, not the victims, and he would kill only in places he knew well.

The aggressor in all likelihood effectuated a surveillance of the victims until they engaged in some form of s.e.xual 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 method of 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 a.s.sure 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.

According to the FBI report, the Monster acted alone. It said the killer may have a record, but only for such things as arson or petty theft. He was not a habitually violent person who would have committed serious crimes of aggression. Nor was he a rapist. "The aggressor is a person who is inadequate and immature in s.e.xual matters, who has had little s.e.xual contact with women in his own peer group." It said that the reason for the mysterious gap in the killings from 1974 to 1981 was probably because the killer was away from Florence during that time. "The aggressor is best described as a person of average intelligence. He would have completed his secondary studies or the equivalent in the Italian educational system. He would be experienced in work that required use of the hands."

Farther on it read, "The aggressor would have lived alone in a working-cla.s.s area during the years in which the crimes occurred." And he would own his own car.

But the most interesting part, even today, is the manner in which the crimes were committed, which the FBI called his "signature." "The possession and the ritual are very important for this kind of aggressor. This would explain why the female victims were generally moved some meters from the vehicle containing their companion. The necessity of possession possession, as a ritual enacted by the aggressor, betrayed rage toward women in general. The mutilation of the s.e.xual organs of the victims represented either the inadequateness of the aggressor or his resentment of women."

The FBI report noted that this type of serial killer often tried to control the investigation through direct or informal contact with the police, presenting himself as an informant, sending anonymous letters, or contacting the press.

One chapter of the FBI a.n.a.lysis discussed the so-called "souvenirs"-the body parts and perhaps trinkets and jewelry-the Monster took from the victims. "These pieces were taken as souvenirs and helped the aggressor relive the event in his fantasies for a certain period of time. These pieces are kept for a long period of time, and once they are no longer needed by the aggressor they are often left back at the scene of the crime or on the tomb of the victim. Occasionally," the report noted dryly, "the killer may, for libidinous reasons, consume the body parts of the victim to complete the act of possession."

A paragraph was dedicated to the letter that contained the piece of a victim's breast, mailed to the magistrate Silvia Della Monica. "The letter may indicate that the aggressor was attempting to mock the police, suggesting that the publicity and attention of this case were important to him, and indicating a growing sense of security on his part."

And about the pistol used by the Monster, the FBI wrote that "for him, perhaps, the pistol was a fetish." The use of the same firearm and boxes of bullets was all part of the ritualized nature of the killing, and probably included specific clothing and other accessories used only for killing, and kept well hidden at other times. "The overall behavior of the aggressor at the scene, including his use of certain accessories and instruments specific to the crime, suggests that the ritual inherent in this series of aggressions is so important to him that he must repeat the offense in the identical manner until he reaches satisfaction."

None of it sounded like Pacciani, so the FBI report was ignored and suppressed.

In the three years from 1989 to 1992, Perugini and his investigators became increasingly frustrated that they could not gather enough evidence to charge Pacciani. They finally decided to organize a ma.s.sive twelve-day search of the peasant's miserable house and property.

In April of 1992 Perugini and his men launched what would become the longest and most technologically advanced property search in Italian history. From 9:50 a.m. on April 27 to noon on May 8, 1992, a well-armed squad of elite investigators searched Pacciani's hovel and garden: they examined the walls inch by inch, sounded under the paving stones, searched in every possible gap and cavity, looked in every drawer, turned over furniture, beds, chairs, sofas, closets, and bureaus, lifted the roof tiles one by one, excavated with backhoes almost three feet deep in the soil of the garden, and penetrated with ultrasound every square millimeter of the land surrounding the house.

Firemen went over the place with their special knowledge. Representatives of private firms wielded metal detectors and heat-sensing equipment. There were technicians who filmed with precision the places that were being searched. There was a doctor on hand to check on the health of Pacciani, as they feared the excitable peasant might have a heart attack during the search. They brought in an expert in "diagnostic architecture," able to pinpoint the location in a seemingly solid, load-bearing wall where, for example, one might hide a niche or cavity.

At 5:56 p.m. on April 29, when the exhausted police had already decided to abandon the search "under a sky that promised rain," a discovery was made. Ruggero Perugini would later write about this triumphant moment in his book A Normal Enough Man A Normal Enough Man (the book that depicted the Botticelli nymph on the cover, vomiting blood). "I caught in the light of the late afternoon an almost imperceptible gleam in the earth," the chief inspector wrote. (the book that depicted the Botticelli nymph on the cover, vomiting blood). "I caught in the light of the late afternoon an almost imperceptible gleam in the earth," the chief inspector wrote.

It was a Winchester series H cartridge, completely covered with oxidation. It had not been fired, and so the base did not bear the Monster's signature firing-pin mark. It did, however, bear marks that indicated it had been inserted into a firearm. It was a.n.a.lyzed by ballistics experts who concluded that it was "not incompatible" with having been inserted into the Monster's gun. "Not incompatible" was as far as they would go despite (as one expert complained later) having been relentlessly pressured.