The Monster of Florence

by Douglas Preston; Mario Spezi

  The count glanced at his watch, then apologized. “I’m not being discourteous. I myself smoke only twice a day, after twelve and after seven.”

  It was three minutes to twelve.

  The count continued: “He wanted more busts in the Gran Salone during the shooting. He ordered up papier-mâché busts that were made to look old. But they wouldn’t do. So I said that I had a few of my ancestors down in the basement, shall we bring them up? He said marvelous. They were quite dirty, so I asked him, shall we dust them? Oh no, he said, please don’t! One of them was my quadrisnonna, my great-great-great-grandmother, born Luisa Velluti Zati of the Dukes of San Clemente, who was a very proper woman. She refused to attend the theater. She thought it was immoral. Now she is appearing as a prop in a movie. And what a movie! Violence, disembowelments, cannibalism.”

  “You never know, she might be pleased,” the countess said.

  “The movie crew behaved very well. On the other hand, the Florentines were really bloody-minded while they were filming. Naturally, now that it’s over, these same shopkeepers have put up signs in their windows: ‘Hannibal was filmed here.’ ”

  He checked his watch, found it had attained mezzogiorno, and lit his pipe. A cloud of fragrant smoke rose up toward the distant ceiling.

  “Aside from smoke and busts, Ridley was fascinated with Henry the Eighth.” The count rose and rummaged through the archives, finally extracting a letter on heavy parchment. It was a letter from Henry VIII to a Capponi ancestor, requesting two thousand soldiers and as many harquebusiers as possible for Henry’s army. The letter was signed by Henry himself and from the document dangled something brown and waxy, the size of a squashed fig.

  “What is that?” I asked.

  “That is Henry the Eighth’s broad seal. Ridley quipped that it looked rather more like Henry’s left testicle. I made a photocopy for him. Of the document, I mean.”

  We moved from the library into the Gran Salone, the palace’s main reception room, where Hannibal Lecter plays the clavier while Inspector Pazzi, hiding in the Via de’ Bardi below, listens. The Salone contained a piano, not a clavier, which Anthony Hopkins played in the film. The room was decorated with dark portraits, fantastical landscapes, marble busts, armor, and weapons. Due to the expense of heating such a vast space, the air temperature hovered just above that of a Siberian torture chamber.

  “Most of that armor is fake,” said the count, with a dismissive wave. “But this suit over here, this is a good suit of armor. It dates from the 1580s. It probably belonged to Niccola Capponi, who was a knight in the Order of Saint Stephen. It once fit me well. It’s quite light. I could do push-ups in it.”

  There was a lusty wail from a hidden room in the palace and the countess bustled off.

  “These are mostly Medici portraits. We have five Medici marriages in our family. A Capponi was exiled from Florence with Dante. But in those days Dante was probably looking down his long nose at us. We were among, as Dante wrote, la gente nova e i subiti guadagni—‘the new people and the suddenly rich.’ Neri Capponi helped bring Cosimo de’ Medici back to Florence in 1434 after his exile. It was an enormously profitable alliance for the family. We were successful in Florence because we were never the first family. We were always second or third. There is a Florentine saying: ‘The nail that sticks out gets hammered back in.’ ”

  The countess reappeared with a baby, Francesca, named after Francesca Capponi, a great beauty who married Vieri di Cambio de’ Medici, and who died in childbirth at the age of eighteen. Her rosy-cheeked portrait, attributed to Pontormo, hung in the next room.

  I asked the count who his most famous ancestor was.

  “That would be Piero Capponi. All Italian schoolchildren know his story. It’s like Washington crossing the Delaware, oft repeated and much embellished.”

  “He’s downplaying the story, as usual,” said the countess.

  “I am not, my dear. The story is largely exaggerated.”

  “It’s largely true.”

  “Be that as it may. In 1494, Charles the Eighth of France, on his way with his army to claim Naples, passed Florence and, seeing a way to make some fast money, demanded a huge payment from the city. ‘We shall blow our trumpets’ and attack, he declared, if the ransom were not paid. Piero Capponi’s answer was, ‘We shall then ring our bells,’ meaning they would call up the citizens to fight. Charles backed down. He is reputed to have said, Capon, Capon, vous êtes un mauvais chapon. ‘Capon, Capon, you are one evil chicken.’ ”

  “Chicken jokes are quite prevalent in the family,” the countess said.

  The count said, “We eat capons at Christmas. It’s a little cannibalistic. On that subject, let me show you where Hannibal Lecter took his meals.”

  We followed him into the Sala Rossa, an elegant drawing room with draped chairs, a scattering of tables, and a mirrored sideboard. The walls were covered in red silk that was woven from cocoons produced on the family’s silkworm estates two hundred and fifty years ago.

  “There was a poor woman in the film crew,” said the countess. “I had to keep saying to her, ‘Don’t move anything without permission.’ She kept moving everything around. Every day while they were filming, Niccolò’s little brother Sebastiano, who runs Villa Calcinaia, the family estate in Chianti, brought up a bottle of their wine, and he would place it in a strategic location in this room. But it never managed to get into the picture. This woman kept moving it out. The producers had an arrangement with Seagram’s to use only their brands.”

  The count smiled. “Nevertheless, by the end of the day the bottle had always managed to get itself uncorked and was empty. It was always the best riserva.”

  Many years ago, when Thomas Harris was researching the Monster of Florence case for his novel Hannibal, and attending Pacciani’s trial, he met Count Capponi and was invited to the palazzo. Much later Harris called the count and said he would like to make Hannibal Lecter curator of the Capponi archive—would that be all right?

  “We had a family meeting,” the count said. “I told him that we agreed, on one condition—that the family would not be the main course.”

  Niccolò and I became friends. We met for lunch every so often at Il Bordino, a tiny trattoria behind the church of Santa Felicità, where his family’s chapel and crypt were located, a short walk from his palazzo. Il Bordino was one of the last old-time trattorias in Florence; small, crowded, with a glass counter displaying the dishes available that day. Its dim interior was more like a dungeon, with blackened stone and plaster walls, scarred wooden tables, and ancient terra-cotta floors. The fare was quintessentially Florentine, simple dishes of meat and pasta accompanied by slabs of coarse bread, served at working-class prices, with tumblers of rough red wine.

  One day over lunch, I mentioned to Niccolò that Mario Spezi and I were researching the case of the Monster of Florence.

  “Ah,” he said, keenly interested. “The Monster of Florence. Are you sure you want to get involved in that business?”

  “It’s a fascinating story.”

  “A fascinating story indeed. I should be careful if I were you.”

  “Why, what could happen? It’s an old story. The last killing was twenty years ago.”

  Niccolò slowly shook his head. “To a Florentine, twenty years is the day before yesterday. And they are still investigating. Satanic sects, black masses, a villa of horrors . . . Italians take these things very seriously. Careers have been made—and ruined—over this case. Take care that you and Mario do not poke too vigorously with your sticks into that nest of vipers.”

  “We’ll be careful.”

  He smiled. “If I were you, I should get back to that delightful novel you described to me about Masaccio—and leave the Monster of Florence well enough alone.”

  CHAPTER 33

  One fine spring day, Monster 101 neared its end. I knew all the facts that were known, an expert on the case second only to Spezi and the Monster himself. But there was one point on which Spezi
had been resolutely coy, and that was his opinion as to who the Monster of Florence might be.

  “Eccoci qua,” said Spezi. “And so here we are: satanic sects, blasphemous hosts, and hidden masterminds. What next?” He leaned back in the chair with a crooked smile and spread his hands. “Coffee?”

  “Please.”

  Spezi shot back his demitasse of espresso, an Italian habit I could never quite acquire. I sipped mine.

  “Any questions?” His eyes twinkled.

  “Yes,” I said. “Who do you think is the Monster?”

  Spezi flicked the ash off his cigarette. “It’s all there.” He gestured at the heap of papers. “Who do you think?”

  “Salvatore Vinci.”

  Spezi shook his head. “Let’s look at it as Philip Marlowe might. It’s all about the Beretta. Who brought the gun to the 1968 crime? Who used it? Who carried it home? And, most important, what happened to it later? It’s all there in the story, if you care to look for it.”

  “The gun belonged to Salvatore Vinci,” I said. “He brought it with him from Sardinia, he planned the 1968 killing, he had the car, and he was the shooter.”

  “Bravo.”

  “So he must have carried the gun home.”

  “Exactly. He handed the gun to Stefano Mele to take the last shot, so that Mele would contaminate his hands with powder residue. Afterwards, Mele threw the gun down. Vinci picked it up and took it home. He was no fool. He wasn’t about to leave the murder weapon at the scene. A gun used in a murder is dangerous, because ballistics can connect it to bullets recovered from the victims. A gun like this would never be sold or given away. It would either be destroyed or carefully hidden. Since we know the gun wasn’t destroyed, Salvatore Vinci must have hidden it. Along with the boxes of bullets. Six years later it emerged to kill again—in the hands of the Monster of Florence.”

  I nodded. “So you think Salvatore Vinci is the Monster—just as Rotella did.”

  Spezi smiled. “Really?” He reached into the pile of papers, withdrew the FBI report. “You’ve read it. Does it sound like Salvatore Vinci?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not at all! The profile is insistent on one crucial point: the Monster of Florence is impotent, or nearly so. He suffers from sexual dysfunction and would have little or no sexual contact with women his own age. He kills to satisfy his libidinous desires, which can’t be satisfied in the normal way. Strong evidence of this is that none of the crime scenes showed any evidence of rape, molestation, or sexual activity. But Salvatore was the opposite of impotent—he was a veritable Priapus. Salvatore doesn’t match the rest of the FBI report either, particularly in the psychological details.”

  “If Salvatore Vinci isn’t the Monster,” I asked, “then you still have the problem of how the Beretta passed from him to the Monster.”

  The question hung in the air. Spezi’s eyes twinkled.

  “Was it stolen from him?” I said.

  “Exactly! And who was in the best position to take the gun?”

  Although all the clues were there, I could not see them.

  Spezi tapped his finger on the table. “I don’t have the most important document in the case. I know it exists, because I spoke to someone who’d seen it. I tried everything to get it. Can you guess what document that might be?”

  “The complaint of the theft?”

  “Appunto! In the spring of 1974, four months before the Monster’s first killing in Borgo San Lorenzo, Salvatore Vinci went to the carabinieri to file a complaint. ‘The door of my house was forced and my house was entered.’ When the carabinieri asked him what was stolen, he said, ‘I don’t know.’ ”

  Spezi rose and opened the window. The stream of fresh air eddied the blue layers of smoke in the room. He shook another Gauloise out of a pack lying on the table, stuck it in his mouth and lit it, then turned from the window. “Think about it, Doug. This fine fellow, a Sardinian with a deep and ancient suspicion of authority, probably a murderer, goes to the carabinieri to report a breaking and entering when nothing was stolen. Why? And why would anyone rob his house in the first place? It’s a sorry house, poor, there’s nothing in there of value. Except . . . perhaps . . . a .22 Beretta and two boxes of bullets?”

  He tapped the ash off the cigarette. I was on the edge of my seat.

  “I haven’t told you the most extraordinary thing of all. Vinci named the person responsible for the breaking and entering. The person he denounced was just a boy. A member of his Sardinian clan, a close relation. The last person he would have thrown to the carabinieri. Why file charges against him if he took nothing? Because he was afraid of what the thief might do with the gun. Salvatore Vinci wanted the breaking and entering to be on record, to protect himself. In case the boy did something with the gun that might be . . . terrible.”

  Spezi pushed his finger a few inches closer to me, as if sliding the nonexistent document forward. “Right there, on that document, we would find the name that Salvatore Vinci gave the carabinieri. The name of the thief. That person, my dear Douglas, is the Monster of Florence.”

  “And who is it?”

  Spezi smiled teasingly. “Pazienza! Back in 1988, after the rift between Rotella and Vigna, the carabinieri officially withdrew from the investigation. But they couldn’t leave it well enough alone. They kept it going in secret. And the missing document is one of the things they dug out of God knows what dusty file in the basement of some dingy barracks.”

  “A secret investigation? Did they find out anything else?”

  Mario smiled. “Many things. For example, after the first Monster killing, Salvatore Vinci checked himself into the psychiatric department at Santa Maria Nuova hospital. Why? We don’t know—the medical records seem to have disappeared. Perhaps the boy who had stolen his gun had gone and done something terrible with it.”

  He reached out and shuffled through a pile, extracting the FBI report. “Your FBI, in this report, lists a number of characteristics the Monster is likely to have. Let’s apply it to our suspect.

  “The report says that the Monster is likely to have a record of petty crimes such as arson and theft, but not crimes such as rape and violence. Our man has a rap sheet of auto theft, illegal possession of weapons, breaking and entering, and an arson.

  “The report says that during the seven years between the crime of 1974 and the next one in 1981, the Monster was not in Florence. Our man left Florence in January of 1975. He returned to Florence at the end of 1980. In several months, the killings started again.

  “The report says that the Monster probably lived alone during the period of the crimes. When not living alone, he would probably be found living with an older woman such as an aunt or grandmother. During much of the seven-year period he was away from Florence, our suspect lived with an aunt. Several months after the last killing, in 1985, our man met an older woman and moved in with her. The killings stopped. True, from 1982 to 1985 he was married, but according to a carabinieri officer who was part of the secret investigation into the Monster case, the marriage was annulled for impotentia coeundi— nonconsummation. To be fair, impotentia coeundi was sometimes invoked as a way to obtain a divorce in Italy at that time, even when it wasn’t necessarily true.

  “The FBI report says that this type of killer will often contact the police and try to mislead the investigation, or at least collect news about the crime. Our man offered himself as an informant to the carabinieri.

  “Finally, studies of sexual serial killers often turn up a history of maternal abandonment and sexual abuse within the family unit. Our man’s mother was murdered when he was one year old. He suffered a second traumatic separation from a mother figure when his father’s longtime girlfriend left. And he may have been exposed to his father’s bizarre sexual activities. He was living with his father in a small house while his father presided over sex parties involving men, women, and perhaps even children. Did his father force him to participate? There’s no evidence that he did . . . or didn’t.”
>
  I was beginning to see where he was going.

  Spezi took a long drag of smoke and exhaled. “The report says the killer probably began in his twenties. However, at the time of the first killing, our man was only fifteen years old.”

  “Wouldn’t that rule him out?”

  Spezi shook his head. “The fact is, many serial killers begin at a surprisingly young age.” He reeled off the names of famous American serial killers and their ages of debut—sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, seventeen. “He almost botched the first crime in 1974. It was the work of a panicky and impulsive beginner. He managed to pull it off only because the man had been killed by the first shot, but only by accident. The bullet struck his arm and then, deflected by the bone, entered the chest and stopped his heart. The girl had enough time to get out of the car and run. The killer fired after her, but only hit her in the legs. He had to kill her with the knife. Then he lifted her cadaver and moved it behind the car. He tried to possess her, but couldn’t do it. ‘Sexual inadequacy.’ Impotentia coeundi. He took a woody vine instead and pushed it into her vagina. He remained with the body and caressed it with the only instrument that gave him a thrill, his knife. He made ninety-seven cuts in her flesh. He may have wanted to sexually molest the corpse but he couldn’t. He made the cuts around the breasts and around the pubic area, as if to underline that she was now his.”

  A long silence in the small dining room. The window at the far end of the table looked out on the very hills the Monster had stalked.

  “It says the Monster owned his own car. Our man had a car. The murders were committed in places well known to the killer, near his house or place of work. When you map our man’s life and movements, he had either lived near or was familiar with every single place.”

  Mario’s finger touched the table again. “If only I could find that document of the breaking and entering.”

  “Is he still alive?” I asked.

  Spezi nodded. “And I know where he lives.”

  “Have you ever spoken to him?”