Murder on the New Moon

by Johnny Sharp

  Carmela De Nuccio’s terror would also have been mercifully brief, as the killer shot her dead with several bullets. It seemed the killer had been keen to ensure that both were dead before he did anything else, as he also stabbed Giovanni several times, slitting his throat. He then turned his attention to Carmela’s body, which he dragged away from the car and mutilated in a macabre and ritualistic fashion.

  Her whole genital area… gone.

  It was just too horrifying, too outlandish for even the most unshakable observer to behold—a scene beyond the wildest imaginations of horror movie scriptwriters. And if that weren’t enough to drive any witness or detective out of their wits, these and other details would soon come back to haunt them.

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  Chapter 3—Making Sense of Madness

  Even when faced with a double murder as uniquely horrible and incomprehensible as this, experienced detectives will still turn to the most obvious explanations first. More often than not, they prove correct.

  This act was so frenzied and violent that it must be personal, they figured. Could some kind of deranged vendetta be the motive for it?

  Could a vengeance-crazed former lover have killed both the girl and her partner in a jealous rage, and then taken the body parts in some warped symbolic act of possession, as if to assert ownership of the most private, intimate part of this young woman’s being? The stab wounds on the man’s body could also be a sign of hatred for the man to whom she was now betrothed. A sensible enough theory, perhaps, but as investigators were soon to discover, you need more than that to catch a killer.

  Discreet inquiries into Carmela’s private life revealed that she had left a former boyfriend for Giovanni, but the ex could prove he was elsewhere on the night of the murders, and no other such potential enemies were anywhere to be found.

  However, a different line of inquiry was proving more intriguing.

  Just as this area was popular with courting couples, it was also a prime hunting ground for voyeurs. Could the killer be a voyeur whose activities had suddenly escalated to murder and mutilation? Could he have been confronted, panicked and overreacted, then perhaps removed the genital area in some wildly excessive attempt to remove evidence of his crime?

  However implausible it sounded, the police had to look into it, and words with some of the local voyeurs suggested that they might indeed be looking in the right place for their suspect.

  They found that a motley crew of voyeurs would regularly meet at the nearby Taverna del Diavolo (the aptly named “Tavern of the Devil”) to arrange who would have the right to set up their cameras in each of the most popular lovers’ haunts in the vicinity. The area where Giovanni and Carmela parked was known as a prime location, and their car was even known by the voyeur community, who would note “good” vehicles that they had noticed were likely to be the scene of sexual activity.

  Meanwhile, Antonello Villoresi, a journalist at the local daily newspaper, La Nazione, was putting together a story on the case when he noticed the similarities between the recent murders and a case near Borgo San Lorenzo in 1974. He wrote a small sidebar on the main news story speculating on this possibility. He also noted that both of the male victims had come from the town of Pontassieve—coincidence, or something more significant?

  For the time being, police remained focused on the case in hand—they weren’t in the habit of solving murder cases by listening to journalists’ idle hearsay.

  Besides, they were already homing in on a suspect. They had discovered that one particular voyeur, an ambulance driver named Enzo Spalletti, had regularly spied on couples in the area overlooking Via dell’Arrigo, and had been out and about that night. He denied being a voyeur and claimed it was mere coincidence that his car was spotted there. Under interrogation he admitted that he had been there attempting to spy on couples.

  Investigators smelled a rat—and potentially a case against this individual—when his wife announced that he had told her early on Monday morning that a couple had been murdered nearby several hours before news reports were released. Who else but the killer could have known that?

  The police felt they had a pretty strong suspect in custody. Spalletti denied any involvement in the crimes, but it was surely only a matter of time before they were able to pin the guilt on him.

  After ballistics and forensic tests came back and were compared with the 1974 murder, which La Nazione had flagged up, the investigating team made a chilling realization: The murders were committed with the same gun… and the same knife.

  A serial killer was at large in the Florentine hills. The mustachioed little man occupying a cell in the city’s prison didn’t have any connection to Borgo San Lorenzo, where the first killings took place, but could he still be the man they were looking for?

  On Oct. 23, 1981, they got their answer.

  The killer had struck again… while Spalletti was in custody.

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  Chapter 4—Here Be Monsters

  The dark nights were getting longer and longer by the end of October, but even on a moonless Thursday night like Oct. 22, couples were still indulging in their familiar rituals.

  Susanna Cambi, 24, and her 26-year-old fiancé, Stefano Baldi, was one such pair, and because a general strike was taking place the following day to protest the government’s draconian economic policies, the weekend was beginning early. After a visit to the cinema, they parked up in a picturesque valley near Calenzano, a few miles to the northwest of the city. It was a place where local people grew their own vegetables or wine during the day…and young lovers came to find some precious time alone once the sun went down.

  Calenzano

  Photo by Massimiliangalardi

  Stefano and Susanna probably hadn’t even read the news stories about the murders of two other couples, seven years apart. Even if they had, young lovers are not often noted for their caution. Besides, it was mid-evening, summer was over—why would anyone want to prowl around a vineyard on a dark, damp, unseasonably chilly Thursday evening like this?

  Stefano Baldi & Susanna Cambi

  Victims

  People would still be asking those kind of questions some 30 years later, but the first anyone knew about the couple’s fate that night was when a couple of elderly residents, arriving to tend their garden allotments the following day, came across a black VW Golf. The right front seat was reclined, the front passenger window was broken, and the right door was open.

  Stefano had been shot four times, while Susanna had been shot seven times and stabbed four times. Her body was dragged 32 feet or so into the open, where the sickeningly familiar removal of the genital area had taken place.

  Again, investigators found very little to go on, but it was immediately clear that this was the work of the same killer who had murdered the couple in Scandicci back in June. Sure enough, the bullet shells proved to be from the same gun—a .22 Beretta—and the stab wounds from the same weapon, now thought to be a scuba knife with distinctive notches on the blade. Only this time, the cutting seemed to have been done more confidently and clinically. Was the killer becoming more proficient?

  Baldi & Cambi Crime Scene

  Police Photo

  Again, the killer appeared not to have raped the woman. No semen was found on the body, nor any molestation marks elsewhere. Once more, there were no fingerprints, suggesting the killer must have worn gloves. A size 11 boot print was found on the wet ground near the car, but any hope of further clues was soon dashed as police, reporters, onlookers, and mourners leaving flowers swarmed the site, which was not sealed as a matter of course in those days. It soon became hopelessly contaminated.

  Nonetheless, stories flew around, some of them more intriguing than others. The day after the murder, before the bodies were discovered, a man phoned Susanna’s mother at her sister’s home, a mysterious occurrence considering he would have had no way of knowing that she was staying elsewhere. Susanna was also said to have complained that she had been th
e subject of unwanted attention from a man in the weeks preceding the murder.

  All of this would prove to be little use to detectives, however, and the pressure on them was about to crank up to unbearable levels. The people of Florence and its surrounding towns and villages now knew they had a serial killer on their hands.

  The young couples of Tuscany would never be quite so carefree again.

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  Chapter 5—The Killer’s First Mistake

  Once details of the killing began to spread, a popular consensus began to grow around the notion that the killer must be a member of the medical profession. Investigators had publicly mentioned the skill with which the body parts of Carmela and Susanna had been removed, and the idea of a well-to-do surgeon secretly slicing up his victims strongly appealed to an Italian public raised to be distrustful of those in the upper ranks of society.

  Locals pointed fingers at scores of unfortunate suspects based on little more than the sight of a police car parked near their house. The newspapers, meanwhile, had put a name to this heinous phantom stalking the hills: “Il Mostro di Firenze”—The Monster of Florence.

  For several months, the countryside surrounding Florence was unusually deserted after nightfall. Couples sought out quiet areas within built-up areas to conduct their evening liaisons, often with sheets covering the car windows to protect their modesty. The voyeurs had never had it so bad, and they too were scaling down their activities, lest they find themselves caught up in the investigations just like Enzo Spalletti, and risk having their shameful nocturnal activities exposed to family and friends.

  Gradually, as 1981 turned into 1982 and the winter and spring passed without further appalling headlines splashed over the newspapers, a few brave souls began to venture further afield once more.

  That said, 22-year-old Paolo Mainardi and his childhood sweetheart Antonella Migliorini, 19, were far from unaware of the danger posed by Il Mostro. They would only drive to relatively accessible spots, figuring that the Monster would not strike near any reasonably busy roads or likely witnesses.

  Machiavelli Piazza in Montespetoli

  Photo by Vignaccia76

  So after spending the evening of Saturday, June 6, with friends in Montespertoli, 12 miles southwest of Florence, Paolo persuaded his fiancée to accompany him on a short trip out to a quiet (but not too quiet) spot near the village of Baccaiano.

  Piecing together the various (and in some cases conflicting) accounts of that night, we can visualize a dramatic picture of the events that must have followed, even if we can only imagine the terror that must have visited Paolo and Antonella as the clock ticked toward midnight.

  It appears that the pair had finished making love and were getting dressed (the Monster, who clearly watched his victims before striking, seemed well aware that a state of semi-undress would make it harder for victims to escape) when Paolo noticed that they had company.

  Antonella Magliorini & Paolo Mainardi

  Victims

  He jumped into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition. He hit the car headlights, slammed into reverse, and lurched the car back 65 to 100 feet back onto the main road.

  But disaster struck! He overshot, and the back wheels of the car went into a ditch on the other side of the road. Try as he might, he could not pull the car out.

  Meanwhile, the killer was approaching, slowly and calmly. Stopping on the opposite side of the road, he took aim three times.

  With cool precision, he shot the man through the windshield and blasted out the headlights of the car.

  Approaching the car, he then fired several more shots into the couple before making his getaway.

  Within minutes, two friends driving down via Virginio Nuova towards Baccaiano spotted a Fiat 127 with its back wheels in a ditch. Turning around for a closer look, they assumed that there had been a crash and raised the alarm.

  Ambulance driver Lorenzo Alleganti arrived on the scene within a few minutes, and he immediately realized this was no accident.

  He first saw Antonella lying dead in the back seat, while Paolo was in the driver’s seat having also suffered several bullet wounds.

  The killer was evidently keen to make his getaway, as he did not perform his usual ritual dissection of the woman’s body, presumably concluding, with good reason, that with the car stuck on the side of a road, a passing motorist could find them at any moment. The killer took the keys from the ignition, threw them into the long grass a few hundred feet down the hill, and disappeared into the night.

  Despite the fact that by his usual, sickeningly clinical standards, this looked like a bit of a rushed job, there were once again few clues to be found at the scene. An empty packet of Norzetam (a so-called “smart drug,” which claimed to enhance intelligence and alertness) also yielded no leads. That the crime scene was once again soon overrun with people did not help.

  One question raised by the apparent accuracy of his shooting, however, was whether he could have had military training.

  Had the killer driven to the scene? If so, why were the car keys discarded nearly 110 yards away? If he were driving, surely he would have been able to dispose of them further afield. Or was that part of an attempt to throw investigators off the scent? All these questions made for more tiny pieces of a much-larger puzzle.

  Even in the absence of any other evidence, though, on this occasion, the Monster had made a major mistake.

  Because Paolo Mainardi was still alive.

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  Chapter 6—On the Killer’s Trail

  How careless of the Monster not to finish off one of his victims! His usual way was to neutralize the main physical threat—the male victim—then kill the female before beginning his appalling ritual with the knife. The Monster was also in the habit of stabbing the victims a few more times to ensure that they did not survive.

  Alas, as young Paolo had gone into a coma, he was unable to say anything of substance to those at the scene that might help identify his assailant. Then, shortly after eight the next morning, Paolo died. The investigators’ hopes had been dashed once more, and yet again the killer seemed to have the luck of the devil on his side—no witnesses, no trace left beyond the usual bullet casings, and precious few hints as to his identity. But the men and women who hunted him were not so naïve as to let him know all that.

  As soon as news of the murders broke, chief prosecutor Silvia della Monica asked the media to indulge in a small but significant economy with the truth. She asked them to publicize the “fact” that Mainardi had survived for a few hours, and had been able to give investigators crucial information about his killer. The hope was that this news would cause the Monster to panic and do something that would lead police to his door. It was a cunning, if ultimately unsuccessful ploy, but evidence suggests that it did have an effect.

  The ambulance driver who was first on the scene, Lorenzo Alleganti, reported receiving a phone call in the middle of the night, purporting to be a police officer. The “officer” asked him to reveal what he had seen that night. Alleganti refused to say anything. The same man then called back later, and when asked who was speaking, the voice said “Il Mostro di Firenze” (“The Monster of Florence”). He told the ambulance driver to look out for his family. Alleganti was given police protection, but he claimed that the calls continued, on one occasion even ringing the number where he was staying on holiday, until the end of 1985.

  So what did the caller sound like? He had no particular accent and the voice was not particularly distinctive, Alleganti reported. Maybe the Monster had thought of that too. Soon after, a potential witness came forward claiming he had seen the killer, and the police released a sketch of a balding, unshaven, middle-aged-looking individual. In truth, he looked like any number of ordinary Italian men, and sure enough, ordinary Italian men were suspected of being Il Mostro due to a passing resemblance to the picture. A pizzeria owner on the edge of the city cut his throat because of the harassment he received because
of his likeness to the sketch, and there were several examples of individuals whose lives had been made unbearable by suspicious locals believing they were killers due to an accident of appearance. This idyllic little patch of southern Europe was slowly going mad.

  As is customary in such high-profile cases, letters flooded into police stations, claiming either to be the Monster or to know who he was. Most were dismissed as the work of attention-seeking oddballs or people with a grudge and too much time on their hands, but one anonymous letter proved more interesting. It contained a yellowing newspaper clipping from August 1968, and suggested that investigators look at the murder it reported, which happened in the town of Signa, approximately 7 miles west of Florence. What they found would open up a whole new avenue in the hunt.

  Signa Castle

  Photo by Velq1958

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  Chapter 7—How Long Has This Been Going On?

  Even in the late 1960s, while the counterculture’s liberating influence was taking effect in more cosmopolitan societies, free love was very much an alien concept for most young Italians.

  Thirty-three-year-old Barbara Locci, however, was an unashamed exception to that rule. The pretty, snub-nosed mother of one was known as “Queen Bee” among local menfolk, as she was known to have taken numerous lovers—a pattern of behavior that her husband, Stefano Mele, seemed either unable or unwilling to put a stop to.

  Her latest paramour was a 29-year-old Sicilian bricklayer named Antonio LoBianco, and after a visit to the cinema one night in August 1968, the pair decided to stop in a quiet lane near a cemetery to make love. Barbara’s 6-year-old son, Natalino, was asleep in the back of the car, but that didn’t stop the pair. Their pleasure was cut short, however, as eight shots from a pistol were fired through the car window, leaving them both dead at the scene as the child screamed in horror.