Similarities

Il Mostro di Firenze (the Monster of Florence) had murdered several people between 1968-85 – up to sixteen. The murders of Antonio lo Bianco and Barbara Locci – the first – were different. Later female victims were stabbed and some mutilated too. The scenes were staged too and Locciʼs son Natalino Mele had been in the car and witnessed the murder of his mother – he was just six years old. Natalino was also dropped off at a home near the scene of the murders.

This was unusual behaviour for a monstrous killer and it was never repeated in any of the other murders, which started six years after lo Bianco and Locci were murdered. There were differences which resulted in some believing that the 1968 murders were not committed by il Mostro, but that applied to the 1983 murders of Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Jens Uwe Rüsch as well. There were other differences between the murders of the German tourists and some of the other murders committed by il Mostro.

All sixteen murders involved the .22 calibre Beretta and most involved stabbing too – often gratuitous – and in some cases mutilation too. There were similarities in all of the murders other than just the gun and ammunition. The killer tended to strike on a Saturday and when the moon was hidden and all of the victims had attended discos the night before they were killed. It suggests that il Mostro prepared and planned his murders carefully, but despite a photo-fit of il Mostro he continued to evade justice.

Bizarre Developments

The investigation careered down a cul-de-sac at break-neck speed. Religious historian Massimo Introvigne contacted police to tell them that Florence had a long history of the occult and that the mutilation was reminiscent of their ritual. Investigators had already come to believe that the taking of genitalia was a trophy for some religious cult. However, there was absolutely no evidence to support this hypothesis.

Soon after the decision to associate the mutilation with the occult or a religious cult without a shred of evidence to support it, the person who had received the phone call, probably from il Mostro, received another call while he was on holiday. This was intriguing for police. How did the killer know that the Red Cross worker was on holiday?

Escalating Depravity

On July 29^th 1984 il Mostro murdered Claudio Stefanacci and Pia Gilda Rotini in Stefanacciʼs car in the commune of Vicchi di Mugello near Florence. Both had been shot and stabbed and il Mostro severed Rotiniʼs genitalia and left breast. Her body had been positioned like the other female victims, bar Locci. She had been stabbed a hundred times. No fingerprints were discovered. Police were baffled. But il Mostroʼs reign of terror was not over yet.

On September 8^th 1985 il Mostro struck again at the commune of San Casciano near Florence. Frenchman Jean-Michel Kraveichvilli and his girlfriend Nadine Mauriot were the last known victims of il Mostro. Kraveichvilli tried to escape after being shot, but he was caught and stabbed to death. Il Mostro repeated his mutilation of Rotini on Mauriot and later sent a macabre taunt to Assistant prosecutor Silvia Della Monica, the prosecutor who had tricked him into making the phone calls. The package contained a portion of Mauriotʼs severed breast.

While il Mostro ended his reign of terror, perhaps fearing that the newly discovered use of DNA profiling would catch up with him, the rumour mill continued speculating. Who was il Mostro? How had he gotten away with it for so long? But the vital question, how can the murders be solved remains conspicuous by its absence? Why? It is the most important question of all.

Intriguing

Il Mostro di Firenze (the Monster of Florence) had claimed his tenth or possibly twelfth victims on September 9^th 1983. The murders of German tourists Horst Wilhelm Meyer and Jens Uwe Rüsch were intriguing, as they broke the pattern. All the other victims including the four that would complete il Mostro’s murderous spree had been of a man and a woman, either making love, or seeming to have gone to the secluded places where they were killed for that purpose.

While some commentators rule out the murders of Antonio lo Bianco and Barbara Locci because they were not stabbed at all and other reasons, such as the lack of stabbing and genital mutilation of the female victim for example, compared to the other murders attributed to il Mostro, this lacked more. There was no evidence that Meyer and Rüsch were gay.

Misogynistic Sociopath

Meyer had long blonde hair and according to some could have been mistaken for a woman. That led some commentators to surmise that il Mostro mistook him for a woman and didn’t mutilate him when he realised his mistake. There is no evidence that he did mistake Meyer for a woman and not mutilate him when he realised his error, but that fits the pattern in some ways.

Il Mostro is clearly a misogynist – a sociopathic one. He removes the feminine identity of his victims. He has no interest in desexualising mutilation of men. This time it was just the thrill of killing, or perhaps there really was more than one monster at work.

The use of the Beretta and ammunition link these murders to other il Mostro crimes. But if that applies to the murders of Meyer and Rüsch, then it also applies in the first murders – those of lo Bianco and Locci.

Differences

The .22 calibre Beretta had been used in all 16 murders – four occurred after September 10^th 1983 – and the ammunition used had come from the same box. Whether the 1968 murder of lo Bianco and Locci were part of the series is a moot point. There were differences – possibly crucial ones. Locci’s body had not been sexually staged like the others and there was no genital mutilation. They had not been stabbed like the others either, but as was mentioned above that applied to Meyer and Rüsch as well.

The killer was also uncharacteristically merciful in the 1968 murders. Natalino Mele was just six years old. He was not only spared, but was dropped off at a nearby home, presumably by the killer. Natalino’s accounts were contradictory, but so what? He was a young child at the time and bound to have been traumatised by witnessing the murder of his mother.

The differences have led some to conclude that the murders of lo Bianco and Locci were not committed by il Mostro, but if not their murderer possesses important information about il Mostro as the gun was definitely used in all the killings, so how did il Mostro get it and from whom? Either il Mostro committed all the murders up to that point, or he obtained the gun used in the first killings later and used it on all his victims, but why?

The obvious answer is to clear Stefano Mele, but again why? And why choose such a bizarre method to do it? And having effectively fulfilled that purpose why continue after the 1974 killings, or at least after the gun had been linked to all the murders in 1982? Il Mostro plainly enjoys killing and hates women, especially their sexuality. Mele certainly had a motive for killing his wife and her lover, but not the rest of the victims, or even opportunity for some. Either Mele cannot be il Mostro, or there were other monsters sharing the killing.