by Satish Sekar © Satish Sekar (May 13th 2014)
Intriguing
Il Mostro di Firenze (the Monster of Florence) had claimed his tenth or possibly twelfth victims on September 9th 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 10th 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.