Murder on lovers lane

Stone Phillips Anchor • Profile

Millions of people visit Florence each year to admire its cultural treasures. One of them is the world-famous Bargello Museum, home to great works by Michelangelo and Donatello.  Up until the 18th century, this was a grim prison, where executions were carried out on the very spot where I'm standing.

The truth is that the history of Florence, as glorious as it is, is also soaked in blood. From religious wars, to the intrigues and assassinations of the powerful Medici family, to the modern-day story we're going to tell you tonight.  It's about a killer unlike any other. It’s about a killer who is, in some ways, still claiming victims today.

Doug Preston: I'm a crime novelist.  I write thrillers.  And I've never encountered a story like this either in fiction or in non-fiction. It's really a story of tremendous evil.

Italy has seen its share of murder over the centuries, but it was never like this.  It’s a case that's been going on for decades, about a series of crimes so gruesome and so incomprehensible that seasoned investigators came to believe the devil himself was behind them.

It was an investigation like no other -– one in which the hunters became the hunted.

Preston: I feel like I've fallen into one of my novels.  Because now I'm under investigation.

For best-selling author Douglas Preston, it all began innocently enough six years ago when he decided to fulfill a longtime dream and write a novel set in Italy.

Preston: We'll rent a villa in the country outside of Florence, with olive trees and cypresses around us. Overlooking a vineyard. And isn't it going to be wonderful?

They made their home in the hills of Tuscany in a gorgeous place steeped in history.  Just down the road was the villa of legendary explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America is named.  And right next door to Vespucci's villa, within sight of Preston's house, was another, grimmer landmark.

Doug Preston: The scene of one of the most horrific killings in Italian history. 

Web extra video Dream home leads to 'Monster' murders An American author's new home in Tuscany leads him down a dark path Dateline NBC

It was a double murder, part of a string in which 14 young people were killed as they made love in cars on country lanes. The murders were an unholy amalgam of romance and violence.

Stone Phillips: A lot of people would hear that there was a murder just up on that hill, and be a little spooked by it.  Maybe -- maybe move, find another house.
Doug Preston: Well, I was a little spooked.  Obviously my landlord never said anything about it.  But the thing is that it interested me. 

After all, he was a mystery writer.  These murders had never been solved, and Preston soon learned that the killer had a name.

Stone Phillips: The Monster of Florence.  Had you ever heard of it?
Doug Preston: I'd never heard of it … and I was really intrigued, the Monster of Florence.  What a yoking together of two disparate words.  I mean, you think of Florence, this beautiful renaissance city, the birth of civilization. And then the Monster of Florence. I found that very intriguing. I had to know more about it.

His research soon led him to a man named Mario Spezi, a well-known newspaper reporter in Florence.

Doug Preston: He's the local expert. Actually at the paper they called him the "monstrologer."
Stone Phillips: Because he knew so much about it--
Doug Preston: Because every killing -- he covered it. That's right.

The two men met, and struck up an instant friendship.  Soon they were discussing writing a book together about the case.  But there was something else, too.

Doug Preston: I saw the obsession in Mario when I first met him. 

Obsession.  It's a word that will come up again and again.  But Spezi says it was pure chance that plunged him into the abyss. It was June, 1981 -- a Sunday -- when he got word of a double murder in the hills outside Florence.

Spezi: It's a small street in countryside.  It's very hard to find. 

It's about as lovely as you can imagine, with olive groves and wildflowers, along with a panoramic view of the city below.  A perfect place for young couples to park and make love, which is exactly what the victims had been doing.

Spezi says the crime scene is still vivid in his mind, 25 years later. It was a scene worthy of Hannibal Lecter, but this was real.  And here's a warning:  the details are graphic, and disturbing.

Mario Spezi: What I remember here was the car and the boy was in the drive seat, and it looked like someone was sleeping.

Web extra video 'Monster' victim had 'eyes open wide' Italian reporter recalls seeing his first two victims Dateline NBC

But the young man, just 30 years old, was not sleeping in the driver's seat.  He was dead, with a bullet in his head.  Spezi didn't see the second victim, who was a woman, until a police officer pointed across a dirt road.

Stone Phillips: So, he didn't want to go.  He told you where she was.
Mario Spezi: Right.  He wanted not to see again.

And when he found her, Spezi understood why.

Mario Spezi: She was positioned like someone is looking to the sky, with the eyes opened wide.
Stone Phillips: She was on her back.
Mario Spezi: Yeah.

The woman, 21, had also been shot to death, then dragged into a field of wildflowers, her gold necklace between her lips.  It was almost as if she'd been posed.  And there was something else -- something ghastly.

Stone Phillips: The killer had-- had removed her--
Mario Spezi: Yes.
Stone Phillips: --sexual organs?
Mario Spezi: All -- all sexual -- all sexual region, yes.
Stone Phillips: Had been -- had been cut away.
Mario Spezi: Cut away.  He took away.
Stone Phillips: He took it with him.
Mario Spezi: Yeah.

According to author Doug Preston, “The medical examiner's report was quite horrific. He said that the mutilation had been performed with three very swift, powerful and expert cuts with a knife. Probably a scuba knife.”

Stone Phillips: Why a scuba knife?
Doug Preston: Well a scuba knife has a peculiar notches in it which most knives don't have.

The killer had left only one hard piece of evidence -- shell casings from a 22-caliber pistol. Police quickly tested them and identified the type of gun that fired them as a long-barrel Beretta, a common gun in Italy.  But this particular gun was different.

Doug Preston: The firing pin of this gun left an unmistakable mark. Because it had a defect in it. That no other gun could leave. And so this became a very important clue.

The next day's paper carried Mario Spezi's story on the murder, and another reporter thought it sounded familiar.  He remembered a double murder in 1974 -- seven years earlier.

That double murder also involved young lovers on a country road, but north of Florence -- 30 miles away from the recent crime.  The young woman had been shot, then stabbed tentatively, with just the tip of the knife, dozens of times.  A vine was inserted in her vagina.  On the ground had been 22-caliber shells.  Police, of course, read the story too.

Doug Preston: They immediately went back to the shells of that killing. And found that in fact, they were from the same gun.

The same defective firing pin marked both sets of shells.

Doug Preston: It was very shocking. Because it suddenly told the city of Florence: this isn't just an isolated, psychopathic killing. A serial killer is stalking the hills.

And the killer was just getting started.

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