Murder on lovers lane

The year was 1968.  The crime was a double murder.  The victims were a man and a woman making love in a parked car.  The gun was the very same .22 caliber Beretta that the Monster of Florence was using to terrorize the Tuscan countryside.  In their frantic hunt for the monster, police re-opened what had seemed at the time like an open-and-shut case.

Doug Preston: The killer was the husband of the woman who was having an affair with somebody.

The killer's name was Stefano Mele, and all during the ‘70s and early ‘80s when the monster killings took place he was either in prison or a halfway house.

Doug Preston: There was no way this guy could be the monster.
Stone Phillips: And yet, somehow, the same gun was used in a '68 killing and these monster killings.
Doug Preston: That's right. Exactly.

How could the gun have passed from Stefano Mele to the Monster of Florence? Italian reporter Mario Spezi got a clue when he managed to interview Mele at the halfway house where he was being held.

Spezi: This is very important. He said, "they will kill again."  "They," not, "he."

In the words of author Doug Preston, “Who is 'they'? And that's when Spezi realized that this man had not acted alone. He'd had at least two accomplices.”
    
There were so many secrets buried in the Tuscan hills, and another was about to be unearthed.  Police slowly realized that the 1968 murder was far more than the act of a jealous husband.

Doug Preston: It was actually a group of Sardinians who had settled in Tuscany.  And it appeared to be a clan killing in which the husband was the fall guy. 

The group from the island of Sardinia was known to be insular and violent.  Its leader, Salvatore Vinci, had a bizarre relationship with Stefano Mele and his wife.

Doug Preston: It turned out that they'd been involved in absolutely kinky and depraved group sex encounters.  Where this woman was the center of attention. They called her the queen bee. 

And, Preston claims, Vinci was enraged when the queen bee -- who had slept with all his Sardinian countrymen -- started an affair with an outsider, a Sicilian.

Preston: He was furious with her, and he wanted revenge.

Investigators came to believe that Salvatore Vinci ordered his group to murder the queen bee and her lover.

Doug Preston: So the police formulated a theory that the Monster of Florence was one of these people who had got such a sick pleasure out of it he just had to do it again and again and again.

So, the hunt for the monster focused on that circle of Sardinians with access to the gun.  The new strategy even had a name.

Doug Preston: The Sardinian connection.  Or in Italian, they called it la pista Sarda.  The Sardinian track.

In 1982 police arrested one of the Sardinians.  They believed either he was the monster or that he knew who was.

Stone Phillips: And in September of 1983 while he was in custody?
Doug Preston: The monster struck again.

A young German couple was making love in the back of a Volkswagen bus.  The monster shot through the window, killing both.  These were murders nine and 10.

Preston: And then he entered the VW bus, and that's when he discovered he had killed a homosexual couple by mistake.

Police hit the Sardinian gang again -- arresting two more of its members.

Florentines hoped the terrifying case had finally been solved.  But then in July 1984 came the headline everyone dreaded: "IL MOSTRO E TORNATO."

The monster has returned.

The victims were young lovers parked in the country north of Florence.  Both were shot to death with that same Beretta .22.  The woman, just 18, was mutilated.  But this time it was worse. 

Preston: In this case, the monster had done more than just remove the woman's vagina.  He had also cut off and taken away her left breast.

These were murders 11 and 12.  There was outrage across Italy.  And now police were the focus of it.

Doug Preston: Because again and again the police had been arresting people.  And again and again, the monster had been killing people when those suspects were in custody.

In September 1985, the monster committed a crime that Hannibal Lecter would find hard to top.

The young lovers this time were tourists from France who were camping in the hills south of Florence.  As they made love in their tent, the monster shot the woman in the face, killing her instantly.  The man was shot several times, but somehow managed to burst from the tent.

Doug Preston: And here's someone who's running for his life … and yet the killer was actually able to catch him, reached up behind him, cut his throat.

The killer then returned to the tent and mutilated the dead woman in his new, more terrible way.  But he still wasn't done.

Doug Preston: One of the prosecutors in the case -- a woman named Silvia della Monica -- received in the mail a letter, addressed like a ransom note [with] letters cut out of a newspaper ... And inside was one item.  It was the nipple from the victim. 

Web extra video Killer targeted couple making love in tent After a couple finished making love, the 'Monster' cut into their tent, says Italian reporter Dateline NBC

The monster's grisly taunt was the exclamation point on a string of murders that had spanned 11 years and taken 14 lives. It had transfixed and terrorized a nation.

Investigators tried one last time to crack the Sardinian clan.  They arrested its leader, Salvatore Vinci -- whom they had long suspected -- but didn't have the evidence to convict him.

Preston: And that guy walked out of the courtroom.  And he disappeared.  And he's never been seen again.

It was crushing.  After six years of investigation, the Sardinian track had apparently come to a dead end. The gun had not been found.  The Monster of Florence was still at large.

Italian authorities sought help from outside the country.  They asked the FBI's behavioral science unit to formulate a psychological profile of the monster.

The FBI report described a lone killer who was sexually impotent, acting out a "ritualized anger" toward women. It was someone who felt he could only possess a woman by murdering her and mutilating her body.

Italian investigators questioned hundreds of men, but they made no progress until they received an anonymous letter about a farmer who lived just outside Florence.

Preston: Pietro Pacciani. He was known to be very violent.  He beat his children.  He beat his wife.  People were frightened of him.

He was certainly a monster. But was he the monster?

MORE FROM CRIME STORIES

Crime stories Section Front

The Night Mary Jane Disappeared The Friday the 13th Mystery Mystery at Lost Dog Road Slideshow: Photos in the Bob Duke case When The Smoke Clears Slideshow: The Christie Fleming murder Through The Pouring Rain In Plain Sight: Jaycee Dugard Bad Chemistry Bad Chemistry: Photos in the case Crime stories Section Front   Add Crime stories headlines to your news reader: