Murder on the New Moon Read online

  Murder on the New Moon

  Johnny Sharp

  Florence by Night

  Photo by Enrico Pinna

  Copyright

  Murder on the New Moon

  Copyright © 2011 by Johnny Sharp

  Foreword copyright © 2011 by Marilyn Bardsley

  Cover art to the electronic edition copyright © 2011 by DarkHorse Multimedia, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  See full line of true crime eBook originals at www.crimescape.com.

  Electronic edition published 2011 by RosettaBooks LLC, New York.

  ISBN e-Pub edition: 9780795323188

  Contents

  eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley

  Prologue

  Chapter 1—A Shocking Double Murder

  Chapter 2—A Killer’s Bloody Signature

  Chapter 3—Making Sense of Madness

  Chapter 4—Here Be Monsters

  Chapter 5—The Killer’s First Mistake

  Chapter 6—On the Killer’s Trail

  Chapter 7—How Long Has This Been Going On?

  Chapter 8—Another Mistake?

  Chapter 9—A Mysterious Note

  Chapter 10—A New Atrocity

  Chapter 11—The Last Act

  Chapter 12—The Final Insult

  Chapter 13—Two Major Suspects

  Chapter 14—A Mother’s Mysterious Death

  Chapter 15—Leaving the Sardinian Trail Behind

  Chapter 16—Trial and Error?

  Chapter 17—How Many Monsters?

  Chapter 18—On the Devil’s Trail

  Chapter 19—The Drowned Doctor

  Chapter 20—The “Mastermind” Is Unmasked

  Chapter 21—New Forensic Evidence?

  Chapter 22—The Hunter Becomes the Hunted

  Chapter 23—The Mystery Endures

  Chapter 24—Sardinian Trail Or Blind Alley?

  Chapter 25—Profiles and Prime Suspects

  Chapter 26—Will We Ever Know the Truth?

  Photo Index

  Sources

  eForeword by Marilyn Bardsley

  “Il Mostro di Firenze” is Italian for “The Monster of Florence,” and a monster he certainly is, if he is still alive. Even though he is not nearly as well known as Jack the Ripper, the Monster visited absolute mayhem upon the hill towns of Tuscany for decades, beginning in the 1960s. In a country still bound by traditional views of sex outside of marriage, lovers had to be extremely discreet about their liaisons. In rural lovers’ lanes, the Monster murdered his 16 victims. Not satisfied to merely kill the hapless lovers, he carried out shocking mutilations of the women.

  Thousands of men were investigated as the murders caused a media-driven frenzy of suspicion among locals. The case exposed the Italian system of justice, which has lately come under intense criticism in the Amanda Knox prosecution, as corrupt and inept. Many men were accused of being the Monster, but their convictions were later proven wrong.

  Johnny Sharp, an excellent investigative journalist, has been following this fascinating but convoluted case for more than 20 years. With his wry, understated sense of humor, he details the unsuccessful and often outlandish Italian police and judicial efforts, which frequently teetered on the absurd. Finally, Johnny Sharp, who writes for the mainstream media in Britain, thoroughly scrutinizes each of the suspects and evaluates them and the evidence against them.

  Prologue

  If you are ever among the millions of annual visitors to the beautiful Italian city of Florence, you will be spoiled for choice as to which of its historical sights, artistic treasures and timeless architectural delights to view. The equally captivating surrounding region of Tuscany, famous for its Chianti red wine, has more than its fair share of sightseeing attractions. A few miles northeast of the city, is a more modest monument, which very few people have cause to visit.

  A short distance off a dirt track is a grey, weather-beaten headstone propped next to a wire fence surrounding a scruffy farm holding.

  You would probably never find it unless you knew where to look, and yet the dark tale of which it is now part is every bit as extraordinary, macabre and mysterious as that of any Renaissance myth.

  It is a true story that stretches back to the 1960s and possibly beyond—one which has seen a city gripped by fear, dozens arrested, a string of charges and convictions followed by embarrassing acquittals and pardons, and an ever-raging whirlpool of theories, rumors and conspiracies, which still divides Italians to this day.

  To one of the few people who do regularly visit the spot, it is simply a place of mourning. For more than 37 years, a lady named Bruna Bonini has regularly placed fresh flowers at the gravestone of her daughter, Stefania Pettini, and the girl’s fiancé, Pasquale Gentilcore. At this spot in 1974, the young couple became the victims of a ghastly double murder, which shocked locals, baffled investigators, and began a series of crimes that remain unsolved to this day.

  Their anonymous assailant has since grown in infamy, and the mystery he has created has all the horrific hallmarks and enduring intrigue of a modern-day Italian Jack the Ripper.

  Most disturbingly of all, it’s just possible that he may still be at large…

  Chapter 1—A Shocking Double Murder

  When people visit the idyllic North Italian region of Tuscany, they often remark on how the experience feels like traveling back in time. Something about the sun-scorched, vineyard-dotted hills, the medieval monasteries and the sleepy olive groves seems blissfully cut adrift in a more innocent age. Even the bustling city of Florence that lies at Tuscany’s heart is still dominated by the iconography of Italy’s distinguished cultural past, and although it lies only a couple of hours’ drive from the industrial powerhouses of Milan, Turin and Rome, the feeling that it still has one foot in the 15th century is hard to shake. Florence has long attracted tourists keen to drink in this kind of history and bathe in the city’s cultural riches, and in recent years, visitors have also flocked to rural Tuscany, attracted by the beautifully bucolic environment, world-renowned Chianti wine and mild Mediterranean climate. Its elegantly crumbling old farmhouses have been turned into holiday villas for Europe’s jet set, and the mere mention of Tuscany is now synonymous with romantic notions of the Continent’s unspoiled rural retreats.

  Florence Skyline

  Photo by echiner1

  Forty years ago, however, romance wasn’t quite so easy to come by for the natives of this largely agricultural region. Before the tourist money began to roll in, life was hard for most ordinary Tuscans, played out in a close-knit yet culturally backward place still mired in feudalism, family ties and repressive socio-religious customs. The younger generation in particular looked enviously at the rapid upheavals happening elsewhere, yet they would have felt as if the social and sexual liberation reflected in imported movies and Anglo-American pop culture was still way out of reach.

  By 1974, cultural ripples from the sexual revolution of the 1960s might have reached cosmopolitan denizens of Rome or Milan, but in the hilltop town of Borgo San Lorenzo, and even in Florence, more than 12 miles to the southwest, that era would have offered little more liberation than any other decade. Most young people lived at home with their parents until marriage or later, and that meant that for a young couple, however committed they may be, privacy was a precious commodity. With sex outside wedlock a strict no-no in this devoutly Catholic country, their only chance of giving in to their natural instincts was to find a small slice of sanctuary outside the fa
mily home.

  Where there’s a will, though, there are invariably several ways. One popular option was for couples to drive out to the dark, deserted roads that crisscross the countryside, park in a secluded spot and sneak some intimate moments, as the darkness and isolation shielded them from disapproving eyes. Yet that very same seclusion will always be a double-edged sword. While it protected the young lovers from prying eyes, it made them more vulnerable to dangers that were soon to cast a terrifying shadow over this picturesque patch of southern Europe.

  These carefree youngsters probably weren’t aware of it, but part of a seedy underbelly of Italian society were voyeurs who would lurk in popular lovers’ lanes and try to catch a glimpse of the couples as they made love, sometimes armed with night-vision cameras or following them from the discos, cafes or cinemas where they spent the hours before darkness fell.

  Maybe 18-year-old trainee accountant Stefania Pettini was not entirely oblivious of the odd unsavory individual lurking in the area. While meeting friends at the Teen Club disco in the town along with her 19-year-old barman fiancé, Pasquale Gentilcore, she mentioned that a weird man had been hanging around them and upsetting her. That didn’t stop her from accompanying Pasquale in his father’s blue Fiat 127 to the surrounding country lanes.

  Pettini Crime Scene

  They stopped along a dirt track near the river Sieve. What happened over the hours of darkness that followed is still a matter of conjecture. What we do know is that the Fiat was still there when a local farmer stumbled across it early in the morning of Sunday, Sept. 15, 1974. In it, he found Pasquale clad in just underpants and socks in the driver’s seat. He had been shot several times, and appeared to have died without a struggle.

  The scene was gruesome enough, but when the stunned witness glanced behind the vehicle, he found something truly macabre and stomach-churning. A young woman’s body lay naked and mutilated, with 96 stab wounds circling around her breasts and genital area. Most disturbingly of all, a piece of grapevine had been thrust into her vagina.

  At least there appeared to be a trail of evidence scattered across the scene. Bullet shells were found all around the car, and both lovers’ possessions had been rifled through. Pasquale’s wallet was lying nearby, along with some of Stefania’s clothes. The young woman’s handbag was found 250 yards away, its contents strewn around in a cornfield by the road to Rabatta, suggesting the killer had departed the scene in that direction. Pasquale’s wallet still had money in it, indicating that financial gain was not the motive, although certain items of Stefania’s jewelry and other possessions from the purse were missing. Could the killer have been looking for a gruesome trophy, a souvenir to help him remember and relive his appalling crime at his leisure?

  Pasquale Gentilcore & Stefania Pettini

  Victims

  Once the autopsy report was in, the picture became clearer. Pasquale had suffered five bullet wounds, his girlfriend three, all from a small-caliber gun. Ballistic experts concluded the gun was a .22 automatic long-barrel Beretta pistol, probably a model 73 or 74, the kind normally used on firing ranges due to its accurate shot. The bullets were distinctive copper-jacketed Winchester “H” series, manufactured in Australia the 1950s. They were common enough in Italy, but a more peculiar detail was the mark left on them from a slightly malfunctioning firing pin. The gun was clearly not in perfect condition, and it showed.

  Stefania had been shot three times. This fact and the location of the entry wounds led pathologists to conclude that she had died from one of the multiple knife wounds. Yet many of those wounds were just made with the tip of the knife, dotted in a rough pattern around her breasts and genital area. Could he have been lingering over her corpse, performing some bizarre ritual? Could he, God forbid, have been attempting to torture her before finishing her off? The idea was too horrible to even imagine.

  The type of knife used was not as easy to identify as the gun. Forensics examiners concluded that it was 4 to 5 inches long and a half-inch wide with a single-edged blade—the size and shape of a small hunting or scuba knife. Would any of these measurements prove significant in the investigation? Well, investigators didn’t have a lot else to go on initially, besides making some common-sense deductions from the grisly scene.

  The wounds and the ferocity of the attack suggested a man with an intense hatred of women, who also gained some kind of depraved satisfaction from leaving his victim naked and on full display, her last shreds of dignity utterly defiled. They also suggested the knife had been used as some brutally symbolic phallic instrument. The killer had not raped the woman. Had he tried but failed to achieve arousal and in his frustration expressed his impotent rage this way?

  Such questions may not even have been considered back in 1974. Analyses of the potential character of the killer and speculative psychological “profiles” were hardly the style of the police in 1970s Italy. Investigators relied, as ever, on conventional police methods, which meant their first instinct was to look at people close to the couple. After all, when confronted with a scene of such frenzied violence, unaware of any wider context of random killings, anyone would assume that the killer would probably know the victims. Could the couple have made enemies? Could a spurned former lover of one of them have taken bloody revenge?

  Borgo San Lorenzo Tower

  Photo by Vladimir Menkov

  While looking for such leads (and coming up empty-handed), investigators also appealed to locals for information. In small towns like Borgo San Lorenzo, people might harbor secret clan and family loyalties, but would also know each other’s business pretty well. In extreme circumstances like these, they might be persuaded to reveal such information to the authorities. And in a community hardly accustomed to visitors (Tuscany’s era of mass tourism was still a few years away), they might also have noticed any strangers coming into town—particularly those acting suspiciously.

  Eventually, the police inquiries led to them to focus attention on local voyeurs. Locals initially pointed to one Guido Giovannini, who was said to spy on couples in that area.

  Giovannini had been seen out on the evening of the murder. But there wasn’t a shred of solid evidence to back up local gossip, so police quickly ruled out Giovannini, along with a local mystic and a mentally-ill local who came into the local police station proclaiming himself the culprit.

  Investigators didn’t have the luxury of DNA evidence to go on back then. Besides, fingerprints were absent, suggesting the killer had worn gloves during the attacks. All they had to go on was ballistics evidence. If they could find the murder weapon that fired those bullets, they might be in business. As the weeks and months went by, no such discoveries came to light and, as the months turned into years, the case faded from the memories of those who had read about it in their morning papers. By the turn of the decade, few outside police circles and the more obsessive crime reporters would have cause to recall that night in 1974—apart from the families and friends of the tragic young couple, of course.

  When someone finally did recall it, they would find that they had reason to dig a little deeper into the violent history of these beautiful hills.

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 2—A Killer’s Bloody Signature

  During the first weekend of June 1981, Florence was sweating through a heat wave. Temperatures rocketed above 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and a fierce humidity made for some seriously sticky days and nights.

  So on the morning of Sunday, June 7, when police were called to the site of a double murder, they initially thought the badly mutilated body of the female victim was the result of a combination of the decomposition in the intense heat and animals eating parts of the body.

  That idea was repulsive enough, but when reality dawned, it shocked even the most hardened of detectives, and soon sent fear rippling through the whole city and beyond.

  Scandicci

  A quiet country lane near the hillside town of Scandicci, overlooking Via dell’Arrigo and the twinkling lights of Flo
rence to the north, would have been a favorite romantic location for 30-year-old warehouse worker Giovanni Foggi and his fashion-shop assistant fiancée, 21-year-old Carmela De Nuccio. They headed there after setting out at around 10 PM from her family home in nearby Ponte a Greve and were said to have spent some time at the Anastasia Disco near the village of Mosciano. A neighbor later reported hearing what sounded like a car backfiring around midnight and the sound of John Lennon’s “Imagine” on the vehicle’s stereo suddenly being cut short.

  The next anyone knew of their fate, however, was at 10:30 the following morning. An off-duty police sergeant was accompanying his young son for a walk when he noticed a discarded handbag lying next to a brown Fiat Ritmo, and a man apparently asleep inside. On closer inspection, he noticed that the driver’s window had been smashed, and the young man was actually dead from a bullet wound to the head.

  Carmela De Nuccio & Giovanni Foggi

  Victims

  When investigators reached the scene, they found something that would stick in their memories for a long time.

  Venturing down a steep bank nearby, they found the owner of the discarded handbag. Witnesses said she lay on her back in a field of wildflowers, as if gazing skyward, her eyes open wide, with her gold necklace resting between her lips. Police were initially reluctant to look too closely at her body, and it was only when further reinforcements reached the scene that it dawned on all present that there had been no animal attack. In fact, the killer had cut out the woman’s entire genital area and removed it from the scene.

  Her whole genital area… gone.

  The surrounding area was searched, but no body parts were found.

  This bizarre detail had to be significant… but how?

  As the police pieced together the likely chain of events from the night before, it seemed likely that Giovanni would probably have known very little about what happened when several bullets went through the driver’s window. He would have been killed almost instantly, courtesy of a shot to the head.