Murder on the New Moon Read online

  Still, when we look again at the Sardinian trail, we begin to sympathize with anyone who might reach for such hypotheses and semi-logical chains of thought. None of the potential suspects who emerged from them are entirely convincing on closer inspection.

  Despite, in all probability, being involved in the 1968 murder and being convicted for it, Stefano Mele clearly did not go on to kill the other couples. We know he was in jail or otherwise incapacitated during those times.

  Likewise, Giovanni Mele and Piero Mucciarini were both arrested on suspicion of the murders in 1984, and released when the Monster killed again.

  Before that, Francesco Vinci, the youngest of three Sardinian brothers who were Barbara Locci’s lovers, and who may have taken part in the 1968 murders, was arrested and charged with the murders in 1982. The fact that he was in prison when the next two crimes took place, however, proves that he could only have been involved if he was not acting alone. The arrest of his nephew Antonio Vinci on firearms charges barely a week after the 1983 killings suggests the police believed that the pair of them might have been involved. Yet the fact that his uncle was still in prison in 1984 when another double murder took place makes it very difficult to paint a picture of an uncle handing the killer’s weapon on to his nephew.

  So we turn to a later suspect who never had the good fortune of being exonerated by events. Salvatore Vinci was the middle of the three brothers from the Mediterranean island, and the official investigation began to turn in his direction after the last of the Monster killings. As I explained in Chapter 14, he appears to have killed his first wife in 1961. Stefano Mele admitted, then denied, that the middle Vinci brother had been behind the 1968 murders. There were circumstantial links between his clan and the gun and also between a series of murders of prostitutes during the Monster era and Salvatore Vinci’s maintenance company. Meanwhile, the bloodstained rag and woman’s straw purse found in his apartment after the 1984 killings were never thoroughly tested. Do they still exist, and if so, could the new technology of DNA testing help prove their provenance one way or the other? Given the stubborn refusal of the present investigation to reconsider anything to do with the Sardinian suspects, it doesn’t look like we’ll find out any time soon.

  There is, however, an as-yet-ignored aspect of these murders, which might also point towards Salvatore Vinci. The 1983 murders of two German men, Wilhelm Horst Meyer and Uwe Rusch Sens, were clearly committed by the Monster—the distinctive bullet shells once again proved that. Yet the fact that it was a pair of men suggested the killer had made a startling detour from his previous preference for heterosexual couples.

  The official line on this crime, seemingly accepted by nearly everyone who has looked at the case, is that the killer simply mistook the blond, long-haired Uwe Rusch Sens for a woman and did not commit the usual ritual mutilation after finding out his mistake. Among the other aspects of the crime scene that drew investigators to this conclusion was the existence of a pornographic magazine, Golden Gay, discarded near the scene. Yet the widespread assumptions that the couple was a) mistaken for a man and woman by the killer and b) a gay couple are open to question.

  In the first instance, we have to consider the fact that the previous Monster killings and subsequent profiles revealed a killer who would in all likelihood have watched his victims before he struck. Would he really have failed to notice that they were not a man and a woman, but, in fact, two young men? A resident who saw the men parked at the scene even reported that the supposedly effeminate blond man actually sported a goatee!

  On the latter subject, relatives or friends have not confirmed the pair’s sexuality, and it would surely be more likely for a pair of young guys to be traveling together as friends.

  Moreover, some accounts have said that the magazine did not have fingerprints on it, suggesting it may have been brought to the scene and did not belong to the men. If that is the case, could the Monster have been the one who brought it to the scene, either to throw investigators off the scent or to somehow heighten the fantasy element of the experience?

  Furthermore, if the killer had chosen this couple by mistake, it seems odd that he did not attempt to satisfy his bloodlust again soon afterwards. During this murder and the 1982 murders, he was apparently unable to perform his usual ritual mutilations, and would surely have fled the scene feeling frustrated and unfulfilled. Either the killer was so cool and calculated that he could control any urge to quickly make up for his mistake, or he had actually been perfectly happy with his handiwork on this occasion.

  Another interesting fact that has never been mentioned in any coverage of the case is that the magazine, Golden Gay, was in fact a magazine aimed at bisexuals, produced in France but sold in Italy where the retail censorship laws were different. The magazine was marketed towards a straight audience that liked to experiment with same-sex pairings and specialized in depicting group sex involving both scenarios.

  It is interesting to note that Salvatore Vinci was known to have indulged in, and had a particular predilection for, sex with both men and women. One former lover revealed that Salvatore enjoyed being penetrated by a male lover while doing the same to a female partner.

  Was this a significant detail missed by the original investigation, or yet another irrelevant distraction?

  One other fact that helps in pointing the finger of guilt at Salvatore Vinci: The murders ended in 1985. He was arrested the following June, and spent the next two years awaiting trial for the 1961 murder of his wife, before being acquitted and promptly disappearing off the face of the earth.

  Everything we know about serial killers tells us that it is highly unlikely that the killer would curtail his activities without either having left the country, died, or been imprisoned.

  Dennis Rader

  Mug Shot

  One rare exception to this “rule” that serial killers do not “retire” voluntarily was the BTK killer, Dennis Rader. He sadistically murdered at least 10 victims in Kansas between 1974 and 1991, with long intervals of up to eight years between killings. However, even in that case, he could not resist the opportunity to taunt the authorities. He sent messages on computer disks to the media in 2005. Through digital footprints on the disk, they managed to secure an arrest and conviction, whereupon he admitted that he had been planning another murder for later that year. So even that exception seems to prove the rule, as any notions of his “retirement” were, it seems, premature.

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 25—Profiles and Prime Suspects

  Bearing all this in mind, we have to ask: Is Salvatore Vinci the closest we have to a prime suspect for the Monster murders?

  Perhaps, but when you consider the FBI profile of the killer, it takes several logical leaps to fit the middle-aged Sardinian into the frame.

  The apparent impotence of the killer and the absence of rape does not match Salvatore Vinci’s polygamous, sex-mad personality, nor does the strong evidence that he had committed rape before without any problems with impotency. (He was said to have impregnated his first wife Barbarina by violent, coercive means. He is nowhere near 5’10”, which several pieces of evidence suggest was the killer’s height, and if we conclude that the size 11 footprints found at two crime scenes belonged to the killer, that would also point to a bigger man.

  The profile suggests the killer probably lived alone or with an older family member and was probably in his 20s at the time of the first murder. Again, this profile is a miss on both counts.

  Nonetheless, such speculative profile sketches, however well grounded in previous cases they may be, should only ever be regarded as a rough guide, with each element potentially open to contradiction. Serial killers come in all shapes and sizes, and any mold that a number of them fit is there to be broken.

  Who knows? There may be an alternative explanation for the position of the bullet holes in the German men’s camper van, and someone other than the killer may have left the footprints there. Meanwhile, although it seems re
asonable to conclude that the killer’s trademark mutilations were signs of impotency, in reality, no one ever really knows the warped motivations that drive an individual to commit unspeakable crimes like these. So we must keep an open mind.

  In Mario Spezi and Robert Preston’s 2008 book The Monster of Florence, they go so far as to name their suspect for all the murders except the 1968 case. They then confront and interview him. He is Antonio Vinci, the estranged son of Salvatore.

  As we explained in Chapter 14, Antonio Vinci was the baby boy who was mysteriously removed from the room when his mother died from gas poisoning in Sardinia back in 1961.

  Although Spezi and Preston reveal that Antonio expressed an intense hatred for his father, he was, by contrast, close friends with his uncle, Salvatore’s younger brother Francesco—hence the unsuccessful attempts by police to play uncle and nephew off against each other in 1982.

  Since Spezi and Preston’s confrontation with Antonio, their man has also been interviewed (although he refused to appear on camera) by Dateline NBC anchor Stone Phillips for a US documentary about the case. On both occasions, he denied any involvement in the murders, and although his words and demeanor were presented as being somehow sinister (such as his reported parting shot while looking Spezi in the eye: “I don’t play games”), that is surely a matter of interpretation.

  All the same, the case that Spezi and Preston make against Antonio Vinci is initially a persuasive one. They note that Antonio’s annulled marriage between 1982 and 1985 may have been the result of his impotence and inability to consummate the union (although he contemptuously dismissed any such suggestions when interviewed), and point out that unlike his father, he is of the height that the crime scene evidence suggests.

  They also opine that he could have been familiar with all the areas where the crimes took place and was not otherwise detained at the times they took place, despite confirming that he lived away from the area between 1975 and 1980.

  They also offer an explanation as to how the .22 Beretta pistol and its bullets came into Antonio’s possession. They tell of how Salvatore Vinci’s home was burgled in the spring of 1974 and that Antonio, who was a teenager living with his father at the time, was the prime suspect. They conclude that he must have stolen the gun and its bullets.

  They leave some pressing questions unanswered within this scenario. Would Salvatore (who knew full well who had broken in) have simply let his son keep the gun and bullets after stealing them, and use them even when he, as their rightful owner, knew it could well lead to no end of trouble for himself? Omertà (the code of silence endorsed by secretive criminal clans such as the Mafia) is one thing, but are we to believe that stealing from your own is something Salvatore Vinci would have accepted?

  Meanwhile, one fact that proves a far more formidable stumbling block for their theory is this: When he was supposed to have committed his first double murder, in 1974, Antonio Vinci would have been barely 15 years of age. Could he really have worked up a sufficient burning hatred for women by that point to provoke him to commit such appalling acts? Would he have had the guile to cover his tracks so well—the expertise with a pistol and the means to escape? He did not live within walking distance of where the crime was committed, and both the FBI profile and other crime scene evidence point to the killer driving to and from the scenes of the crimes, and indeed owning his own car. Are we to believe that this teenager made good his escape from the scene on foot, probably covered in blood, carrying a pistol and a bloody knife along with several of the victims’ possessions?

  In The Monster of Florence, Preston writes that Spezi explained the age issue away by asserting, “The fact is, many serial killers start at a surprisingly young age.” We are told he then “reeled off the names of famous American serial killers and their ages of debut—sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, seventeen.” He doesn’t actually name those examples, but in reality there are only a few isolated cases where serial offenders first killed as teenagers, and never in the calculated, violent manner of Il Mostro.

  Spezi’s suggestion that serial killers often embark on their murder sprees as teenagers is frankly untrue. The documented fact is, most serial killers start killing much, much later. According to an influential study by respected American psychologist Jack Apsche, the average age of serial killers when claiming their first victim is the ripe old age of 28. Antonio wouldn’t even have reached that age until two years after the final murders.

  Meanwhile, if Antonio Vinci was the killer, are we to believe that he voluntarily retired from his bloody vocation in 1985, at the tender age of 26, before most serial killers would have even started? Should we believe that he has spent the last quarter of a century mostly at liberty and living quietly in the Florence area, somehow miraculously cured of the urge either to kill again or to contact police to further taunt them after his attention-seeking piece de resistance—the package of a victim’s breast tissue sent to Silvia della Monica?

  It just doesn’t ring true. Indeed, in this instance, it looks increasingly like it is Spezi and Preston rather than the official investigators who are trying to make the evidence fit the theory. From where this author is standing, it just looks like another square peg being forced into a round hole.

  www.crimescape.com

  Chapter 26—Will We Ever Know the Truth?

  At the time of this writing, the official investigation into the Monster murders appears to have fizzled out. Inspector Giuttari has now been transferred to Rome and Judge Mignini is still fighting charges of abuse of office, while their campaign to prove a Satanic conspiracy has resulted in little more than a string of acquittals, pardons and investigative loose ends.

  So perhaps we now have to consider that the true culprit may thus far have escaped the attention of the authorities, or indeed any of the amateur “Monstrologists” who have attempted to tackle the case.

  That’s not so unlikely if we believe the FBI’s 1989 profile that depicted a man who probably had no major convictions to his name, and might well have had few or no run-ins with the law in his life before he first fired that Beretta pistol in anger. All we can really do is try to construct our own profile of the likely killer. One theory which I personally feel has been relatively overlooked or at least seldom explored is that the killer succeeded in going undetected for so long because he committed at least some, if not all of the murders, while posing as a figure of authority.

  Consider the circumstances in which these audacious murders were committed. In the first few instances, by all accounts, the hills were alive with the furtive gaze of voyeurs, and it seems more than likely that one of them would have seen something… unless they were scared away from the area by the presence of an authority figure they feared might expose their illicit night maneuvers.

  Whether the authority figure was a policeman, some kind of warden, or a military figure, that guise would also have served the purpose of making the killer look the opposite of dangerous once news of a serial killer had spread and a climate of fear had set in. Everyone from campers to lovers to vigilantes out making their own “inquiries” would have had no reason to look twice at this man in uniform, especially if he had a suitably convincing appearance, manner and cover story to quickly get rid of anyone who challenged him.

  Nino Filastro, a lawyer who represented Mario Vanni and also Mario Spezi when Judge Mignini came after him in the latter stages of the investigation, told an Italian website devoted to the case that he believes the killer posed as a police officer and used a flashlight to approach the cars and ask for documents, dazzling his victims before opening fire. It would also explain why he seemed to have been able to approach his victims at such close quarters before attacking.

  Consider also that the killer used both a knife and a gun, in some cases seemingly using both in quick succession. That suggests military training and possibly the kind of apparel (a holster, a knife sheath), which would allow him to quickly switch from one weapon to another, while at the same time having
roused no suspicion while observing the area earlier in the evening.

  What if he wasn’t in disguise, but actually did work in a position of authority? Could that explain why in several instances, people close to the case received intimidating and suspicious phone calls (such as to the ambulance driver who attended the 1982 murders), and were puzzled as to how anyone could have known their whereabouts or a way of contacting them? Someone with inside access to the case might have been able to get their hands on such details.

  If we continue to run with that notion, what do we make of the suggestion that the killer somehow planted the bullet shells in the evidence box for the 1968 killings and then alerted the authorities to their existence with the newspaper clipping sent to investigators in 1982?

  If we believe the killer might actually have worked in law enforcement, he might just have engineered himself the chance to tamper with evidence from a previous case. As we mentioned in the last chapter, it is just the kind of outlandish theory that has sent the official investigation down so many blind alleys. Yet… just because the odds are against it, doesn’t mean we should dismiss the possibility.

  Even if we do disregard that last scenario, the letter sent to Inspector Silvia della Monica after the final murder in 1985 suggests a man who was keen to humiliate the police. We can also make a fair presumption that public and official recognition was important to him—why else leave the bodies in such public places?

  Sending the taunting letter to Della Monica sounds like the actions of a man well aware of, and aspiring towards, the serial-killer tradition first cemented in legend by the granddaddy of all homicidal maniacs—Jack the Ripper, the 19th-century butcher of prostitutes in London’s East End. Someone, very possibly the serial killer himself, famously sent just such a piece of flesh and a mocking letter to investigators.