The Monster of Florence (16 page)
O
ne chilly February in 1996, Mario Spezi crossed the little piazza toward the carabinieri barracks in the village of San Casciano. He was out of breath, and not just because of the Gauloises he smoked unceasingly; he was wearing a massive and exceedingly ugly overcoat, in garish colors, dangling with zippers, belts, and buckles that served no purpose except to obscure the real function of the garment. A small button near the collar was a microphone. Behind the silly plastic label on the breast was a video camera. Between the outer material and the lining was a recorder, a battery, and wires. The electronic apparatus hidden among the stuffing did not emit even a faint buzz. A technician from the television station had activated it inside the church of the Collegiata di San Cassiano, behind a stone column between the confessional and the baptismal font. There had been no one in the Collegiata, aside from an old lame woman kneeling on the prayer stand in front of a forest of plastic candles that spread their electric light against the darkness.
In the two years since Pacciani had been convicted, Spezi had written many articles casting doubt on the peasant’s guilt. But this one promised to be the scoop to end all scoops.
The video camera would run for an hour. In those sixty minutes Spezi had to convince Arturo Minoliti, the marshal of the carabinieri barracks of San Casciano, to talk. He had to get the man to tell him the truth about Perugini’s discovery of the cartridge in Pacciani’s vegetable garden. Minoliti, as the local carabinieri official, had been present during the twelve-day search, the only one there not connected with SAM or the police to witness the recovery of the infamous cartridge.
Spezi had always had deep misgivings about this type of journalism, and he had often sworn he would never do it. It was dirty, it was shaking down someone for a scoop. But just before entering the barracks, where Minoliti was waiting, his scruples vanished like holy water on the tip of a finger. Taping Minoliti surreptitiously was, perhaps, the only way to arrive at the truth, or at least a piece of it. The stakes were high: Spezi was convinced that Pacciani was innocent, and that a huge miscarriage of justice had taken place.
Spezi stopped in front of the entrance to the barracks and turned so that his breast would film the sign that read “Carabinieri.” He pressed the buzzer and waited. A dog barked somewhere and an icy wind cut his face. He didn’t even think for a minute that he ran the risk of being discovered. The desire for a scoop made him feel invincible.
The door was opened by a man in a blue uniform, his eyes wary.
“I’m Mario Spezi. I have an appointment with Marshal Minoliti.”
They left him in a small room long enough to smoke another Gauloise. From where he sat Spezi could see the empty office of the minor functionary from whom he hoped to steal the truth. He noted that the seat in front of the writing desk, the one that Minoliti would occupy, was placed on the right-hand side and he calculated that the lens of the camera, on the left side of his chest, would film only a wall. He said to himself that as soon as he sat down, he would have to turn the seat, with a casual gesture, in order to frame the carabinieri officer while he spoke.
Nothing will come if it,
Spezi thought, suddenly feeling insecure.
This is like a Hollywood film, and only a bunch of overexcited television people could possibly think that it would succeed.
Minoliti arrived. Tall, nearly forty, off-the-rack suit, gold-rimmed shades not quite covering the face of an intelligent man. “Sorry that I kept you waiting.”
Spezi had worked up a plan for bringing him around to the crucial point. He counted on chipping away at his resistance by arousing his conscience as an upholder and enforcer of the law, and to play a little on his vanity, if he had any.
Minoliti indicated a chair. Spezi took the seatback and rearranged it with a single, easy move. He seated himself facing the marshal and placed his cigarettes and lighter on the desktop. He was certain he now had Minoliti in the camera’s sights.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” he began hesitatingly, “but tomorrow I have a meeting with my editor in Milan, and I’m looking for something on the Monster of Florence. New stuff, real news. By now, you know better than me, everything and its opposite has been said and nobody gives a damn about it any longer.”
Minoliti fidgeted in his seat and twisted his neck in a funny way. He moved his gaze from Spezi to the window and back. In the end he sought help in a cigarette.
“What do you want to know?” he said, blowing the smoke from his nostrils.
“Arturo,” Spezi said, leaning forward confidentially. “Florence is small. You and I move in the same circles. We’ve both heard certain rumors, it’s inevitable. Excuse me for being direct, but it seems you have doubts about the investigation against Pacciani. Grave doubts . . . ?”
The marshal took his chin between his hands and, this time, twisted his lips strangely. Then the words came like a gust of relief. “Well, yes . . . In the sense that . . . In short, if there’s a strange coincidence, you let it pass. If there are two, you can still let it go. When it gets to three, well, in the end you have to say that it’s no longer a coincidence. And here, with the coincidences, or more like strange happenings, there have been a few too many.”
Under the lens of the microcamera Spezi’s heart began to accelerate.
“What do you mean? Is there something that doesn’t seem right about the investigation?”
“Well, yes. Look, I’m convinced that Pacciani is guilty. But it was up to us to prove it . . . You can’t cut corners.”
“Which is to say?”
“Which is to say . . . the rag, for instance. That rag just doesn’t make sense to me, it just doesn’t.”
The rag he was alluding to was a hard piece of evidence against Pacciani. A month after the maxi-search of his property that had brought to light the cartridge, Minoliti had received an anonymous package. Inside was a spring guide rod from a gun, wrapped in a piece of rag. There was a piece of paper written in capital letters. It said:
THIS IS A PIECE OF THE PISTOL BELONGING TO THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE. IT WAS IN A GLASS JAR REPLACED (SOMEONE HAD FOUND IT BEFORE ME) UNDER A TREE IN LUIANO. PACCIANI USED TO WALK THERE. PACCIANI IS A DEVIL AND I KNOW HIM WELL AND YOU KNOW HIM TOO. PUNISH HIM AND GOD WILL BLESS YOU BECAUSE HE IS NOT A MAN BUT A BEAST. THANK YOU.
The business had seemed decidedly odd right away. And then, a few days after this fact, in the course of yet another search of Pacciani’s garage, the agents of SAM had found a similar piece of rag that they had somehow overlooked in the twelve-day search. When the two pieces were brought together, they matched up perfectly.
Perugini theorized that the Monster himself had mailed the letter with the rag, in an unconscious wish to incriminate himself.
“This rag stinks,” said Minoliti, turning toward the telecamera hidden on Spezi. “Because I wasn’t called when it was found. All the operations were supposed to be conducted jointly by SAM and the carabinieri of San Casciano. But when the rag was found, I wasn’t called. Strange. The rag, I say to you, is dirty. We were already in that garage and found many pieces of material, which we took and catalogued. That rag wasn’t there.”
Spezi lit another Gauloise to control his excitement. This was a major scoop and they had yet to arrive at the bullet found in the garden.
“In your opinion, where did the rag come from?”
The carabiniere opened his arms. “Eh, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. That’s the trouble. And then why send a spring guide rod? Of all the parts of a pistol it’s the only one that can’t be matched to a specific firearm. And they just happened to mail that one!”
Spezi decided to nudge him toward the Winchester bullet. “And the cartridge. Does that also stink?”
Minoliti took a deep breath and was silent for several seconds. He turned and suddenly began, “It really burned me the way that cartridge was found. I resented how Chief Inspector Perugini put us in such a difficult situation with the truth . . .”
It was all Spezi could do to remain calm, his heart was pounding so hard.
“We were in Pacciani’s garden,” said the marshal, “I, Perugini, and two other agents of the squad. Those two were scraping the soles of their shoes on a cement grapevine post that lay on the ground and were joking about the fact that they both were wearing the same shoes. At a certain moment, near the shoe of one of them, the base of the cartridge just appeared.”
“But,” Spezi interrupted in order to make sure that the business was very clear on the tape, “Perugini described it quite differently in his book.”
“Right! Right, because he says, ‘The ray of light made the cartridge glisten.’ What ray of light! Look, maybe he just wanted to dress up the discovery a bit.”
Spezi asked, “Minoliti, did they put it there?”
The marshal’s face darkened. “That’s one hypothesis. More than a hypothesis even . . . I’m not saying that I’m certain . . . I have to consider this against my will. It’s a quasi-certainty . . .”
“A quasi-certainty?”
“Eh, yes, because in light of the facts I can’t find another explanation . . . Then, I say, when Perugini wrote about witnessing this glimmer of light, it really frosted me. I say, ‘Chief Inspector, you disrespect me. If I go and contradict you, I’m fucked.’ What I mean is, who’re the judges going to believe? A marshal or a chief inspector? At a certain point I’m forced to back up his story.”
Spezi felt like he was filming an Oscar winner, the acting was so superb, and the Neapolitan accent of Minoliti just added that much more color. The journalist saw that he had fifteen minutes of tape by the clock. He had to press him. “Arturo, did they plant it?”
Minoliti was suffering. “I just can’t believe that my colleagues, my friends . . .”
Spezi couldn’t lose any more time. “Okay, I understand you. But, if for a moment you were to forget they were colleagues you had known for a long time, would the facts cause you to say that this bullet had been planted?”
Minoliti became like stone. “In the light of reason, yes. I must say it was planted. I arrived at that conclusion that certain evidence is dirty: the cartridge, the spring guide rod, and the rag.” Minoliti continued to speak in a low tone, almost as if to himself. “I am up against an extremely difficult situation . . . They’ve got my telephone tapped . . . I’m afraid . . . I am truly afraid . . .”
Spezi tried to find out if he had told anyone of this, by way of confirmation. “You never spoke to anyone?”
“I talked to Canessa.” Paolo Canessa was one of the prosecutors.
“And what did he say?”
“Nothing.”
A few minutes later, at the door of the barracks, Minoliti said good-bye to Spezi. “Mario,” he said, “forget what I told you. It was just venting. I spoke to you because I trust you. But your colleagues, before they come in here, I order them searched!”
Feeling like a worm, Spezi crossed the piazza and walked along the sidewalk, his left shoulder almost brushing the walls of the houses, his arms rigid. He no longer felt the cold wind.
My God,
he thought,
it worked
!
He went into the local Casa del Popolo where the people from the TV channel were waiting for him and drinking beer. Angling over to their table, he seated himself without saying a word. He felt their gaze on him. He continued to say nothing, and they asked him nothing. They all somehow understood it had been a success.
Later that evening, reunited at dinner after having seen the film of Minoliti, they let themselves feel euphoric. It was the scoop of the century. Spezi felt sorry to stick in the meat grinder the unwitting Marshal Minoliti. But, he told himself, even the truth must have its victims.
The next day, the Italian news agency ANSA, which had heard about the taping, ran an item on it. As soon as it was published, all three national television channels called to interview Spezi. At the news hour, Spezi parked himself on the sofa, remote in hand, to see how the news would be reported.
Not one word was aired. The following morning the newspapers did not speak of it, not even a line. Rai Tre, the national television channel that had arranged for the taping of Minoliti, canceled the segment.
Clearly, someone in a position of power had spiked it.
I
n Italy, a man condemned to a life sentence is automatically granted an appeal before the Corte d’Assise d’Appello, with a new prosecutor and a fresh panel of judges. In 1996, two years after the conviction, Pacciani’s case came up for appeal before the Corte d’Assise. The head prosecutor was Piero Tony, an aristocratic Venetian and lover of classical music, bald with a fringe of hair that fell below his collar. The president of the court was the aged and imposing Francesco Ferri, a jurist with a long and distinguished career.
Piero Tony had no stake in the original conviction of Pacciani, no face to save. One of the great strengths of the Italian judicial system is this appeals process, in which none of the players involved in the appeal—prosecutors or judges—have an ax to grind.
Tony, charged with upholding Pacciani’s conviction, reviewed all the evidence against the peasant with dispassion and objectivity.
And he was aghast.
“This investigation,” he told the court, “if it weren’t so tragic, would put one in mind of the Pink Panther.”
Instead of prosecuting Pacciani, Tony used his time in court to criticize the investigation and deprecate the evidence against Pacciani, taking it apart with ruthless logic, piece by piece, until not one brick of evidence was left standing on top of another. Pacciani’s lawyers, seeing all their arguments usurped by the prosecution, could do little but sit in stunned silence and, when their turn came, express their amazed agreement with the prosecution.
As the trial proceeded, it generated panic and consternation among the investigators. With the prosecutor himself declaring Pacciani’s innocence, the peasant would surely be acquitted, which would be an unbearable humiliation and loss of face for the police. Something had to be done—and it fell to Chief Inspector Michele Giuttari to do it.
Six months earlier, at the end of October 1995, Chief Inspector Giuttari had been installed in a sunny office high above the Arno River near the American embassy. He had taken over the Monster of Florence case after Chief Inspector Perugini left for Washington. The Squadra Anti-Mostro had been disbanded, since the case was thought to have been solved, but Giuttari would soon reconstitute a special investigative unit to take over its responsibilities. In the meantime, he had embarked on the herculean task of reading all the files on the case, tens of thousands of them, which included hundreds of interviews with witnesses, masses of expert reports and technical analyses, as well as entire trial transcripts. He also combed through the evidence lockers, examining everything that had been collected at the scenes of the crimes, no matter how irrelevant.
Chief Inspector Giuttari discovered many loose ends, unexplained evidence, and profound mysteries left to resolve. During this process, he came to a fateful conclusion: the case had not been completely solved. Nobody, not even Perugini, had understood the full and terrifying dimensions of the case.
Michele Giuttari was a Sicilian from Messina, dashing and articulate, an aspiring novelist and connoisseur of convoluted conspiracy theories. He went about with half a “toscano” cigar stuck in the corner of his mouth, coat collar flipped up, his long, thick, glistening black hair slicked back. He bore a striking resemblance to Al Pacino in the movie
Scarface
, and there was indeed something cinematic in the way he conducted himself, with style and verve, almost as if a camera were trained on him.
As Giuttari combed the files, he uncovered important but overlooked clues that, in his opinion, pointed to something far more sinister than a lone serial killer. He started with Lorenzo Nesi’s claim that he saw Pacciani
with another person
in a red car (that was actually white), on Sunday night a kilometer from the last killing. Giuttari opened an investigation into this shadowy person. Who was he? What was he doing in the car? Had he participated in the murder? By uncovering the truth, the
real
truth, it went without saying that the chief inspector would be doing himself a favor. Perugini had used the Monster as a vehicle for tremendous career advancement and Vigna would soon do the same. There was plenty of mileage left in the Monster of Florence case.
Now, six months later, Pacciani’s looming acquittal threatened to undo Chief Inspector Giuttari’s nascent theories and carefully laid plans. The chief inspector had to do something to mitigate the damage of Pacciani’s acquittal. He developed a plan.
On the morning of February 5, 1996, Chief Prosecutor Piero Tony spent four hours summing up. The case against Pacciani, he said, contained no evidence, no clues, and no proofs. There were no pieces of a pistol connecting him to the killings, there were no bullets planted in the garden capable of convicting, there wasn’t a single witness in which he could believe. There was nothing. For Tony, the fundamental fact of the accusation remained unaddressed: nowhere did investigators explain how the infamous .22 Beretta used in the 1968 murder passed from the Sardinian clan into Pacciani’s hands.
“Half a clue plus half a clue,” Tony thundered, “does not make a whole clue: it makes zero!”
On February 12, Pacciani’s lawyers, robbed of their arguments, said little in summation. The following day, Ferri and his associate justices shut themselves up in their chambers to deliberate.
On that same afternoon, Chief Inspector Giuttari slipped on his black coat, raised his collar, stuck the half “toscano” in his mouth, and gathered together his men. Their unmarked cars blasted out of police headquarters and headed to San Casciano, where they surrounded the house of Mario Vanni—the ex-postman who, at Pacciani’s first trial, had mumbled over and over that he and Pacciani were just “picnicking friends.” Giuttari and his men seized Vanni and bundled him into a squad car, not even giving the poor fellow time to put in his false teeth. Vanni, they said, was the “other man” Lorenzo Nesi had seen in the car. They charged him with being Pacciani’s accomplice in murder.
The timing was exquisite. On the morning of February 13, the very day the appeals court judges were to announce their verdict, the newspapers were trumpeting the news of Vanni’s arrest as Pacciani’s co-Monster.
As a result, the great bunkerlike courtroom was like a volcano waiting to explode. The arrest of Vanni was a direct challenge to the judges, should they dare acquit Pacciani.
As the proceedings began, a policeman sent by Chief Inspector Giuttari arrived breathlessly in court, carrying a bundle of papers. He demanded the right to speak. Ferri, the president of the court, was annoyed by this last-minute move. Nevertheless, he coolly invited the emissary from police headquarters to say his piece.
The man announced that four new witnesses in the Monster case had surfaced. He presented them as Greek letters: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. For reasons of security, he said, the Tribunale could not render the names. Their testimony was absolutely crucial to the case—because two of these witnesses, the emissary told the stunned court, were
actually present
at the double homicide of 1985 when the French tourists were killed. They had witnessed Pacciani at the very scene of the crime, committing the murders, and one had actually confessed to helping him. The others could corroborate their testimony. These four witnesses, after more than a decade of silence, had suddenly been moved to speak out just twenty-four hours before the final judgment that would decide Pacciani’s fate.
A frozen silence fell over the courtroom. Even the Bics of the journalists remained stuck in their notebooks. This was an incredible revelation, the kind of thing you saw in the movies—never in real life.
If Ferri had been annoyed, now he was incensed. But he maintained an icy calm, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “We cannot hear Alpha and Beta. We are not here for a lesson in algebra. We cannot wait for the Procura [the prosecutor’s office] to lift the veil of secrecy from the names. Either they tell us immediately who this Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta are and we will invite them into the courtroom to take their testimony, or else we will ignore this and take no action whatsoever.”
The policeman refused to name the names. Ferri was livid at what he considered an offense to the court, and he dismissed the emissary and his news of witnesses. Then he and the other judges rose and retired to their chambers to decide their verdict.
Later, it was suggested that Ferri had fallen into a clever trap. By presenting the witnesses in a deliberately offensive manner, Giuttari had provoked Ferri into refusing to hear them—thus creating grounds to appeal Ferri’s verdict to the Italian Supreme Court.
It was eleven in the morning. By four in the afternoon, the rumors began to circulate that the appeals court was about to issue its verdict. In all the bars in Italy, the televisions were tuned to the same channel, while pro-Pacciani and anti-Pacciani factions faced off, arguing and laying bets. Many “I ♥ Pacciani” T-shirts were dusted off and donned for the occasion.
Standing, his voice marked with age, President of the Court Ferri announced the absolute and unconditional acquittal of Pacciani for being the Monster of Florence.
The shaky old peasant was freed. He later greeted well-wishers from the shabby window of his house, flanked by his lawyers, weeping and spreading his hands to bless the crowd, as if he were the pope.
The public trial was finished, but the trial of public opinion continued. Giuttari’s timely arrest of Vanni and his courtroom gambit had done the trick. Pacciani had been acquitted of a crime that two people had
seen
him commit—his accomplices. There was a public uproar. Pacciani was guilty—he had to be. And yet the court had acquitted him. Ferri came under public criticism. Surely, many said, there must be some way to undo this travesty of justice.
There was: Ferri’s refusal to hear the four witnesses. The Italian Court of Cassation (equivalent to the Supreme Court) took up the matter, vacated the acquittal, and opened the door for a new trial.
Giuttari swung into action, marshaling the evidence, preparing for fresh indictments and a trial. Only this time, Pacciani was not a lone serial killer. He had accomplices: his picnicking friends.
