The Monster of Florence (28 page)
B
ack in America, I watched the gathering storm from afar. Spezi and I had received a curt e-mail from our editor at RCS Libri, who was seriously alarmed at what was happening. She was terrified that the publishing house would be dragged into a legal mess, and she was particularly incensed that I had given her telephone number to the reporter for the
Boston Globe
, who had called and asked her to comment. “I must tell you,” she wrote me and Mario, “that this call seriously annoyed me. . . . Right or wrong, personal disputes have nothing to do with me nor do they interest me. . . . I pray both of you to keep RCS out of any eventual legal disputes connected to your personal business.”
Meanwhile, curious to find out more about this Gabriella Carlizzi and her website, on a whim I went online and checked it out. What I read infuriated me. Carlizzi had posted pages of personal information on me. With the diligence of a rat collecting its winter store of seeds, she had gathered bits and pieces of information about me from all over the Web, managed to find someone to translate it all into Italian (she herself was monolingual), and had mixed it all together with out-of-context excerpts from my novels—usually descriptions of people being murdered. She managed to dig up public remarks I had made in Italy that I had no idea were even being taped, and she made particular use of a lame joke I had told at a book presentation, that had Mario Spezi decided not to write about crime, he would have made a marvelous criminal himself. To this brew she added her own sinister insinuations, creepy asides, and animadversions. The end result was a toxic portrait of me as a mentally disturbed person who wrote novels full of gratuitous violence that toadied to the basest human instincts.
That was bad enough. But what really enraged me the most was to see my wife’s and children’s names, taken from my biography, posted next to pictures of the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the burning Twin Towers.
I fired off an outraged e-mail to Carlizzi, demanding that my wife’s and children’s names be removed from her website.
Her response to my e-mail was unexpectedly mild, even ingratiating. She apologized and promised to take down the names, which she promptly did.
My e-mail had achieved the results I’d hoped, but now Carlizzi had my e-mail address. She wrote me back: “Even if brief, our little exchange of ideas, touching as they do upon spheres both delicate and in a certain sense intimate, it seems silly to address each other formally using ‘
lei.
’ Souls, when they speak from the heart, speak to each other using ‘
tu.
’ Would it displease you, Douglas, if we used the ‘
tu
’ form with each other?”
I should have known better than to reply to that one. But I did.
A flood of e-mails from Carlizzi followed, each one running to many pages, written in an Italian so contorted, so full of smarmy confidences and loopy conspiracy logic that they were almost impossible to decipher. Decipher them I did.
Gabriella Carlizzi knew the truth about the Monster of Florence, and she desperately wanted to share it with me.
Hi Douglas, did you get my long e-mail? Are you perhaps frightened of the fact that I asked you to reserve the front page of
The New Yorker
to reveal the name and the face of the Monster of Florence? . . . I will write on my website a piece, declaring my invitation to you to reserve this prestigious page, and I will notify
The New Yorker
as well . . .
Re: I PRAY YOU . . . YOU MUST BELIEVE ME . . . IF ONLY YOU AND YOUR WIFE COULD LOOK INTO MY EYES . . .
Dearest Douglas,
. . . Know that even while I write you, I am thinking that I am speaking not just to you, but also to your wife, and to those you love and that I know well how much they mean to your life as a man, beyond that of a journalist and a writer, but simply a man, a friend, a father. . . . I have embarked on this battle, this search for the truth, I do it only to maintain a promise I made to the Good Lord and to my Spiritual Father, a famous Exorcist, Father Gabriele . . . I made this promise, Douglas, as a way of thanking the Lord for the miracle of my own son Fulvio, who after only a quarter of a day of life died, and while in the hospital, when they were dressing him for his coffin, I telephoned to Father Gabriele for a blessing, and the Father answered me, “Don’t pay it any mind my daughter, your son will live longer than Methuselah.” After a few instants, a hundred doctors in the hospital of San Giovanni in Rome cried out, “But it is a miracle, the baby is revived.” Back then I didn’t have the Faith I have now, but with regard to the gift God gave to me, in some way, sooner or later, I would have to pay him back. . . . Dear Douglas, I have the photographs of every crime, when the victims became aware of the Monster, and screamed, their scream was photographed by a minicamera given by the secret service. . . .
. . . And I found, dear Douglas, in Japan, a document that I think is useful, which would prevent the Monster from killing someone close to you. I am undertaking investigations of this document. . . .
Look at the article I have published on my site, where I have written that truly I invite you to come to see me, and to prepare the first page of
The New Yorker
. . . I wrote that only to convince you that I am not joking.
Alarmed by these references to
The New Yorker
and this business of the Monster killing “someone close” to me, which would appear from the creepy references to be my wife, I went back to Carlizzi’s site and discovered she had added a page, in which she reproduced the cover of my novel
Brimstone
next to the cover of a novel Spezi had written,
Il Passo Dell’Orco
.
Gabriella
[read the website]
has not wasted any time and has invited Preston to come visit her and gaze with his own eyes on the Monster and his victims. She puts it in black and white and responds to the e-mail of Preston: “Save the front page of
The New Yorker
and come to me, I will give you the scoop that you’ve been waiting for for a long time.” How will Douglas react? Will he accept the invitation or suffer the prohibition of an Italian friend? Certainly
The New Yorker
will not let this scoop slip away. . . .
And above all—she continues—I want to serenely ask Douglas Preston: “You, what would happen to you if one day proof comes in that ‘your’ Monster is a blunder, while the real Monster is another. . . . You would discover that he is very close to you, that you worked with him, you became friends with him, you held him in esteem as a professional, and that never did you perceive that inside such a person so cultivated, so sensitive, so full of goodwill, there was a labyrinth in which the Beast had hidden itself since completing its Great Work of Death . . . a Monster who is respected, who knows how to fool everyone. . . . Wouldn’t that be for you, dear Preston, the most upsetting experience of your life? Then you surely could write the most unique thriller in the world, and perhaps, with the royalties you receive, even buy
The New Yorker
.
So that was it. Spezi was the Monster. The flood of crazy e-mails came in like the tide at full moon, hitting my inbox multiple times during the course of each day. In them Carlizzi elaborated on her theories and urged and begged me to come to Florence. She hinted that she had a special relationship with the public minister, and that if I came to Italy she could guarantee I would not be arrested. She would, in fact, see to it that the charges against me were dropped.
. . . Florence has always been under orders to protect the true Monster, and these orders come from on high, because the Monster could at any time reveal horrible things regarding the pedophilia of illustrious magistrates, who because of this threat of blackmail will never capture him. Dear Douglas, you, unknowingly, are being used, in Italy, by the Monster, who uses as a cover illustrious names. . . . I pray you, Douglas, come to me immediately even with your wife, or give me your telephone number, I have sent you mine, we will consult with each other . . . don’t say anything to Spezi. . . . I will explain all. . . . I pray to God that you and your wife will believe me . . . I can show you everything. . . .
•
One day, if you would care to write my biography, you will realize that you can leap beyond fantasy and fiction, with a true story.
•
You can well imagine that the investigation marches along even at night and on holidays. For this I pray you CONTACT ME WITH THE GREATEST URGENCY! . . . Remember: this is to be treated with the maximum secrecy.
•
Dear Douglas, I still haven’t received a response to my e-mails: is there a problem? I pray you, let me know, I am worried and I want to understand what to do to bring clarity.
I soon stopped reading all but the subject lines:
Re: WHERE ARE YOU?
Re: LET US PRAY FOR MARIO SPEZI.
Re: NOW DO YOU BELIEVE ME?
Re: URGENTISSIMO URGENTISSIMO
And finally, forty-one e-mails later:
Re: BUT WHAT IN THE WORLD HAS HAPPENED TO YOU?
The e-mail barrage left me reeling, not from the sheer madness of it, but from the fact that the public minister of Perugia and a chief inspector of police took a person like this seriously. And yet, as Carlizzi herself claimed, and as Spezi’s later investigative work would show, this woman was the key witness who had convinced Judge Mignini and Chief Inspector Giuttari that the death of Narducci was connected—through a satanic sect—to the crimes of the Monster of Florence. It was Carlizzi who directed the public minister’s suspicions to Spezi and who first claimed he was involved in the so-called murder of Narducci. (Spezi was later able to show that entire paragraphs in legal documents produced by the public minister’s office closely paralleled the paranoid ramblings that Carlizzi had earlier posted at her website. Carlizzi, it might seem, had a Rasputin-like influence over Mignini.)
Even more incredibly, Gabriella Carlizzi had somehow managed to become an “expert” in the Monster case. Around the same time she was filling my inbox with e-mails, she was much sought after by magazines and newspapers in Italy to comment on the Monster investigation, and quoted at length as a reliable expert. She appeared on some of the most noted talk shows in Italy, where she was treated as a serious and thoughtful person.
In the middle of this bombardment, I mentioned to Mario that I’d been exchanging e-mails with Carlizzi. He chided me. “Doug, you may find it amusing, but you’re playing with fire. She can do great harm. For God’s sake, stay away from her.”
Carlizzi, for all her craziness, seemed to have excellent sources of information. I had been shocked at what she’d managed to dig up on me. Sometimes, she seemed almost prescient in her predications about the case, so much so that Spezi and I wondered if she might not have an inside source in the public minister’s office.
At the end of March, Carlizzi had some special news to announce on her site: the arrest of Mario Spezi was imminent.
T
he call came on Friday, April 7, 2006. Count Niccolò’s voice boomed over the transatlantic line. “They’ve just arrested Spezi,” he said. “Giuttari’s men came to his house, lured him outside, and bundled him in a car. I don’t know any more than that. The news is just breaking.”
I could hardly speak. I never really believed it would go this far. I croaked out a stupid question. “Arrested? What for?”
“You know very well what for. For several years now, he has made Giuttari, a Sicilian, look like an arrant fool in front of the entire nation. No Italian could tolerate that! And I have to say, dear Douglas, that Mario has a wickedly sharp pen. It’s all about
face
, something you Anglo-Saxons will never understand.”
“What’s going to happen?”
Niccolò drew a long breath. “This time they have gone too far. Giuttari and Mignini have stepped over the line. This is too much. Italy will be embarrassed before the world, and that cannot be allowed to happen. Giuttari will take the fall. As for Mignini, the judiciary will close ranks and wash their dirty linen behind closed doors. Giuttari’s comeuppance may very well come at him from an entirely different direction, but he is going down—mark my words.”
“But what will happen to Mario?”
“He will, unfortunately, spend some time in prison.”
“I hope to God it won’t be long.”
“I will find out all I can and call you back.”
I had a sudden thought. “Niccolò, you should be careful. You’re the perfect candidate for this satanic sect yourself . . . a count from one of the oldest families of Florence.”
Niccolò laughed heartily. “The idea has already crossed my mind.” He broke out in a singsong Italian, as if reciting a nursery rhyme, speaking not to me, but to a hypothetical person wiretapping our telephone conversation.
Brigadiere Cuccurullo,
Mi raccomando, segni tutto!
Brigadier Cuccurullo,
Be sure to record everything!
“I always feel so dreadfully sorry for the poor fellow who has to listen to these calls.
Mi sente, Brigadiere Gennaro Cuccurullo? Mi dispiace per lei! Segni tutto!
” (“Are you listening, Brigadier Gennaro Cuccurullo? I am sorry for you! Record everything!”)
“Do you really think your phone is being tapped?” I asked.
“Bah! This is Italy. They’re probably tapping the pope’s telephones.”
There was no answer at Spezi’s house. I went online to look for news. The story was just breaking on ANSA, the Italian news agency, and Reuters:
MONSTER OF FLORENCE: JOURNALIST SPEZI ARRESTED FOR OBSTRUCTION OF JUSTICE
Our book was to be published in twelve days. I was seized with fear that this was a prelude to stopping publication of the book, or that our publisher would get cold feet and withdraw it. I called our editor at Sonzogno. She was already in a meeting about the situation and unavailable, but I spoke to her later. She was rattled by Spezi’s arrest—it isn’t often that one of your best-selling authors orders the arrest of another one—and she was angry at me and Spezi. Her view was that Spezi, in pursuing a “personal” vendetta against Giuttari, had unnecessarily provoked the chief inspector, possibly dragging RCS Libri into an ugly legal mess. I rather hotly pointed out that Spezi and I were pursuing our legitimate rights as journalists seeking the truth, and that we had broken no laws nor done anything unethical. She seemed, to my surprise, to be somewhat skeptical of that last assertion. It was an attitude I would find all too prevalent among Italians.
News from the meeting, at least, was encouraging. RCS Libri had made a decision to forge ahead with publication of our book. More than that, the house would push the book’s distribution up by a week to get it into the bookstores quickly. As part of this effort, RCS had ordered the release of the book from their warehouses as soon as possible. Once out of the warehouse, it would be far more difficult for the police to seize the print run, since the books would be scattered across Italy in thousands of bookstores.
I finally got hold of Myriam Spezi. She was holding up, but barely. “They tricked him into coming down to the gate,” she said. “He was in slippers, he had nothing with him, not even his wallet. They refused to show a warrant. They threatened him and forced him in a car and took him away.” They drove him first to GIDES’s headquarters in the Il Magnifico building for an interrogation and then spirited him away, sirens blaring, to the grim Capanne prison in Perugia.
The evening news in Italy carried the story. Flashing pictures of Spezi, the Monster’s murder scenes, the victims, and pictures of Giuttari and Mignini, the announcer intoned, “Mario Spezi, the writer and longtime chronicler of the Monster of Florence case, was arrested with the ex-convict Luigi Ruocco, accused of having obstructed the investigation into the murder of Francesco Narducci . . . in order to cover up the doctor’s role in the Monster of Florence murders. The public minister of Perugia . . . hypothesizes that the two tried to plant false evidence at Villa Bibbiani in Capraia, including objects and documents, as a way to force the reopening of the Sardinian investigation, closed in the nineties. Their motive was to divert attention from the investigations linking Mario Spezi and the pharmacist of San Casciano, Francesco Calamandrei, with the murder of Francesco Narducci . . .”
And then a video of me appeared on the television, taken as I walked out of Mignini’s office after the interrogation.
“For the same alleged crime,” the announcer said, “two other people are under investigation, an ex–inspector of police and the American writer Douglas Preston, who with Mario Spezi has just written a book on the Monster of Florence.”
Among the many calls I received, one came from the State Department. A pleasant woman informed me that the American embassy in Rome had made inquiries about my status to the public minister of Perugia. The embassy could confirm that I was indeed
indagato
—that is, a person officially suspected of committing a crime.
“Did you ask what the
evidence
was against me?”
“We don’t get into the details of cases. All we can do is clarify your status.”
“My status was already clear to me, thank you very much, it’s in every paper in Italy!”
The woman cleared her throat and asked if I had engaged a lawyer in Italy.
“Lawyers cost money,” I muttered.
“Mr. Preston,” she said, in a not unkindly tone of voice, “this is a very serious matter. It isn’t going to go away. It’s only going to get worse, and even with a lawyer it could drag on for years. You can’t let it fester. You’ve got to spend the money and hire a lawyer. I’ll have our embassy in Rome e-mail you their list. We can’t recommend any particular one, unfortunately, because—”
“I know,” I said. “You’re not in the business of rating Italian lawyers.”
At the end of the conversation, she asked, tentatively, “You aren’t, by any chance, planning a return to Italy in the near future?”
“Are you kidding?”
“I’m
so
glad to hear that.” The relief in her voice was palpable. “We certainly wouldn’t want the, ah, problem of dealing with your arrest.”
The list arrived. It was mostly lawyers who dealt in child custody cases, real estate transactions, and contract law. Only a handful dealt in criminal matters.
I called a lawyer on the list at random and spoke to him in Rome. He’d been reading the papers and already knew of the case. He was very glad to hear from me. I had reached the right person. He would interrupt his important work to take the case, and enlist as a partner one of the preeminent lawyers in Italy, whose name would be well known and respected by the public minister of Perugia. The very hiring of such an important man would go halfway toward settling my case—that was how things worked in Italy. By hiring him, I would show the public minister that I was a
uomo serio
, a man not to be trifled with. When I timidly inquired about the fee, he said it would take a mere twenty-five thousand euros, as a retainer, to get the ball rolling—and that low,
low
fee (practically pro bono) was only possible because of the high profile of the case and its implications for freedom of the press. He would be glad to e-mail me the fund-wiring instructions, but I had to act
that very day
because this most-important-lawyer-in-Italy’s schedule was filling up . . .
I went to the next lawyer on the list, and then the next. I finally found one who would take my case for about six thousand euros and who actually sounded like a lawyer, not a used-car salesman.
Before Mario’s arrest, we would later learn, Villa Bibbiani in Capraia and its grounds were searched by the men of GIDES, looking for the gun, objects, boxes, or documents we were supposed to have planted. Nothing was found. To the ever resourceful Giuttari, this was not at all a problem. He had acted so promptly, he said, that we hadn’t time to carry out our nefarious plot—he had stopped it dead in its tracks.
