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Entangled in a web of money, organized crime, and the authoritative Vatican state, the disturbing disappearance of a papal official’s young daughter captivates Italians decades later.
Emanuela Orlandi disappeared in 1983 after boarding a bus home from a flute lesson in Rome. Thirty-seven years later and Emanuela’s case is still shrouded in mystery. A month earlier, another young Vatican girl went missing and she too has never been found. In fact, the daughter of the Pope’s personal butler, yet another girl from the Vatican, noticed a man following her on her school bus numerous times, one month before Emanuela’s disappearance.
Eyewitnesses linked the seemingly related events to the former leader of a well-connected Italian crime organization. After losing millions when their primary bank collapsed, the organization warned they would target the bank’s main shareholder — the Vatican. Suspicious conversations, documents and events suggest the Vatican was a factor in the disappearances, or at the least, failed to disclose all their information.
A talented high school musician, 15-year-old Emanuela Orlandi grew up frolicking through the Vatican gardens in what felt, as her brother described, “the safest place in the world.” Their haven was shattered when Emanuela disappeared after a flute lesson in 1983.
Emanuela attended classes at a music school twice a week. She routinely walked a mile from her home to the bus stop unaccompanied. Emanuela enjoyed her classes and also sang in the church choir. She had recently finished her second year of high school. Emanuela was the fourth of five children, and had only one brother, Pietro. They grew up in a happy household inside the Vatican walls with a small population of other residents.
Emanuela disappeared at a time when organized crime dominated regions of Italy politically, socially, and economically. Her disappearance came at the end of the notorious Years of Lead, a period of socio-political turmoil in Italy from the late 1960s to the early 1980s marked by a wave of terrorism. Unprecedented assassinations, bombings, and kidnappings left Rome in a state of fear and uncertainty at this time.
Furthermore, Emanuela was immersed in the conservative Catholic culture that persisted in the Vatican in the 1980s. She lacked the escape of social media that teenagers often use today. Emanuela did not have access to the Internet or a cell phone and was therefore unable to connect to other communities outside of the one she was raised in.
The haunting disappearance has no shortage of theories as to what happened. The most popular are organized crime, a Vatican sex ring, or simply that she ran away from home, overwhelmed by the confines of her conservative Catholic family.
On June 22, 1983, the Orlandi family watched their beloved Emanuela leave for music class and never return.
Curiously, Emanuela asked her brother to escort her to music class the day she disappeared. Pietro had other commitments. In a Guardian article he explained, “It’s a very painful memory – she insisted I take her, and we rowed over it. Then she left, slamming the door. I never thought it would be the last time I saw her. I’ve gone over it so many times, telling myself if only I had accompanied her maybe it wouldn’t have happened.”
Later that afternoon, Emanuela called home and spoke to her sister Federica. She explained that she was stopped by a man in a green BMW in front of the Italian senate. The man offered to pay Emanuela a large sum of money to distribute pamphlets for Avon products at a two hour fashion event the following Saturday. Apparently Emanuela told Federica the unknown man was coming after class to see if Emanuela received permission from her mother to take the job. Federica told Emanuela to forget the job and return home immediately. She never did.
Both a traffic and police officer witnessed the conversation between the man in the BMW and Emanuela. The traffic officer later described the man to a sketch artist who matched a future suspect.
Emanuela arrived late to her music lesson that day. Her teacher said she seemed distracted. Emanuela even asked to leave her music lesson ten minutes early, which she did at 6:50 p.m. However, she did not go straight home.
Emanuela’s friends saw her as they got on the bus after the lesson ended. Emanuela was in conversation with a red-haired woman. The friends’ sighting of Emanuela was the last trace of the teenager before she disappeared. Emanulea was supposed to meet up with her other sister at a nearby piazza at 7:30 p.m., but she never arrived.
Emanuela’s close friend, Rafaella Google, was the daughter of the Pope’s personal butler. Shortly after the failed assassination attempt on the pope in 1981, Rafeaella’s father had been warned of a possible planned kidnapping. He advised his daughter to be vigilant. Rafealla complained of being followed the month before Emanuela disappeared. She noticed the same man following her on the bus to school on six separate occasions.
Emanuela’s friends told police they’d seen men following Emanuela on two occasions. The last time was three days before she disappeared. According to Emanuela’s friends, a car stopped as she and her friends walked to the Vatican. The man in the passenger seat eerily pointed to Emanuela and said, “It’s her.”
Forty days before Emanuela’s disappearance, another 15-year-old girl from the Vatican disappeared. Mirella Gergori left her house to go on a date with a former schoolmate. She was picked up by a man her mom later identified the man as a part of the papal escort. Both girls have never been found.
Emanuela’s disappearance has been linked to the leader of the Italian crime organization, the Banda della Magliana, a well connected criminal gang in Rome that operated from the late 1970s to the early 1990s. The gang was in control of many operations across Rome and had links to the mafia, politicians, and intelligent services.
For many years the gang invested the majority of their money in a mafia connected bank. One of the main shareholders was the Vatican Bank. When the bank crashed and the gang lost millions, the Banda della Magliana warned they would target the Vatican to recover their losses.
One of the leaders of the Banda della Magliana was Enrico De Pedis. De Pedis’s former lover Sabrina Minardi claimed to have witnessed Emanuela in the hands of the gang and saw where they were keeping her. She even claimed to have eventually seen De Pedis dispose of Emanuela’s body. However, Minardi’s memory is damaged from a lifetime of drug use.
The composite sketch of the man with the BMW, detailed by the traffic officer, closely resembled De Pedis. Investigators showed 100 pictures to the friends who were with Emanuela when she was followed. Each friend pointed to the De Pedis and two other men who were all involved in the Banda della Magliana.
De Pedis died in 1990 and was controversially buried in the Sant'Apollinare Basilica in Rome, a prestigious resting place for a mobster. No one had been buried in the basilica for a century, making the burial ever the more unusual. In addition to the connections to organized crime, the strange disappearances caused suspicious activity inside the walls of the Vatican.
In 1993, the Rome newspaper Il tempo published a statement made by Mrs. Gergori, Mirella’s mother. Mrs. Gergori recounted a disturbing encounter with a 35-40-year-old man in the papal audience. She recognized the man because he used to joke with her daughter and her daughter’s best friend at the bar next door to the Gergori home. Mrs. Gergori gestured in greeting to the man. His face immediately grew pale and he abruptly twisted his head so as to not be recognized. Mrs. Gergori was caught off guard and became outraged.
After the papal audience, she never saw the man again. Mirella’s mother said in her statement, “This has made me reflect. I have deduced that the only possible link between the Vatican and my daughter was that man, that man who spoke to Sonia De Vito, my daughter’s best friend who has never wanted to tell us the whole truth about the last conversation with her.”
The man was Raul Bonarelli, the chief superintendent of Vatican security. Bonarelli denied Mrs. Gergori’s claims. Surprisingly, when Mirella’s mother faced Bonarelli in court eight years later, she did not recognize him as the same man who sat at the bar. However, the physiognomy could have changed in eight years or Mirella’s mother, who was critically ill, could have misremembered the matter.
Bonarelli’s phone was tapped. A peculiar conversation unfolded. When Bonarelli asked his boss how he should approach questions about Emanuela’s case, his boss replied: “Eh...what do we know? If you say: I have not looked into the matter...The Service has investigated inside...this is something that went on later...don’t say that it went to the Secretary of State.” It is apparent the Vatican was not as transparent as they claimed to be on information about the disappearances.
The Vatican’s suspicious activity surrounding the girl's disappearances did not stop there. A few days after Emanuela’s disappearance, an Italian Secret Service agent, Giulio Gangi, found a mechanic who had fixed a passenger window of a green BMW that had been damaged from the inside. The address linked to this car took him to an apartment inside the Vatican. A woman refused to answer any questions and chased him off the property. His bosses ordered him never to return to the apartment. He was soon removed from the case.
In 2012, a memo written by the official Vatican spokesperson, Reverend Frederico Lombardi, was stolen and made public. In this memo, he clearly questioned the Vatican’s activities. Lombardi wrote, “If the non-collaboration with the Italian authorities was a normal and justifiable affirmation of Vatican sovereignty, or in fact circumstances were withheld that might have helped clear something up.” Lombardi later said that his memo was incomplete and misunderstood.
Five years later, an Italian investigative journalist published a document that suggested the Pope had been involved in Emanuela’s disappearance. The document was written by a Cardinal and hidden in a locked Vatican cabinet for years. Pietro has said he believes the Pope knew exactly what happened to Emanuela but is concealing the information to preserve the reputation of the Church.
Each strange occurrence — the suspicious demotion of the Italian secret service agent, the tapped phone call, the memo written by the official Vatican spokesperson, the link between Mirella and a papal escort, and the discovered document about the Pope’s involvement — suggest the Vatican was a factor in the unsolved and tragic disappearances.
Danilo Restivo screams serial killer. Shielded by a simple demeanor and high-powered family the vicious murderer triggered mass fear in Italy and Britain. Yet the murders were not the only crimes in Restivo’s case. The muddled obstruction by Italian elite and the lapses in the investigation aroused speculation as to how many victims and criminals were left unnamed.
The unappealing concrete jungle of a city Potenza lies in the Italian deep south. Famous for only its long running murder mystery, the remote mountainous region captivated a worldwide audience when a 16-year-old girl was brutally murdered by a serial killer with a bizarre fetish.
Family reputations and the Catholic church are the backbone of the Italian town. The Restivos were a well-connected family with close links to the police, Italian authorities and most importantly the Catholic church.
Young Elisa Claps disappeared in 1993 after meeting dental technician student Danilo Restivo at the town’s central church. Fat lipped and bulging-eyed Restivo pursued Claps but was rejected. Out of pity, Claps agreed to meet Restivo so he could give her a present and ask for advice in courting another woman. After their meeting, Claps was never seen again.
Restivo was only briefly considered a suspect in Clap’s disappearance. The thought that the awkward 21-year-old from an eminent family could do something so cruel was highly improbable, even ridiculous.
On the other side of the continent, in a seaside resort in England, housewife and mother Heather Barnett was mutilated by the same killer nine years later. Like in Potenza, Bournemouth residents were shocked that such a savage attack could take place in their winsome town, a frequent family vacation destination. The sadistic killer left both victims with clumps of hair in each hand. Their own — and the hair of another woman.
Lanky Restivo had turned into a sloppy overweight adult. After smashing Barnett’s skull and removing her breasts, Restivo played the role of caring neighbor and comforted her children when they found their mother’s mutilated body in the bathroom hours later.
Restivo was no bumbling fool, like he presented himself. The balding 30-year-old acted like a child with his older wife and parents. He exploited his dysfunctional demeanour to take advantage of those around him, skirting by as an innocent simpleton incapable of committing such elaborate kills. In reality Restivo left sinister clues beside his victims and concocted credible alibis. The outcast even spoke perfect English but pretended he needed a translator so he had twice the amount of time to think of an adequate answer to detectives' questions.
When Elisa’s body was found in the church in 2010, it confirmed Restivo was the Haircut Killer. His signature — pants pulled down, cut bra and hair in each hand — was on both bodies.
The Claps family and Italian residents were outraged that Elisa was not found immediately after she disappeared and Restivo remained untouched for 17 years.
In fact, Elisa’s brother immediately ran to the church when he realized his sister was missing in 1993. He attempted to open a wooden door leading to the upstairs loft — where her body was later found — but was told the door could not be opened. Only the priest had the key.
As the center of local power, priest Don Mimi refused access to his church so police were never able to thoroughly search the premises. Mimi’s church was also the only one not to ring bells on the decade anniversary of Claps’s disappearance. Although he denied any connection to the Restivo family, a photo surfaced of the priest celebrating Restivo’s 18th birthday with him.
Speculation ran rampant that the crime scene had been tampered with. Claps’s body was found in almost too perfect a condition, wholly exposed with glasses folded at her feet. There were even used condoms in the attic proving that people had access to the area where her body was found.
The Claps, convinced of corruption and cover-up, have fought against the unwillingness of the Italian elite and church for two decades. They are determined to prosecute all authorities involved, refusing to accept a society that protects a murderer and is unable to defend the most innocent victim.
While Restivo is facing justice for two of his crimes with a life sentence in prison, the mystery behind the tangled mess of the investigation itself remains unsolved. It seems almost impossible that Restivo did not commit other crimes. In fact, over the years the Haircut Killer has been linked to other deaths, including a series of vicious murders in southern France and Spain. An image of a missing South Korean woman was found on Restivo’s computer. Another young South Korean girl was killed three blocks from Restivo’s home. Her deserted corpse matched his signature.
Murder. Infidelity. Illegitimate children.
A large-scale DNA investigation to find the murderer of a 13-year-old girl upended an isolated mountain town’s quiet way of life in the hillsides below the Bergamo Alps.
Communities that prided themselves on traditional Catholic values crumbled after one of the most expensive manhunts in Italian history exposed adultery scandals. Families scrambled for answers after the murder investigation ruptured the peace of the reserved countryside and showcased locals’ most intimate secrets.
Brembate di Sopra, a town encircled by evergreen trees with a charming view of snowy mountain peaks, was in unwanted spotlight. The Italian public obsessed with what happened to freckle-faced gymnast Yara Gambirasio when she disappeared after walking a few hundred meters from her home to the gym.
Yara, whose crooked smile revealed a mouth full of braces, was dedicated to perfecting her rhythmic gymnastics routine for an upcoming competition. She clipped back her curly brown hair with a colorful barrette and headed to the gym on November 26, 2010, to return a borrowed stereo.
The gym, with its loud yellow walls and polished floors, contrasted the harmonious layout of Renaissance buildings in the old-fashioned town. Yara left the flagrant sports complex and was never heard from again.
Catching whiff of a good story, national camera crews swooped into the sedate town. Bent on satisfying the Italian public’s endless appetite for true-crime entertainment, reporters sparked a media frenzy and horrified locals. They flocked to the Gambirasio home, surrounding the residence while snow piled around them. Appalled, Yara’s family hid from the cameras, refused interviews, and even turned down a torchlight procession to raise awareness.
With sunken faces, downturned eyes, and a sickly complexion screaming for help, Yara’s parents pleaded for privacy and patience.
The entire Bergamo province was mistrustful of outsiders. Centuries ago, the traditional region formed an alliance of northern cities to fight foreign invasions. That alliance exerts a symbolic influence today — separatists rally sentiment against southern Italians and immigrants.
A middle-aged man stumbled upon Yara’s body three months later when he fetched his remote-controlled airplane from a grassy thicket. Amidst the rags of Yara’s clothing the lead prosecutor Letizia Ruggeri spotted a Hello Kitty logo, mangled in the overgrown weeds. Yara’s autopsy revealed the presence of male DNA on her underwear from the suspect deemed “Ignoto (Unknown) 1”. Ruggeri lept into action and launched a widespread manhunt for Yara’s killer using modern genetic technology.
Thousands of DNA samples were taken: family members, school friends, gym-goers, and clubbers who partied close to where the body was found.
One of the samples led Ruggeri to a village just north of Brembate di Sopra where she found the DNA of a deceased bus driver who was determined to be the father of the murderer. The only catch — neither of his sons were a match and neither of them had children.
An investigation within an investigation erupted as the hunt was on to find the bus driver’s illegitimate son.
Yet locals became wary. They were skeptical of the invasive DNA sampling and the ability of the female prosecutor. Distraught residents feared the killer was among them. Investigators were unable to obtain any leads when they travelled along the rolling green hillside to various towns. The villages closed in on themselves, defending against an outside invasion once again.
The editor of a Bergamo province newspaper told the Guardian’s Tobias Jones, “It’s in the spirit of mountain people to disdain gossip and not to repeat nonsense. If I don’t know something, if I have only heard it said, I don’t say anything until I’m certain it’s true.”
However, as the investigation continued, the region’s atmosphere changed. An unquenchable yearning for gossip slowly creeped into the communities. Once people knew investigators were trying to find the bus driver’s lover, old rumours of scandals and suspicions emerged. Letters flooded the investigators’ offices. Betrayals of traditional Catholic values rose to the surface. Five illegitimate children were found in two small villages. Whispers of small-town gossip led to the public unraveling of families.
Chaos ensued until one whispered name — Ester Arzuffi— cracked the case.
Arzuffi had been married to the same man since 1967. She and her husband lived in Brembate di Sopra with three children. After DNA testing, it was found that Arzuffi had two children with the late-bus driver — one female and one male.
Massimo Bossetti was a middle-aged husband and father of three living in Lower Bergamo. Nicknamed “the animal” by his friends, blue-eyed Bossetti was a parishioner who liked to frequent tanning salons.
Bossetti was an exact match to the DNA found on Yara. While his wife claims he was at a family dinner on November 26, circumstantial evidence points towards Bossetti’s guilt. His internet history revealed searches for pubescent young girls, his phone was in Brembate di Sopra that night and was turned off until the next morning, and a truck similar to his was caught on tape near Yara’s home.
Apart from a perfect DNA match, the alleged murderer continues to profess his innocence. To destroy the defense’s depiction of Bossetti as a family man, two people have admitted to having an affair with his wife.
The values of the northern Italian countryside dissolved. Bossetti’s sister was assaulted because of local disdain for the family. Just as he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, Arzuffi’s husband discovered that none of his children were his. Near the end of her life, the bus-driver’s widow had to reckon with her husband’s infidelity.
It turned out that in the small towns — where everyone knew everyone — know one really knew each other at all.
Amanda Knox — she-devil or falsely accused angel? Perhaps, a mix of both.
The American beauty with an unapologetically quirky personality had no idea she would be convicted for the Satanic killing of her study abroad roommate in a drug induced sex orgy.
When 21-year-old Meredith Kercher was found naked in a pool of blood, lying mutilated on her bedroom floor with a grisly three-inches-deep gash in her throat on November 1, 2007, the world was unaware this Italian crime would spiral into a media gold mine and international crisis.
Some view Knox as completely innocent — a victim of the corrupt Italian legal system caught in a sexist media mess all because she was an attractive 20-year-old scandalously enjoying her independence in traditional Italy. Others, however, believe “Foxy Knoxy” (the press’s pet name for Knox originating from her MySpace username) is a lustful murderer whose temptation got the best of her when she brutally murdered Kercher after a drug and sex-filled night of partying.
The reality? Knox was an undoubtable victim of unrestrained press coverage that often lacked journalistic integrity. But it is likely she was also complicit in murder. Ample evidence points to Knox’s guilt.
Kercher, a bubbly and privileged British-born college student, studied abroad in Perugia, a 2,000 year-old Italian city nested at the top of a hill in central Italy. With marble fountains and gothic architecture, Perugia showcases medieval art and surprisingly attracts a number of partying college students in pursuit of a stereotypical study abroad experience.
Kercher, however, was attracted to the college-town partly because of its reputation as the City of Chocolate. While Kercher was devoted to her studies, she was easygoing socially and often danced the night away with friends at local discos. She and Knox munched their way through Perugia’s chocolate festival together.
Where Kercher and Knox’s personalities differ not only led to roommate quarrels but landed Knox as the center of chaotic international media attention. Whereas reserved Kercher kept their home neat and tidy, free-spirited Knox sang loudly in their home and lived in a jumbled mess. Knox even refused to flush the toilet to conserve water. The extroverted Knox was all too trusting of strangers and completely un-self aware. It was this lack of inhibition and odd-ball personality that was so easy for the media to twist, turning Knox into a vicious and sexually immoral killer.
After their daughter’s death, Kercher’s family evaded the spotlight. They retreated from the media and the politics of the trial and placed their faith in the Italian judicial system to deliver justice. Perhaps Kercher’s tabloid writing father knew the details of his daughter’s murder would be like chum in shark-infested waters — a media feeding frenzy.
While DNA evidence from the crime scene led to the conviction of Rudy Guede, a then 20-year-old from the Ivory Coast who committed numerous break-ins weeks before the murder, Kercher’s autopsy suggested there were multiple killers. Knox and her boyfriend of five days Raffaele Sollecito, a true Harry Potter doppelganger, were swept up in the mania of the case.
The media found their protagonist in Knox, a Seattle native who struggled in speaking Italian. Anti-foreigner sentiment and Knox’s promiscuity landed her a leading role in this six year legal saga, almost four of which she spent trapped in an Italian prison cell. Speaking to their Catholic audience, the media and prosecutors berated Knox as a godless temptress.
With hints of narcissism in her brazen personality and an undeniable love for the camera, Knox was not the average grieving friend. In fact, Knox hammed her way through the murder trial. She was eager to talk to reporters, declaring herself the roommate of the girl who was murdered. She did cartwheels at the police station and did not attend Meredith’s memorial service. Knox was even caught fondling her boyfriend while shopping for lingerie barely 24 hours after she discovered her friend’s mangled body.
While off-behavior does not mean Knox is guilty, deception does.
Knox lied, repeatedly. Her actions did not match up with her narrative of what happened. Knox and Sollecito’s phones were turned on early in the morning, when Knox claimed she and Sollecito were sleeping. There were essentially no traces of Knox’s fingerprints in her own apartment — anywhere. The break-in Knox claimed happened, was staged. And most damning, she falsely accused her boss, Patrick Lumumba, a Congo-born bar owner who hired sultry-faced Knox as a waitress to attract more college students.
After three trials and two convictions, Knox and Sollecito had their case heard by Italy’s Supreme Court. Gray skies loomed over the courtroom on March 27, 2015. Rain fell. Knox and Sollecito were definitely acquitted of Kercher’s murder. Not because of their innocence, but because of gaps in the investigation, contaminated DNA evidence, and faulty trial procedures.
Amanda Knox, whether a she-devil or falsely accused angel, flies free.
A soon-to-be-released documentary reveals the sickening truth of high-level conspiracy behind the notorious Monster of Florence, a cold case that plagues Italy to this day.
Recently discovered documents that were concealed by law enforcement for over three decades fully expose the miscarriages of justice, purposeful false leads, evidence tampering, and intricate cover ups that have kept the cold case wide open. Even the term Monster of Florence itself is a misnomer guiding investigators in the wrong direction.
The case dates back to Florence, in the mid-to-late 20th century.
The sweet smell of grapes filled couples’ nostrils as they drove over the rolling green hills of the picturesque Tuscan countryside. Careless couples fogged the windows of their Fiat 127s during endless nights of love-making. Finding intimacy in the narrow backseats of cars was an established norm in the conservative city where most young adults lived with their Catholic parents. Foreigners too flocked to the scenic hills to experience a taste of reckless freedom that comes from public intercourse in one of the most romantic places in the world.
However the lovers’ lanes became sights of a horror film when eight unsuspecting couples’ nights of hot and steamy romance turned into a bloodbath that ended with their assassination and the sawing off of the woman’s genitals and the violent removal of the breast of the last two female victims.
The 1968-1985 killing sprees sparked a general atmosphere of fear that engulfed the city and countryside. Young Florentines felt that their lives were in danger. Coupling in the Tuscan landscape was no longer safe. Finding places for private moments became more difficult and more organized.
Andrea Vogt, the documentary’s director, asserts the case could be closed and shut, easily. There is undeniable evidence that proves a powerful esoteric sect is behind the killings. Vogt, who obsessively investigated the Monster of Florence case as an independent crime journalist, disclosed why the murderers run free half a century later — a lack of political will.
Between the graphic killings that come straight out of a horror film, the countryside’s hidden culture of satanism and sexual perversion, the murders of 15 others associated with the case, a body swap involving the freemasonry, and the support of a celebrated anti-mafia magistrate, this case contains intricate rabbit holes filled with information.
The documentary exposes the highest circles of Florentine society — police officers, secret services, the freemasonry, and two high-level magistrates — that covered for the culprits or aided in the killings. A guilty code of silence protected the instigators of these crimes and their well-positioned friends for the last forty years. Vogt asserts that Italy’s freemasonry is the main estate behind the coverup, having people in all the right positions and corrupting the judiciary.
The documentary’s star witness, Luciano Malatesta, spoke on camera for the first time and revealed his knowledge of the Satanic sect behind the killings. His sister told him the identity of one of the members of the group, and was about to go public, before she too was killed. Malatesta came forward that the killings and coverups made possible the involvement of a Florentine magistrate, Prosecutor Piero Luigi Vigna, who died in 2012.
“A powerful machine from mystification and manipulation has been set in motion,” Malatesta urged. He believes he is the only one who can share the truth and punish those responsible for the horrific crimes.
Maletesta confirms that his sister was a witness to the satanic orgies that were behind the ritualistic killings that took place on the pitch black nights of new moons.
A French military veteran and convicted murderer Giampiero Vigilanti was involved in the killings along with his friend Pietro Pacciani who was convicted of seven of the eight murders, and then was freed when his conviction was surprisingly overturned. Pacciani and Vigilanti knew the area of the killings like the backs of their hands and Vigilanti’s home is equidistant from the two killing locations. Vigilanti clipped newspaper cuttings about every Monster of Florence murder on his walls. He also had a car seen close to the crime scene. A leaked photograph came out in 2018 that showed a footprint found at the scene of a crime with treading similar to French army boots. While Pacciani died of a heart attack, Vigilanti is free to this day.
It was also discovered that the victims were known to one or several members of the band of killers. The seventh female victim worked at the Vicchio train station bar where a red-haired man with a large ring watched her and her boyfriend, according to the bar owner. The victim even confided in a friend that an unpleasant man bothered her while she worked. There were also reports of a strange man who followed her and her boyfriend in an ice cream parlor hours before they were murdered.
The fourth female victim also complained she was being followed. Her best friend was murdered less than a year later in another unsolved crime. Another of the female victims knew Vigilanti’s mother and lived near the Viccio train station. And two French victims were seen at the country fair the day they were killed, where Pacciani was present.
Even the veteran Monster of Florence crime writer, Mario Spezi, was involved in the cover-up. Spezi walked himself right into the story. He was often at the crime scenes before the police. He continually affirmed there was a single killer behind the murders, despite evidence that showed otherwise. His reporting kept the upper level criminal organization responsible for the murders hidden and unpunished. Spezi was also arrested and condemned for defamation and tampering with the investigation when he planned to falsely plant evidence to prove his theory of a disproved lead that was abandoned in 1989. Spezi attempted to clear the name of his friend Francesco Calamandrei whose home was searched for involvement in the killings. American journalist Douglas Preston also became entangled in Spezi’s facade and is now forever banned from returning to Italy.
The documentary reveals that the Florentine judiciary is compromised by conflicts of interest. The rabbit holes are flooded and the dark secrets of Florentine high-society are finally exposed for the world to see.