Free The Monster of Florence by Magdalen Nabb Page A

confirmed it, given the mutilation suffered by the female victim and the weapons used to perpetrate the crime, that this was the latest in a series of murders committed by the mysterious criminal which popular fancy had denominated ‘The Monster of Florence.’ It was also immediately evident that the firearm used was yet again the Beretta 22 Long Rifle, now responsible for 16 deaths.
1968
This weapon, an automatic pistol, of the type frequently used on firing ranges, was first identified after the murder in August 1968 of Belinda Muscas née Lubino and Amadeo Lo Russo to which Belinda Muscas’s husband Sergio Muscas confessed. Since Muscas was still serving his sentence when the present series of killings began, it may be assumed that the weapon changed hands after the ’68 murder. Muscas later retracted his confession though he was nevertheless condemned to life imprisonment.
1974
Six years after the 1968 murder, on Saturday 14th September 1974 in the Borgo San Lorenzo area to the north of Florence, Piero Galli and Sandra Palladini were murdered in their parked car. Notified by passers-by, the carabinieri arrived on the scene to find the half-naked body of the young man supine in the driver’s seat of aFiat 127, later established as belonging to his father, whilst that of the girl, completely naked, lay outside and to the rear of the car. The contents of the girl’s handbag were scattered around. The bag was later discovered in a nearby field. The girl was supine with the upper and lower limbs spreadeagled and a vine branch inserted in the vagina. At first sight both victims appeared to have been stabbed to death with something in the nature of a screwdriver or an awl, but an autopsy later revealed that they had first been shot and then attacked with a knife. The man had received at least five bullet wounds from which he had died immediately. His stab wounds had been inflicted postmortem. The girl had received three bullet wounds in her right arm which had not killed her. She had then been killed with a knife. The autopsy revealed 96 clearly identifiable stab wounds, a few of them mortal but the rest inflicted postmortem, over the entire trunk but concentrated in the abdominal region in the pubic area.
   Ballistics reports identified the firearm as a Beretta 22 LR model 73 or 74 and the ammunition as Winchester H series with copper-coated lead bullets. The knife was estimated to be 10/12 cm long and 1.5 cm wide with a single-edged blade.
   No connection was made at this stage with the 1968 murder of so long before, particularly as the mutilation of the girl’s body indicated that the murderer or murderers in this case must clearly be maniacal and sexually deviant.
June 1981
Seven years had gone by and the unsolved murder of 1974 was virtually forgotten when on Saturday 6th June 1981 at approximately 23.45 in Via dell’Arrigo, Scandicci, another young courting couple was murdered. The bodies of Gino Fani and Caterina Di Paola were discovered accidentally by a police sergeant taking a country walk near his home at 9 o’clock on the morning after the crime, together with his small son. The sergeant first noticed a Fiat Ritmo, dark red in colour, parked in the lane. Its doors were closed, but on the ground near the driver’s side lay a woman’s handbag with its contents scattered around it. Closerinspection revealed the driver’s window to be smashed. Sitting at the wheel of the car, the head turned inwards, was the body of a bearded young man with wounds in the throat.
   The sergeant gave the alarm and was joined by a squad car bringing his colleagues. Only after this did they discover, at the bottom of a steep bank falling away from the road, the body of a girl lying supine with legs apart. Her T-shirt and jeans were ripped and slashed revealing that the pubic area had been crudely excised. The body lay approximately 20 yards from the car but there were no signs of its having been dragged.
   The