The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (59 page)

Patricia Doherty’s and Antoinette Smith’s remains were found not far from Johnny Fox’s pub, where Annie McCarrick disappeared fifteen months later. And Patricia Furlong’s body was dumped only a few miles away. Brian McCarthy suspects at least two other missing women, Jo Jo Dullard and Deirdre Jacob may also be buried in the mountains.

His prime suspect is a married man with children who can be placed in or around the scenes where Annie McCarrick, Deirdre Jacob and Jo Jo Dullard went missing. According to McCarthy, the man had a history of sexual violence against women, but his killing spree has temporarily been halted by a spell in jail on another charge.

There are indications that the killer claimed another victim, though she was outside the age range of this other prey. This was Eva Brennan, age 40, from south Dublin, who disappeared after leaving her parents’ home in Terenure to return to her flat in Rathgar in July 1993. Perhaps her killer is in jail, but he may soon be at large again.

Italy’s Gay Killings

The murder of a man paid by opera singers to clap during their performances rekindled fears that a gay serial killer may be at large in Italy.

Although 57-year-old Salvatore Romano was not known to be gay, detectives believe that his suffocation and bludgeoning with a brandy bottle bore all the hallmarks of a killer who targeted figures connected with high culture. Romano was the last of the
capoclaques
, professional clappers who led the applause from the gods.

Mr Romano was found on Sunday 8 September 2002 in his home, where it is thought that he had dined with his killer or killers. One report said police found three plates and three glasses.

Police were looking for a young man seen running down the stairs with a cigarette in his mouth and for Mr Romano’s red scooter, which was used for the escape. A fingerprint on a glass was one of the few clues.

A neighbour said that, at about the same time, she heard someone screaming: “Help me, I’m dying.”

Mr Romano was gagged and his feet and hands were tied to his neck – a classic Mafia method of inducing suffocation and now typical of the homosexual murders.

There have been dozens of similar cases in Italy since 1990. There are more than 19 unsolved gay murders in and around the Italian capital. Two occurred in the Pigneto area of the city where Mr Romano lived.

On 5 January 1998, former senior assistant to the pope 67-year-old Enrico Sini Luzi was found in his home near the Vatican wearing only his underwear and socks, with his head beaten in. On his wrists there was adhesive left by sticky tape; a red cashmere scarf was tightened around his neck. His home showed no sign of forcible entry.

Luzi’s former position as a “gentleman of His Holiness” is a voluntary one, usually held by members of well-to-do families, which involves assisting visitors in papal ceremonies.

Franco Grillini of the Italian homosexual lobby group ArciGay/ArciLesbica told Agence France Presse: “The victim is a gentleman of the pope’s entourage, which confirms that the people at risk are those who hide and live among people where homosexuality is not acknowledged, like the curia.”

Until then the Italian police had discounted the idea that a gay serial killer was at work. But the modus operandi in the murder of Luzi bore a striking resemblance to that used in the case of the murder of
New York Times
food critic and university lecturer Louis Inturrisi, theatre critic Dante Livorno and former Sotheby’s Italia manager Count Alvise di Robilant, who was hit over the head with a candelabra as he played his piano in his Renaissance home in Florence. The 72-year-old Count, although widely celebrated for his female conquests, had begun a homosexual affair before he was killed.

A television director was also killed and an American Episcopalian chaplain was found in Milan by the local Anglican vicar. The victim was tied up and had been bludgeoned to death in his bathroom. Gay pornography was scattered around the apartment. Most of the murdered men were bludgeoned or suffocated, or both, and there is a theory that the killings are connected to homosexual prostitutes.

ArciGay/ArciLesbica believes that over 100 gay men are murdered in Italy every year, in what Grillini characterizes as “a terrifying massacre of homosexuals”. The group believes that police have made little attempt to stop the killings. Police say they have been hindered by a lack of assistance from the Italian gay and lesbian community, which is still largely closeted. At the time of the Inturrisi killing, one detective said: “We have found it easier to link up with elements from within the Mafia than we have with the gay community.”

Italy’s Monster of Florence

The case of the “Monster of Florence” – a serial killer who murdered courting couples over three decades – remains unsolved. The man charged with the murders, Pietro Pacciani, had his conviction overturned on appeal and was himself murdered before he could face a second trial. The police now believe that Pacciani was the head of a gang of killers, some of whom are still at large.

The killings began one hot night in the summer of 1968. Thirty-two-year-old Barbara Locci, from the town of Lastra in Signa, just to the west of Florence, and her lover Antonio Lo Bianco were found shot dead in his Alfa Romeo. Barbara was married with a child, but she was notoriously promiscuous housewife. She taken several lovers and was known locally as “Queen Bee”.

On the night of 21 August 1968 she had gone to the cinema with Lo Bianco and her young son Natalino. On the way home, the boy had fallen asleep in the back of the car so the couple seized the chance to stop at a secluded cemetery to make love. Antonio had just started removing Barbara’s clothing when the killer crept up on them and fired eight shots, killing them both. He then grabbed the boy – who must have been woken by the gunfire – and carried him to a nearby farm before fleeing into the darkness. The farmer was awakened by a knock on his front door. When he opened it, he found the young boy standing there with tears streaming down his face.

“My mother and my ‘uncle’ are dead,” the boy said.

The farmer called the police.

At the crime scene, the Carabinieri found a white Alfa Romeo Giulietta with licence plates from the neighbouring province of Arezzo. The car was registered to Antonio Lo Bianco. They also found eight .22-calibre shell cases beside the car.

From the state of the bodies, it was clear what was going on when the couple were shot. Detectives immediately suspected Barbara Locci’s cuckolded husband, Stefano Mele. They sent a patrol car which arrived as Mele’s front door between six and seven in the morning. At that moment, Mele came rushing out with a suitcase, as if making a quick getaway. When told of his wife’s murder, he showed little reaction and was taken to police headquarters.

At the stationhouse, Mele told detectives that he had not felt well the previous day, and had stayed at home. Two people had visited, Antonio Lo Bianco and Carmelo Cutrona, another of his wife’s lovers. Mele also mentioned a third lover of his wife, Francesco Vinci, who had been jailed briefly following an accusation of adultery by his own wife. Then it came out that Barbara had been the lover of Francesco Vinci’s two brothers Giovanni and Salvatore as well. Mele said that his wife’s killer could easily have been one of her numerous lovers. The police now had more suspects than they could easily handle.

But the following day, 23 August 1968, Mele confessed to the murder. But he also incriminated Salvatore Vinci who, he said, had given him the gun. Mele said that, when his wife and son had not returned home by 11.20 p.m., he went looking for them. When he reached the town square of Lastra a Signa, he met Salvatore Vinci, who told him that Barbara had gone to the cinema with Lo Bianco and Natalino. Vinci chided Mele for allowing his wife to cuckold him so publicly. He told him that he had to put a stop to the situation. Vinci had a gun with him, Mele said, and the two of them drove to the Giardino Michelacci movie theatre in Signa on the other side of the Arno.

They found Lo Bianco’s Alfa Romeo parked outside and waited for the couple to come out of the cinema. When Lo Bianco and Barbara, with Natalino in her arms, appeared and drove off in Antonio’s car, Mele and Vinci followed. They stopped at the cemetery just outside Signa. When they started to make love, Vinci pulled out the gun and handed to him, Mele said.

Mele then walked up to the car and started firing, continuing until the gun was empty. Afterwards they drove to the bridge in Signa and threw the gun in the Arno, then went home.

“I killed my wife and her lover because I was tired of continually being humiliated,” Mele concluded. “My wife had been cheating on me for a number of years, but it was only a few months ago that I decided to do away with her.”

There were great holes in this confession. The most glaring was that he had failed to mention how Natalino had turned up at the farmhouse. If the boy had been woken by the gunfire, surely he would have recognized his own father. Nevertheless Mele was formally arrested and held pending formal charges.

The police then tried to find the weapon, but when a prosecutor questioned Mele about the gun again, he changed his story. Instead of throwing it in the Arno, Mele said, he had given it back to Salvatore Vinci. Soon after Mele retracted his entire confession and began accusing Vinci’s brother Francesco of the double murder. It was Francesco who had owned the weapon, Mele said, and Francesco who had killed Barbara and her lover.

This change of story did not help him in court and, in 1970, Mele was found guilty of the double murder and jailed for 14 years – a lenient sentence was handed down on the grounds of partial insanity. And that was thought to be the end of it. Then there was another double murder.

On the moonless night of 14 September 1974, with Stefano Mele safely in jail, 19-year-old Pasquale Gentilcore and 18-year-old Stefania Pettini parked up in Pasquale’s father’s Fiat 127 overlooking the River Sieve in Borgo San Lorenzo, just north of Florence and 18 miles from Signa. They were enjoying a romantic moment when someone began firing at them. The next day a passer-by found the car and called the police.

Detectives found the half-naked body of Pasquale Gentilcore in the driver’s seat. He was peppered with gunshot wounds. Copper-jacket shell casings surrounded the scene and there was no evidence of a struggle.

Outside the car to the rear was the naked body of Stefania Pettini. She had been stabbed and mutilated. Her corpse was posed with her arms and legs spread-eagled, and a branch protruded from her lacerated vagina. Her handbag was found in a nearby field, its contents scattered.

A post mortem showed that Pasquale had been shot five times, killing him. Stefania had been shot three times, but she had still been alive when the killer carried her from the car and slashed her. She had died of one of 96 stab wounds inflicted on her naked body. The knife had a single-edged blade 1.5 cm wide and between 10 and 12 cm long. The gun was a model 73 or 74,. 22 automatic Beretta, while the bullets were of a distinctive Winchester type made in Australia in the 1950s.

A mentally unstable man named Giuseppe Francini walked into the police station and confessed to the murders, but he was unable to describe in detail how the killings were carried out. The police also suspected Guido Giovannini, a voyeur reported to have been spying on couples in the area, and 53-year-old self-proclaimed healer Bruno Mocali. But they could find no evidence linking either man to the crime, and they were eventually ruled out. The perpetrator was plainly a sexual deviant maniac, but the police, who had not yet made the link to the 1968 murder and with no clues or leads to pursue, filed the case away as unsolved.

Seven years later, on another warm summer’s night, there was another double murder. On 6 June 1981 an unknown gunman fired eight shots into a Fiat Ritmo. Inside were 30-year-old Giovanni Foggi and his lover, 21-year-old Carmela de Nuccio. The following morning, a police sergeant on a country walk with his young son spotted the copper-coloured Ritmo parked at the roadside. The sergeant then noticed a woman’s handbag was lying beside the driver’s side door with its contents scattered on the ground. Taking a closer look, he noticed that the driver’s side window had been smashed. At the wheel was a young man whose throat seemed to have been slashed.

When detectives arrived, they found the body of a female victim in a ditch some 20 yards away from the car. She had been stabbed in the abdomen and her T-shirt and jeans were slashed. Her legs were spread and her genital region cut out and removed. It seems the perpetrator had had plenty of time to perform this crude surgery. There were no witnesses and no tracks.

The post mortem demonstrated that both had died of multiple gunshot wounds while in the car. The young man had then been stabbed once in the chest and twice in the neck. The woman’s dead body had then been carried to the ditch. The medical examiner concluded that the girl’s genitals had been excised with an extremely sharp instrument, which the killer plainly had some knowledge of using.

Ballistics revealed that the bullets came from a .22-calibre automatic pistol. Again they were the same distinctive Winchester rounds. Veteran detectives quickly made the connection with the Gentilcore and Pettini case. The bullets from all four bodies matched. Florence, it seemed, had a serial killer on its hands – though still no one had made the connection with the 1968 crime.

The red Ford of peeping Tom Enzo Spalletti had been seen parked nearby. When questioned he gave a confused alibi. Detectives’ interest was further piqued by the fact that he mentioned a copper-coloured Ritmo and two dead bodies to his wife at 9.30 a.m. on the morning they had been discovered, telling her that he had read the story in the newspaper – though the papers didn’t report the murders until the following day. Spalletti was arrested and jailed pending trial.

Four months later Spalletti had to be freed when another couple were murdered in exactly the same way. As he was behind bars, this was plainly a crime he could not have committed.

On 23 October 1981, 26-year-old Stefano Baldi and his 24-year-old girlfriend Susanna Cambi decided to spend the evening parked in their Volkswagen at a beauty spot near Calenzano, five miles north of Florence. Later that evening, another courting couple found their bodies.