The Monster of Florence biography

Spezi, however, was intrigued by the details. His research led him to a 1974 double-murder in Borgo San Lorenzo. The couple, teenage lovers Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini, was found murdered outside of their parked car. Both Gentilcore and Pettini had been shot and stabbed. Pettini had been mutilated, and a grapevine stalk had been placed in her genital area.

When police re-opened the investigation of the Gentilcore/Pettini murders,

they discovered that the bullets from the crime scene matched those from the two most recent murders. Il Mostro was now responsible for six homicide victims. As police continued puzzled over possible suspects, more couples would die.

In June 1982, Paolo Mainardi, 22, and his fiancée Antonella Migliorini, 20, were both shot while parked on a country road in Mainardi's car. The killer missed his intended target, however, and Mainardi nearly managed to escape in his vehicle but drove his car across the road into a ditch instead. Il Mostro shot his male victim in the head, and stabbed both bodies several times before fleeing the scene. Mainardi died before he was able to give a description of the killer, but police told media outlets that they had gotten some valuable details in the hopes of pushing the killer into making a mistake.

The tactic wouldn't push Il Mostro out of hiding, but he did begin taunting investigators. He sent police officials a letter suggesting that they check out yet another double-murder, the shootings of Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locci. The killings, which took place in August of 1968, didn't quite fit the profile of Il Mostro's other homicides. The couple was together in an illicit tryst, though, and had both been shot with a .22-caliber Beretta. Bullet casings on file matched the others from Il Mostro's more recent crimes, as well. His death toll was now at 10 victims.

Il Mostro's next killings took place in 1983 when he shot two German tourists, Horst Wilhelm Mayer and Jens Uwe Rusch, while they were parked in their Volkswagen bus. Police believe the killer mistook one of the two men for a woman, and that the tourists were actually homosexual lovers. Disgusted, Il Mostro did not perform his ritual mutilation, but instead tore up a homosexual magazine from the van and fled the scene after the shootings.

In July of 1984, Il Mostro murdered couple Claudio Stefanacci and Pia gilda Rontini. As in the other killings, they were shot and stabbed. Up to this point, with the exception of the 1968 deaths of Lo Bianco and Locci, all the murders held an eerie similarity: all of them occurred between 10:00 p.m. and midnight, the man was always shot first, and the attacker wore surgical gloves in order to leave no trace of his crimes. But in 1984, Il Mostro departed from his pattern. After the couple was dead, the murderer removed Rontini's left breast, as well as her genitals. The move puzzled and disturbed detectives, who began to wonder if the murderer planned to increase the brutality of his killings.