This book is a combination of a true crime that took place almost twenty years ago and also an exploration into the heart of a small town's ills where the simplest thing becomes extraordinarily corrupted and perverse. Some of the following are taken from the hardback blurb.
Years ago there was a young man in Potenza, Basilicata, the rugged and remote land in south Italy, who had an odd habit of cutting young girls' hair on the back of buses. Later on, because of his fetish, he became known as the Barber of Potenza. Who is he? Why did he do what he did? Let's go back to the beginning.
On 12 September 1993, a sixteen-year-old girl went missing in a church in the centre of Potenza. Elisa Claps, a much loved, responsible and only daughter of a good family, had met a young man, Danilo Restivo, one Sunday morning but had then vanished without a trace. Her family were convinced that Restivo, a strange boy with a fetish for cutting women's hair, was responsible. He was said to suffer from mental problems and had a morbid behaviour towards girls. When questioned by the authorities, Restivo produced a far-fetched and a well-rehearsed alibi. A tiny cut on his hand between the thumb and the index finger without any bruises and other injuries looked absurdly incompatible with what he told the investigators as a rolling-head-over-heels fall down an entire flight of steps at a building site.
But Restivo was inexplicably protected by local big-wigs: by his powerful Sicilian father, by the priest of the church who had vices of his own, and by a magistrate in charge of the case with rumoured links to organised crime.
Years went by, but Elisa's family could only find false leads. There were sightings and tip-offs and attempted extortions. Clearly, the investigation had no direction - the church where Elisa was last seen at was never searched - and Elisa's older brother, Gildo, summed it up tersely, "It's a joke...how is it not possible to single out the person responsible when we had so many elements and certainties about the case?"
By 2002 Restivo had moved to Bournemouth, Dorset in England. On 12 November that year, his next-door neighbour, Heather Barnett, was found brutally mutilated with strands of hair in both of her hands. Four months before that inhumane murder, in the early hours of 12 January 2002, twenty-six-year-old Jong-Ok Shin, an English student from South Korea, was stabbed. Before she succumbed to her injuries, she told the police that the attacker had worn a mask. But once again, the police could pin nothing on Restivo. Even the FBI in Virginia could not come up with a profile of the killer. It was only on 17 March 2010, seventeen years after her disappearance, when Elisa's decomposed body was finally found, that the pieces of the jigsaw finally began to fit together.
In May 2011, Restivo was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Heather Barnett by the court of Winchester.
In November 2011, Restivo was sentenced in absentia to thirty years for the murder of Elisa Claps by an Italian court.
Blood on the Altar (1 March 2012) is more than just a gripping true crime story. It's a portrait of Basilicata, the most remote and fascinating region in Italy; it's an investigation into why Italy appears to offer impunity to the powerful; it's a hunt for a serial killer; and most of all, it's an appreciation of one courageous and determined family who refused to accept the injustice of Italian society. It is beautifully written and expertly researched, at once a haunting yet evocative piece of writing by a very fine writer. Anyone hoping for a modicum of justice in a mad, mad world where wealth, connections and power can escape punishment despite murder and other atrocious crimes would want to read this book.
About the author: Tobias Jones is the author of two travel books, The Dark Heart of Italy (2003) and Utopian Dreams: In Search of a Good Life (2007), and two novels, The Salati Case (2009) and White Death (2011). He currently runs a woodland shelter in Somerset with his wife. Do visit his websites for more information: www.tobias-jones.com and www.windsorhillwood.co.uk
A quick take of the author on his book:
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