The Monster of Florence: A True Story by Douglas Preston with Mario Spezi

Unbelievable!  This is the first book of a true crime story ever written where the authors were stupefyingly and atrociously enmeshed in the middle and were accused of being the killer and an accessory to murder.  As the author himself wrote, "A story in a category all its own" and no doubt about it.

Today, the killer famously known as Il Mostro di Firenze is still at large, if not dead, and as far as the case and police are concerned, remains unsolved.  What or who is il Mostro di Firenze?  What is the motive for the killings?  And the inevitable question when a harrowing crime occurs - why?  Some of the following are taken from the book.

It is not uncommon for young people to drive up to a secluded spot somewhere to make out and enjoy each other's company.  In Italy, most young people live at home with their parents until they marry and most marry late.  As a result, making out in parked cars is a national pastime as premarital sex in a deeply religious country is frowned upon.  And so it is in the lovely hills surrounding Florence where if you walk through the shadowy lanes, dirt turnouts, olive groves and farmers' fields, you will find these couples out and about on a lovers' tryst.

Inevitably, when sex is involved, you will also discover that voyeurism exists in many forms, not least Peeping Toms.

One hot quiet Sunday morning in June 1981, a policeman enjoying a Sunday morning walk in Via dell'Arrigo came across two bodies.  A man, thirty years old, was found slumped in a car with a little black mark on his temple apparently from a gunshot wound.  Shells from a pistol could be seen scattered at the scene of the crime.  A woman's naked body lay some distance away.  She had also been shot and mutilated.  She was only twenty-one years old.  The couple were engaged to be married.

The next day, during a staff meeting at the office of La Nazione - the daily paper of Tuscany and central Italy - a novice journalist suddenly remembered a similar crime - a double homicide - that took place near Borgo San Lorenzo, thirty kilometres north of Florence, in 1974.  The couple were also engaged to be married.  The two victims, Stefania Pettini, eighteen years old, and Pasquale Gentilcore, nineteen, were killed on a Saturday night with no moon.  Shells from a gun were recovered from the scene.  The female victim was mutilated.  The resemblances and the modus operandi were striking.  Later on, the police lab report concluded that the same pistol had been used in both crimes.

It did not take long for investigators to arrest a Peeping Tom who had been "having a look" at the time of the double homicide.  After hours of questioning, Enzo Spalletti, an ambulance driver, was charged with being the killer.  However, the author, when covering the story, became skeptical and pointed out many holes in the case against Spalletti, among them the fact that there was no direct evidence linking him to the crime, nor did the accused have any connection to the 1974 double homicide.  This was the first of many blunders made by the police.

Four months later, when Spalletti was still safely ensconced in Florence's Le Murate prison, the real il Mostro di Firenze reared its ugly head again when a young couple was found brutally murdered in a farmer's field.

Consequently, two undisputed facts existed right there and then.  One, Spalletti was innocent despite his Peeping Tom fetish and two, a serial killer was stalking the Florentine hills.  Thus, the Monster of Florence was born.  Spalletti was released the day after.

At this point, one should ask whether this was the work of a lone wolf or the work of several mad men.  An investigation into a long-forgotten double homicide on 23 August 1968 - where similarities to the present killings were detected - uncovered clues that a group of men had committed the killings and that it was not the work of a single murderer.  For reasons that no one could fully understand, the clues were either ignored or dismissed by the police and the carabinieri.

In the absence of new developments, rumours, conspiracy theories, accusations and mass hysteria abounded.  A man committed suicide out of desperation.  The countryside at night reclaimed its serenity and isolation.  Seances were held.  Innocent men including priests and doctors were suspected and much later on, four "quasi-illiterate inebriates of marginal intelligence" were wrongfully jailed.  The right questions and the central motive were never addressed by law enforcement because, basically, there were no evidence, no clues and no proofs.  And so, the list of blunders went on and on and on.

Between 1974 and 1985, seven helpless couples were savagely murdered while making love in parked cars in the beautiful hills surrounding Florence.  Preston wrote that the case has become "the longest and most expensive criminal investigation in Italian history."

This book is an accurate and scrupulous story of the search, the authors' eventual meeting with the man they believe may be il Mostro di Firenze and their own shocking involvement in it.  It is also about the obscure workings of the Italian judicial system where according to a Financial Times' review, "the incompetence of the Italian police terrifies the reader more than the violence of the killer himself."  One highly placed carabinieri officer even saw through the brouhaha surrounding the investigation when he asked "whether the trial might be nothing more than a case of the acquisition and management of power in the police force."

Italy's Monster of Florence is as perplexing as it comes and will forever remain an enigma.  There is always conflict and rarely any accord where human depravity is concerned.  Cardinal Benelli, the archbishop of Florence, concluded that these senseless murders were "...one of the worst ever defeats of all that is good in mankind."  The book is very well-written, well-researched, well-informed and leaves no room for doubt as to who the Monster of Florence is.  Read and decide for yourself.

About the authors:

Douglas Preston worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University.  He has written for The New Yorker, Natural History, National Geographic, Harper's, Smithsonian, and The Atlantic.  The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books, Preston is also the cowriter with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI agent Pendergast.

Mario Spezi, a highly decorated journalist, has covered many of the most important criminal cases in Italy, including those involving terrorism and the Mafia, and has been investigating the Monster of Florence case since its beginning.  He has also published both fiction and nonfiction books in Italy and several other countries.

The Monster of Florence is a nonfiction book first published in 2008.