The Monster of Florence (25 page)
While writing the Monster book, we had been exchanging e-mails on what we had corrected of each other’s chapters. What he found was the last chapter of the book, which I had written, about the interview with Antonio. He sent me an e-mail telling me of the search of his home.
The next morning, after receiving the e-mail, I called and he related to me the story of the search. He asked for my help in publicizing the seizure of our research materials.
Among the documents taken by police were all the notes and drafts of the article we had written for
The New Yorker
, which had never been published. I called Dorothy Wickenden, the managing editor of the magazine, and she gave me a list of people who could help, while at the same time explaining that, since they hadn’t actually published the article, the magazine did not feel it appropriate to intervene directly.
For days I called and wrote letters, but the response was minimal. The sad truth was that few in North America could get excited about an Italian journalist who had irritated the police and gotten his files taken away, at a time when journalists were being blown up in Iraq and murdered in Russia. “Now, if Spezi had been
imprisoned
. . .” I heard many times, “well, then we could do something.”
Finally, PEN intervened. On January 11, 2005, the Writers in Prison Committee of PEN International, in London, sent Giuttari a letter criticizing the search of Spezi’s home and seizure of our papers. The letter stated that “International PEN is concerned that there has been a violation of Article 6.3 of the European Convention on Human Rights that guarantees the right of everyone charged with a criminal offence to be informed promptly ‘and in detail of the nature and cause of the accusation against him.’ ”
Giuttari responded by ordering another search of Spezi’s house, which took place on January 24. This time they took a broken computer and a walking stick that they suspected might contain a concealed electronic device.
But they never did get the diskette Spezi had stuffed down his undershorts, and we were able to resume working on the book. In succeeding months, the police eventually returned, in bits and pieces, most of Spezi’s files, his archives, our notes, and his computer—but not the infamous doorstop. Giuttari and Mignini now knew exactly what was in the book, since they had captured all the drafts from Spezi’s computer. And it seemed they did not like what they read.
One fine morning, Spezi opened his newspaper to read a headline that almost knocked him out of his chair.
NARDUCCI MURDER: JOURNALIST INVESTIGATED
Giuttari’s suspicions had matured, like wine turning to vinegar in a poorly sealed cask. Spezi had gone from interfering journalist to murder suspect.
“When I read that,” Spezi told me on the telephone, “I felt like I was inside a film of Kafka’s
The Trial
, remade by Jerry Lewis and Dean Martin.”
F
or a year, from January 2005 to January 2006, Spezi’s two lawyers tried and failed to learn what the specific charges were against him. The public minister of Perugia had sealed the accusations under an order of
segreto istruttorio
, a judicial secrecy order that makes it illegal to reveal anything about the charges. In Italy, an order of
segreto istruttorio
is often followed by selected leaks by prosecutors to their chosen reporters, who publish without fear of being charged. In this way, prosecutors allow their side of the story to be told while journalists are barred from publishing anything else. This is what seemed to happen now. Spezi was suspected of obstructing the inquiry into the Narducci murder, the newspapers claimed, which had aroused suspicions that he might be an accessory to the murder and the instigator of a cover-up. The implications of this were unclear.
In January of 2006, our book was finished and sent to the publishing house. The title was
Dolci Colline di Sangue.
A literal translation would be
Sweet Hills of Blood
, a play on the Italian phrase
dolci colline di Firenze
, the sweet hills of Florence. It was scheduled for publication in April 2006.
In early 2006, Spezi called me from a pay phone in Florence. He said that while working on a completely different story, unconnected with the Monster of Florence, he had met an ex-con named Luigi Ruocco, a petty criminal who, it turned out, was an old acquaintance of Antonio Vinci. This Ruocco told Spezi an extraordinary story—a story that would blow the case wide open. “This is the breakthrough I’ve been searching for for twenty years,” Mario told me. “Doug, it’s absolutely incredible. With this new information, the case will finally be solved. They’re tapping my telephone and the e-mail is unsafe. So you have to come to Italy—and then I’ll tell you all about it. You’ll be part of it, Doug.
Together we’ll expose the Monster
!”
I flew to Italy with my family on February 13, 2006. Leaving them in a spectacular apartment on Via Ghibellina we had borrowed from a friend, owned by one of the Ferragamo heirs, I went up to Spezi’s house to hear the incredible news.
Over dinner, Mario told me the story.
A few months back, he said, he had been researching an article about a woman who had been victimized by a doctor working for a pharmaceutical company. The doctor had used her, without her permission, as a test subject for a new psychopharmatropic drug. The case had been brought to his attention by Fernando Zaccaria, an ex– police detective who had once specialized in infiltrating drug trafficking rings, and who was now president of a private security firm in Florence. A crusader against injustice, Zaccaria had collected, pro bono, the evidence that helped convict the doctor for injuring the woman with his illegal experiments. He wanted Spezi to write the story.
One evening, when Spezi was at the injured woman’s house with her mother and Zaccaria, he casually mentioned his work on the Monster of Florence case and took out a photograph he happened to be carrying of Antonio Vinci. The mother, who was pouring coffee, peered over at the photograph and suddenly exclaimed, “Why, Luigi knows that man there! And I knew him and all of them too, when I was a little girl. I remember they used to take me to their festivals in the country.” The Luigi she referred to was Luigi Ruocco, her ex-husband.
“I’ve got to meet your husband,” Spezi said.
They gathered the next evening around the same table: Zaccaria, Spezi, the woman, and Luigi Ruocco. Ruocco was the quintessential specimen of a small-time hood, taciturn, with a neck like a bull, a huge square face, and curly brown hair. He was dressed in gym clothes. There was, however, a cautious but open look in his blue eyes that Spezi liked. Ruocco looked at the photograph and confirmed that he knew Antonio and the other Sardinians very well.
Spezi quickly gave Ruocco a summary of the Monster of Florence case and his belief that Antonio might be the Monster. Ruocco listened with interest. In a few minutes Spezi got to the point: did Ruocco know of a secret house that Antonio may have used during the period of the killings? Spezi had often said to me that the Monster had probably used an abandoned house in the country, perhaps a ruin, as a place of retreat to use before and after a killing, where he hid his gun, knife, and other items. At the time of the killings the Tuscan countryside was dotted with such abandoned houses.
“I heard talk about it,” Ruocco said. “I don’t know where it is. But I know someone who does. ’Gnazio.”
“Of course, Ignazio!” Zaccaria exclaimed. “He knows a whole bunch of Sardinians!”
Ruocco called Spezi a few days later. He had spoken to Ignazio and had the information on Antonio’s safe house. Spezi and Ruocco met in front of a supermarket outside Florence. They retired to a café where Mario downed an espresso and Ruocco drank a Campari with a splash of Martini & Rossi. What Ruocco had to say was electrifying. Ignazio not only knew the safe house, but had actually been there only a month before with Antonio. He had observed an old armoire with a glass front in which he could see six locked metal boxes, lined up in a row. His eye fell on a drawer not fully closed below, in which he glimpsed two, possibly three pistols, one of which might have been a .22 Beretta. Ignazio asked the Sardinian what was in those metal boxes and the man had responded brusquely, “That’s
my
stuff,” slapping his chest.
Six metal boxes. Six female victims.
Spezi could hardly contain his excitement. “That’s the detail that convinced me,” he said over dinner. “Six. How could Ruocco know? Everyone talks about the seven or eight double killings of the Monster. But Ruocco said six boxes. Six: the number of female victims killed by the Monster, if you eliminate the 1968 killing, which he didn’t do, and the time he mistakenly killed a gay couple.”
“But he didn’t mutilate all the victims.”
“Yes, but the psychological experts said he would have taken souvenirs from each one. In almost every crime scene, the girl’s purse was found lying on the ground, wide open.”
I listened with fascination. If the Monster’s Beretta, the most sought-after gun in Italian history, were in that armoire, along with items from the victims, it would be the scoop of a lifetime.
Spezi went on. “I asked Ruocco to go to the house, in order to tell me exactly where it was and describe it to me. He said he would. We met again a few days later. Ruocco told me that he had gone and looked inside, and could see the armoire through a window with the six metal boxes. He gave me directions to the house.”
“Did you go?”
“I certainly did! Nando and I went together.” The ruined house, Spezi said, was on the grounds of an enormous, thousand-acre estate west of Florence, called Villa Bibbiani, near the town of Capraia. “It’s a spectacular villa,” Spezi said, “with gardens, fountains, statues, and a stupendous park planted with rare trees.”
He took out his cell phone and showed me a couple of pictures he had snapped of the villa. I gaped at the magnificence of it.
“How did you get in?”
“No problem! It’s open to the public for sales of olive oil and wine, and they rent it out for weddings and such. The gates are wide open and there’s even a public parking area. Nando and I walked around. Several hundred meters beyond the villa, a dirt road leads to two decrepit stone houses, one of which fit Ruocco’s description. The houses can be reached by a separate road through the forest, very private.”
“You didn’t break in, did you?”
“No, no! I sure did think about it! Just to see if the armoire was really there. But that would be an insane thing to do. Not only would it be trespassing, but what would I do with the boxes and gun once I found them? No, Doug, we have to call the police and let them handle it—and hope to get the scoop afterwards.”
“Have you called the police then?”
“Not yet. I was waiting for you.” He leaned forward. “Think of it, Doug. In the next two weeks, the case of the Monster of Florence may be solved.”
I then made a fateful request. “If the villa’s open to the public, can I go see it?”
“Of course,” said Spezi. “We’ll go tomorrow.”
W
hat the hell happened to your car?” It was the following morning, and we were standing in the parking area next to Spezi’s apartment building. The door of his Renault Twingo had been ineptly forced open with what looked like a wrecking bar, ruining the door and much of the right side of the car.
“They stole my radio,” Spezi said. “Can you believe it? With all these Mercedes, Porsches, and Alfa Romeos parked along here, they picked my Twingo!”
We drove to the security firm run by Zaccaria, a nondescript building in an industrial area on the outskirts of Florence. The ex-cop received us in his office. He looked every inch a movie detective, dressed in a pinstriped blue suit of the sharpest Florentine cut, his long gray hair almost to his shoulders, strikingly handsome, dashing, and animated. He spoke with a raffish Neapolitan accent, tossing in a bit of gangsterish slang every once in a while to great effect, and speaking with his hands as only a Neapolitan can do.
Before going to the villa, we went to lunch. Zaccaria treated us to a repast at a local dive, and there, over a plate of
maltagliata al cinghiale
, he regaled us with stories of his undercover work infiltrating drug smuggling rings, some involving the American Mafia. I marveled that he had survived.
“Nando,” Spezi said. “Tell Doug the story of Catapano.”
“Ah, Catapano! Now there was a real Neapolitan!” He turned to me. “There was once a boss of the Neapolitan Camorra named Catapano. He was locked up in Poggioreale prison for murder. It just so happened that the murderer of his brother was in the same prison. Catapano vowed revenge. He said,
I will eat his heart.
”
Zaccaria took a moment to dig into his
maltagliata
and take a swig of wine.
“Slow down,” said Spezi, “and stop using so much dialect. Doug doesn’t understand dialect.”
“My apologies.” He went on with the story. The prison authorities segregated the two men at opposite ends of the prison and made sure they would never encounter each other. But one day, Catapano heard that his nemesis was in the infirmary. He took two guards hostage with a spoon sharpened into a knife, used them to force his way to the infirmary, got the key, and entered, surprising three nurses and a doctor. He immediately set upon his enemy, cutting his throat and stabbing him to death while the doctor and nurses looked on in horror. Then he cried out, in a strangled voice, “Where’s the heart? Where’s the liver?” The doctor, under threat, gave Catapano a quick lesson in anatomy. With one enormous swipe of the knife Catapano opened the man up and ripped out the heart and liver, one in each hand, and then took a bite out of each in turn.
“Catapano,” Zaccaria said, “became a legend among his people. In Naples, the heart is everything—courage, happiness, love. To rip it out of your enemy and bite it is to reduce your enemy to the level of meat, animal meat. It deprives him of what makes him human. And all the television coverage of it afterwards was useful in sending a signal to Catapano’s enemies that he could administer justice with the most refined methods, even in prison. Catapano had proved his courage, his capacity for organization, his exquisite sense of theater, and he did it inside one of the highest-security prisons in Italy, under the horrified gaze of five witnesses!”
Lunch over, we set off for the Villa Bibbiani in an icy winter drizzle under skies the color of dead flesh. It was still raining when we arrived, entering the grounds through a pair of iron gates and up a long, curving driveway lined with massive umbrella pines. We parked in the parking area, got our umbrellas out, and walked to the salesroom. The wooden door was locked and barred. A woman leaned out the window and said the salesroom was closed for lunch. Zaccaria charmed her, asking where the gardener was, and she said we might find him around the back. We walked through an archway and entered a stupendous formal garden behind the villa, with sweeping marble steps, fountains, reflecting pools, statues, and hedges. The villa was originally built in the 1500s by the Frescobaldi family of Florence. The gardens were created a hundred years later by Count Cosimo Ridolfi; in the 1800s, thousands of rare botanical specimens and trees were added to the gardens and park by an Italian explorer and botanist who collected plants from the far ends of the earth. Even in the gray winter rain, the gardens and massive dripping trees retained a cold magnificence.
We moved past the villa to the far end of the park. A dirt road ran along the edge of the arboretum into a thick wood, where, in a clearing beyond, we could see a cluster of crumbling stone houses.
“That’s it,” murmured Spezi, pointing to one of the houses.
I gazed down the muddy road to the house that held the ultimate secret of the Monster of Florence. A chill mist drifted through the trees and the rain drummed on our umbrellas.
“Maybe we could just walk down there and take a look,” I said.
Spezi shook his head. “Not a chance.”
We returned to the car, shook out our umbrellas, and got in. It was a disappointing visit, at least to me. Ruocco’s story seemed too perfect, and the setting struck me as an unlikely one for the secret hideout of the Monster of Florence.
As we drove back to Zaccaria’s firm, Spezi explained the plan he and Zaccaria had worked out for communicating this information to the police. If they merely gave it to the police, and the police found the Monster’s gun, the news would be all over Italy and Mario and I would lose the scoop. We also had to consider the physical danger to ourselves if Antonio knew we were the ones who had turned him in. Instead, Spezi and Zaccaria would approach a certain chief inspector of their acquaintance with what they claimed was an anonymous letter, which they were duly passing along as good citizens. That way, they would have the scoop but not the blame.
“If we pull this off,” Zaccaria said, slapping Mario’s knee, “they’ll make me minister of justice!” We all laughed.
A few days after our visit to Villa Bibbiani, Spezi called me on my cell phone. “We did it,” he said. “We did it all.” He didn’t go into details, but I knew what he meant: he had given the anonymous letter to the police. As I began to ask too many questions, Spezi cut me off, saying “
Il telefonino è brutto
,” literally, “The cell phone is ugly,” meaning he believed it was being tapped. We arranged to meet in town, so he could tell me the full story.
We met at Caffè Cibreo. A strange thing happened, Spezi said, when they had approached the chief inspector. The inspector inexplicably refused to accept the letter, and brusquely told them to take it and their story to the head of the mobile squad instead, a special police unit that investigates homicides. He appeared anxious to have nothing to do with the whole affair and was decidedly unfriendly.
Why, Spezi asked me, would a chief inspector turn down out of hand what could be the most important coup in his career?
Zaccaria, a former inspector himself, had no answer.