The Monster Of Florence Part 19

"I understand," said Mario.

We walked out into the sunlight, the bees droning in the flowers, the bright sun throwing a s.h.i.+mmering trail on the surface of the lake, the light spilling over the red-tiled roofs of Vicchio and flinging streamers of gold through the vineyards and olive groves beyond the town. The vendemmia vendemmia, the grape harvest, was in progress, the fields full of people and carts. The air carried up from the vineyards the perfume of bruised grapes and fermenting must.

Another flawless afternoon in the immortal hills of Tuscany.

CHAPTER 60.

The trial of Francesco Calamandrei, for being one of the instigators behind the Monster killings, began on September 27, 2007.

Mario Spezi attended the first day of the trial, and he sent me a report by e-mail a few days later. This is what he wrote: The morning of September 27 dawned unexpectedly cold after a month of dry heat. The real news that morning was the absence of spectators at the trial of a man alleged to be a mastermind behind the Monster. In the courtroom, where more than ten years before Pacciani had first been convicted and then acquitted, n.o.body was seated in the s.p.a.ce reserved for the public. Only the benches reserved for journalists were occupied. I had trouble understanding the indifference of Florentines toward a person who, according to the accusation, was almost the very incarnation of Evil. Skepticism, incredulity, or disbelief of the official version must have kept spectators away. The accused entered the courtroom taking hesitant little steps. He looked meek, even resigned, his dark eyes lost in unknowable thoughts, carrying with him the air of a retired gentleman, wearing an elegant blue overcoat and gray fedora, his obese body swelled with unhappiness and psychopharmacological drugs. He was half-supported by his lawyer, Gabriele Zan.o.bini, and his daughter Francesca. The pharmacist of San Casciano, Francesco Calamandrei, seated himself on the front bench, indifferent to the flashes of the news photographers and the television cameras that swung his way. The accused entered the courtroom taking hesitant little steps. He looked meek, even resigned, his dark eyes lost in unknowable thoughts, carrying with him the air of a retired gentleman, wearing an elegant blue overcoat and gray fedora, his obese body swelled with unhappiness and psychopharmacological drugs. He was half-supported by his lawyer, Gabriele Zan.o.bini, and his daughter Francesca. The pharmacist of San Casciano, Francesco Calamandrei, seated himself on the front bench, indifferent to the flashes of the news photographers and the television cameras that swung his way.A journalist asked him how he felt. He answered: "Like someone who has fallen into a film, knowing nothing of the plot or characters."The prosecutor's office of Florence had accused Calamandrei of masterminding five of the Monster's killings. They claim he paid Pacciani, Lotti, and Vanni to commit the crimes and take away the s.e.x organs of the female victims so that he could use them for horrendous, but unspecified, esoteric rites. He stands accused of actually partic.i.p.ating in the killings of the two French tourists at the Scopeti clearing in 1985. He is also charged with having ordered the killings in Vicchio in 1984, those of September 1983 in which the two Germans were killed, and those of June 1982 in Montespertoli. The prosecution is silent on the vexing question of who might have committed the other Monster killings.The evidence against Calamandrei is risible. It consists of the delirious ravings of his schizophrenic wife, so desperately ill that her doctors have forbidden her to give testimony in the courtroom, and the same "coa.r.s.e and habitual liars" known as Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta, who testified against Pacciani and his picnicking friends ten years before. Notably, all four of these algebraic witnesses are now dead. Only the serial witness Lorenzo Nesi remains alive, ready to remember whatever might be required.Also arrayed against Calamandrei is a mountain of paper: twenty-eight thousand pages of the trial against Pacciani; nineteen thousand pages of the investigation of his picnicking friends; and nine thousand pages collected on Calamandrei himself: fifty-five thousand pages in all, more than the Bible, Das Kapital Das Kapital of Marx, Kant's of Marx, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason Critique of Pure Reason, the Iliad Iliad, the Odyssey Odyssey, and Don Quixote Don Quixote all put together. all put together.In front of the accused, mounted high behind an imposing bar, was seated Judge De Luca in the place of the usual two magistrates and the nine members of the popular jury who comprise the Court of a.s.sizes, the Tribunal reserved for judging the most serious crimes. In a surprise move, Calamandrei's lawyer had asked for a so-called abbreviated trial, usually only requested by those who have admitted guilt in order to obtain a reduced sentence. Zan.o.bini and Calamandrei asked for it for another reason entirely: "In order that the trial be conducted as rapidly as possible," Zan.o.bini said, "seeing that we have nothing to fear from the result."To the left of the pharmacist, on another bench in the front row, sat the public minister of Florence, Paolo Canessa, with another prosecutor. The two smiled and joked in low voices, perhaps to give an outward show of confidence, or perhaps to needle the defense.Before the end of the day, Zan.o.bini would wipe the smiles off their faces.Zan.o.bini launched into his case with fire, pointing out a technical but very embarra.s.sing legal oversight by Canessa. He then attacked the Perugian branch of the Monster investigation, conducted by Public Minister Mignini, which had linked Calamandrei to the death of Narducci. "Almost all the results of the Perugian investigation are like so much wastepaper," he said. "Allow me to give you an example." He raised a sheaf of papers, which he said const.i.tuted a statement taken by Public Minister Mignini and kept under seal until now. "How is it possible that a magistrate would take seriously and believe a doc.u.ment like the one I will read to you now?"As Zan.o.bini began to read, the cameras swung from Calamandrei to...me. I couldn't believe it, Doug, but I was the star of the doc.u.ment! This doc.u.ment was the so-called spontaneous statement of a woman who had been in contact with Gabriella Carlizzi. She repeated many of Carlizzi's theories to Judge Mignini, claiming she had heard them years ago from a long-deceased Sardinian aunt who knew all the people involved. Mignini had it all written down, recorded, sworn, and signed. Despite the clear absurdity and lack of proof of the woman's allegations, Judge Mignini had then slapped a seal of secrecy on the doc.u.ment, "given the gravity and sensitivity" of the accusations.As Zan.o.bini read the doc.u.ment in the gray courtroom of the Tribunale, I heard, along with everyone else, that I wasn't really the son of my father. My real father-or so this woman claimed in her statement-was a famous musician of sick and perverse habits who had committed the first two killings of 1968; I heard that my mother had conceived me on a Sardinian farm in Tuscany; I heard that upon discovering the truth about my real father, I had carried on his diabolical work as a family tradition, becoming the "real Monster of Florence." This crazy aunt claimed we were all conspiring together: me, the Vinci brothers, Pacciani and his picnicking friends, Narducci, and Calamandrei. From our diabolical a.s.sociation, she told Mignini, "each derives his own benefit: the voyeurs enjoyed their particular activities, the cultists used the anatomical parts taken from the victims for their rites, the fetis.h.i.+sts conserved the pieces taken from the victims, and SPEZI, my aunt always told me, mutilated the victims with a tool known as a cobbler's knife....Certain fellow citizens of Villacidro told me, recently, that the writer Douglas Preston, Spezi's friend, is connected to the American Secret Service."She explained to Mignini, "I hadn't spoken of this up until now because I am afraid of Mario SPEZI and his friends....When Spezi was arrested by you I gathered up my courage and decided to speak about it with Carlizzi, because I trusted her and I knew she sought the truth...."It was absurd stuff and I had to smile as Zan.o.bini read the statement. But I felt no mirth; I couldn't forget that I had ended up in prison partly because of Carlizzi's black-hearted accusations.The first day of Calamandrei's trial ended with a clear win for the defense. Judge De Luca fixed the next three trial days for November 27, 28, and 29. Breaks of this length in trials are, unfortunately, the norm in Italy.

That was the end of the e-mail.

I called up Mario. "So I'm in the American Secret Service? d.a.m.n."

"It was all reported in the press the next day."

"What are you going to do about these absurd accusations?"

"I've already brought suit against the woman for defamation."

"Mario," I said, "the world is full of crazy people. How is it that in Italy, the statements of such people are taken down by a public minister as serious evidence?"

"Because Mignini and Giuttari will never give up. This is clear evidence they're still out to get me, one way or another."

As of this writing, Calamandrei's trial continues, with an acquittal nearly certain, leaving the old pharmacist to live out what is left of his ruined life-one more victim of the Monster of Florence.

The Monster investigation grinds on with no end in sight. Spezi's complaint against Giuttari for defamation was rejected by the Tribunal. He has heard nothing about his suit against Giuttari and Mignini for damages relating to the wrecking of his car. The Supreme Court ruling in Spezi's favor allowed him to ask for damages for his illegal detention. Spezi asked for compensation in the amount of three hundred thousand euros; the lawyers for the state countered with forty-five hundred euros. Mignini is dragging his heels officially closing the investigation against Spezi, while at the same time claiming that Spezi cannot ask for any damages at all because the investigation is still open.

In November 2007, Mignini became involved in another sensational case, that of the brutal murder of a British student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia. Mignini quickly ordered the arrest of an American student, Amanda Knox, whom he suspected of involvement in the murder. As of this writing, Knox is in Capanne prison, awaiting the outcome of Mignini's investigation. It appears from press leaks that Mignini is spinning an improbable theory about Knox and two alleged co-conspirators in a dark plan of extreme s.e.x, violence, and rape.

As if on cue, Perugian prosecutors were reported to be looking into a potential satanic sect angle, because the crime had occurred the day before the traditional Italian Day of the Dead. "I will give you ten to one odds," said Niccol, "that they will eventually drag the Monster of Florence into this." I declined the wager.

Within a week of the murder, Gabriella Carlizzi had weighed in at her website: Meredith Kercher: a brutal murder...Perhaps connected to the Narducci case and the Monster of Florence, to ask Satan for protection in exchange for a human sacrifice? For what purpose? In the end to save those under investigation in the Narducci case who are responsible for his homicide.

Giuttari was acquitted for falsifying evidence in the Monster case, but is now serving a suspended sentence after he was convicted of making false statements in an unrelated case.

On January 16, 2008, the first pretrial hearing took place for Giuttari and Mignini, accused of abuse of office and, in Mignini's case, conflict of interest in favor of Giuttari. The public minister of Florence, Luca Turco, shocked the court with his blunt language. The two accused, he said, were "two diametrically different people." Mignini was "on a crusade in thrall to a sort of delirium," a person "ready to go to any extreme defending himself against anyone who criticized his investigation." Giuttari exploited this form of delirium, Turco said, "for his own personal, vindictive interests beyond the bounds of his professional responsibilities."

As Mignini left the courtroom after the hearing, he cried out to the waiting press, "I contest this!"

I remain a persona indagata persona indagata in Italy for a series of crimes that are still, more or less, under judicial seal and secret. Not long ago I received a registered letter from Italy to my little post office in Round Pond, informing me that I had been denounced before the Tribunal of Lecco, a city in the north of Italy, for in Italy for a series of crimes that are still, more or less, under judicial seal and secret. Not long ago I received a registered letter from Italy to my little post office in Round Pond, informing me that I had been denounced before the Tribunal of Lecco, a city in the north of Italy, for diffamazione a mezzo stampa diffamazione a mezzo stampa, defamation through means of the press, a criminal offense. Curiously, the person or persons asking for the state to bring charges against me, and for what article or interview, were omitted from the doc.u.ment. To even know the name of my accuser and the crime I am supposed to have committed, I will have to pay thousands more euros to my Italian lawyer.

The question I am most often asked is this: Will the Monster of Florence ever be found? I once believed fervently that Spezi and I would unmask him. Now I'm not so sure. It may be that truth can disappear from the world completely, forever unrecoverable. History is replete with questions that will never be answered-among them, perhaps, the ident.i.ty of the Monster of Florence.

As a thriller writer, I know that a crime novel, to be successful, must contain certain elements. There must be a killer who has a comprehensible motive. There must be evidence. There must be a process of discovery that leads, one way or another, to the truth. And all novels, even Crime and Punishment Crime and Punishment, must have an ending.

The fatal mistake that Spezi and I made was in a.s.suming that the Monster of Florence case would follow this pattern. Instead, these were murders without motive, theories without evidence, and a story with no end. The process of discovery has led investigators so far into a wilderness of conspiracy theory that I doubt they will ever find their way out. Without solid physical evidence and reliable witnesses, any hypothesis about the Monster case will remain like a speech by Hercule Poirot at the end of an Agatha Christie novel, a beautiful story awaiting a confession. Only this is not a novel, and there won't be a confession. Without one, the Monster will never be found.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the investigation would end up in a bizarre and futile search for a satanic sect dating back to the Middle Ages. The Monster's crimes were so horrific that a mere man could not possibly have committed them. Satan, in the end, had to be invoked.

After all, this is Italy.

At the time, many people considered the 1968 double homicide to have been the Monster's first murders-hence twelve victims, not ten. (back to text) (back to text)

BY DOUGLAS PRESTON.

Blasphemy

Dolci Colline di Sangue (with Mario Spezi) (with Mario Spezi)

Tyrannosaur Canyon

The Codex

Ribbons of Time

The Royal Road

Talking to the Ground

Jennie

Cities of Gold

Dinosaurs in the Attic

BY DOUGLAS PRESTON AND LINCOLN CHILD.

The Wheel of Darkness*

The Book of the Dead*

Dance of Death*

Brimstone*

Still Life with Crows*

The Cabinet of Curiosities*

The Ice Limit*

Thunderhead*

Riptide*

Reliquary

Mount Dragon

Relic

BY MARIO SPEZI.

Inviato in Galera

Dolci Colline di Sangue (with Douglas Preston) (with Douglas Preston)

Le Sette di Satana

Il Pa.s.so dell'Orco

Toscana Nera

Il Violinista Verde

Il Mostro di Firenze