The Monster Of Florence Part 7

But it was enough. Pacciani was arrested on January 16, 1993, and charged with being the Monster of Florence.

CHAPTER 25.

The trial of Pietro Pacciani began on April 14, 1994. The courtroom bunker was overflowing with a public divided between those who thought him guilty and those who maintained his innocence. Girls paraded around in T-s.h.i.+rts that read in English, "I Pacciani." There was a veritable caravansary of photographers, filmmakers, and journalists, in the middle of which, protected and led by Chief Inspector Ruggero Perugini, was the writer Thomas Harris.

A trial is perfect theater: a restricted time period, a shut room, recitations by subject, fixed roles-the prosecutor, the lawyers, the judges, the accused. There was no trial that was purer theater than Pacciani's. It was melodrama worthy of Puccini.

The peasant farmer rocked and sobbed during the proceedings, sometimes crying out in his antique Tuscan dialect, "I am a sweet little lamb!...I am here like Christ on the cross!" At times he would rise to his full diminutive height, pull forth from a hidden pocket a little icon of the Sacred Heart, and wave it in the judges' faces while the president of the court banged his gavel and told him to sit down. At other times he erupted in anger, face on fire, spittle flying from his lips, cursing a witness or condemning the Monster himself, invoking G.o.d with his hands joined and eyes rolled to heaven, hollering, "Burn him in h.e.l.l forever!"

After only four days of the trial, Spezi broke the first big story. A central piece of evidence against Pacciani was his bizarre painting-the one with the centaur and the seven crosses-which psychologists said was "compatible" with the psychopathic personality of the Monster. The actual image had been kept under wraps, but Spezi had finally managed to extract a photograph of it from the prosecutor's office. It took him only a few days to find the actual painter-a fifty-year-old Chilean artist named Christian Olivares, exiled to Europe during the Pinochet era. Olivares was outraged when he heard that his painting was being used as evidence against a serial killer. "In this painting," he told Spezi, "I wanted to present the grotesque horror of a dictators.h.i.+p. To say it is the work of a psychopath is ridiculous. It would be like saying the Disasters of War Disasters of War by Goya indicated he was a madman, a monster who needed to be locked up." by Goya indicated he was a madman, a monster who needed to be locked up."

Spezi called up Perugini. "Tomorrow," he told the chief inspector, "my paper will publish an article saying that the painting that you attributed to Pacciani was not painted by him, but by a Chilean artist. Would you care to comment?"

The article was a major embarra.s.sment. Vigna, the chief prosecutor, tried to play down the painting. "It was the ma.s.s media that exaggerated its importance," he said. Another prosecutor, Paolo Canessa, tried to minimize the damage by explaining that "Pacciani did sign the painting and told some of his friends that it was his own dream."

The trial marched on for six more months. In a corner of the courtroom, cameras with zoom lenses focused in on Pacciani and the witnesses arrayed against him. The images were projected on a screen on the left-hand side of the court, so that even those in poor seats could follow the drama. Every night the highlights of the trial were replayed on television, attracting huge audience numbers. Everyone gathered around the television at dinnertime, watching a drama in installments better than any soap opera.

The high point came when it was time for Pacciani's daughters to speak from the witness stand. All of Tuscany was glued to the television for their testimony.

Florentines have never forgotten the sight of the two daughters (one of whom had joined a convent) weeping as they told, in excruciating detail, how they had been raped by their father. In front of everyone pa.s.sed a picture of Tuscan country life very different from Under the Tuscan Sun Under the Tuscan Sun. Their testimony portrayed a family in which the women endured insults, drunken abuse, beatings with a stick, and s.e.xual violence.

"He didn't want daughters," said one daughter, weeping. "Once Mamma had a miscarriage and he knew that it was a boy. He said to us, 'You both should have died and he live.' Once he gave us the meat of a groundhog to eat that he had taken for its skin. He beat us when we didn't want to go to bed with him."

None of this had anything to do with the Monster of Florence. When the questioning did turn in that direction, the two daughters weren't able to recall a single d.a.m.ning fact-a glimpse of the gun, a spot of blood, an incautious word dropped during his nightly drinking bouts-that could connect their father with the double homicides of the Monster of Florence.

The prosecutors lined up their meager sc.r.a.ps of evidence. The bullet and a rag were presented. A plastic soapdish found at Pacciani's house was put forward. (The mother of one of the victims said that she thought it looked like one belonging to her son.) A photograph of Botticelli's nymph was propped up in the courtroom, next to a blow-up of the victim with the gold chain in her mouth. A German-made block of sketching paper, also found in Pacciani's house, was advanced as evidence, with relatives saying they thought the German couple might have had one like it. Pacciani claimed he had found it in a Dumpster years before the killing, and notes Pacciani had jotted in it did clearly date to well before the murder. Prosecutors maintained that the wily peasant had added the notes later to divert suspicion. (Spezi pointed out in an article that it would have been far simpler for Pacciani to have thrown the incriminating sketchbook in the fireplace.) Among the witnesses were Pacciani's old pals from the Casa del Popolo, the communist-built social club and meeting hall for working-cla.s.s people in San Casciano. His friends were mostly country b.u.mpkins, uneducated, ruined by bad wine and whoring. Among them was a man named Mario Vanni, a dimwitted ex-postman of San Casciano, who had been nicknamed Torsolo, "Apple Core," by his fellow citizens-in other words, the part of the apple that is no good and is thrown away.

In the courtroom Vanni was confused and terrified. In answer to the first question ("What is your current occupation?") instead of answering, he immediately launched into a quavering explanation that, yes, he knew Pacciani, but they were only "picnicking friends" and nothing more. In order to avoid making mistakes the postman had obviously memorized that phrase with which he answered almost every question, whether relevant or not. "Eravamo compagni di merende," he kept repeating, "We were picnicking friends."

We were picnicking friends. With those words, the unfortunate postman invented a phrase that would enter the very lexicon of the Italian language. With those words, the unfortunate postman invented a phrase that would enter the very lexicon of the Italian language. Compagni di merende Compagni di merende, "picnicking friends" is now a colloquial expression in Italian referring to friends who pretend to be doing something innocent when in fact they are bent on dark, murderous misdeeds. The phrase became so popular that it even has its own Italian Wikipedia entry.

"We were picnicking friends," Vanni continued to repeat after every question, his chin dipping, his eyes squinting about the vast courtroom.

The prosecutor became more and more irritated with Vanni and that phrase. Vanni went on to retract everything that he had said in his earlier interrogations. He denied hunting with Pacciani, denied various statements he had made, and ended up denying everything, swearing he knew nothing, protesting loudly that he and Pacciani were picnicking friends and nothing more. The president of the court finally lost his temper. "Signor Vanni, you are what we call reticent, and if you continue this way you risk being charged with false testimony."

Vanni continued to whine, "But we were just picnicking friends," while the courtroom audience laughed and the judge banged his gavel.

His behavior on the witness stand aroused the suspicions of a police officer named Michele Giuttari, who would later take over the Monster investigation from Chief Inspector Perugini. Perugini had been rewarded for capturing the Monster (i.e., Pacciani) by being given the plummiest of postings: he had been sent to Was.h.i.+ngton, D.C., to became the liaison officer between the Italian police and the American FBI.

Giuttari would take the Monster investigation to a new, spectacular, level. But for now he was waiting in the wings, watching and listening, and developing his own theories of the crimes.

The day arrived in the trial that the Italians call the "twist"-that Perry Mason moment when a key witness mounts the stand and seals the fate of the accused. This witness in the Pacciani trial was a man named Lorenzo Nesi, thin and smarmy, with slicked-back hair and Ray-Bans, s.h.i.+rt unb.u.t.toned, gold chains dangling among his chest hair, a smooth talker and small-time ladies' man. Whether it was for the love of attention or the desire to be on the front page, Nesi would become a veritable serial witness, popping up when most needed and suddenly recalling events buried for years. This was his debut appearance; there would be many more.

In his first deposition, spontaneously given, Nesi said that Pacciani had boasted to him of having gone hunting at night with a pistol to shoot pheasants resting in the trees. This was taken as another d.a.m.ning piece of evidence against Pacciani, because it showed the peasant, who denied having a pistol, owned one after all-no doubt "that" pistol.

Twenty days later, Nesi suddenly remembered something else.

On Sunday evening, September 8, 1985, the alleged night of the murder of the two French tourists, Nesi was returning from a trip and was forced to take a detour past the Scopeti clearing because the Florence-Siena superstrada, his usual route, was blocked by construction. (It was later determined, however, that the work interrupting the superstrada occurred on the following weekend.) Between approximately nine-thirty and ten-thirty in the evening, Nesi said, he was about a kilometer from the Scopeti clearing when he stopped at an intersection to let a Ford Fiesta pa.s.s. The car was of a rosy or reddish color, and he was ninety percent certain it was driven by Pacciani. There was on board a second individual he didn't know.

Why hadn't he reported this ten years ago?

Nesi replied that at the time he was only seventy to eighty percent certain, and that you should only report things you are certain of. Now, however, he had become ninety percent certain of his identification, and that, he figured, made it certain enough to be reported. The judge praised him later for his scrupulosity.

One wouldn't normally think that Nesi, being a small dealer in sweaters, would mistake a color. But he had gotten wrong the color of Pacciani's car-it was not "rosy or reddish," it was dead white. (Perhaps Nesi was thinking back to the red Alfa Romeo reported by witnesses that led to the infamous Identi-Kit portrait.) Nevertheless, Nesi's testimony put Pacciani within a kilometer of the Scopeti clearing on Sunday night, and that was enough to seal the peasant's fate. The judges convicted Pacciani of murder and condemned him to fourteen life sentences. In their opinion, the judges explained Nesi's mistake by the fact that the reflection of the taillights at night made the white car look red. They acquitted Pacciani of the 1968 murders, as prosecutors had presented no evidence linking him with that crime, beyond the fact that it was committed with the same gun. The judges never addressed the question of how, if Pacciani had nothing to do with that killing, he had come into possession of the gun.

At 7:02 p.m. on November 1, 1994, the president of the court began to read the verdict. All the national networks in Italy interrupted their programming to bring the news. "Guilty of the murder of Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini," the president of the court intoned, "guilty of the murder of Giovanni Foggi and Carmela De Nuccio, guilty of the murder of Stefano Baldi and Susanna Cambi, guilty of the murder of Paolo Mainardi and Antonella Migliorini, guilty of the murder of Fredrich Wilhelm Horst Meyer and Uwe Jens Rusch, guilty of the murder of Pia Gilda Rontini and Claudio Stefanacci, guilty of the murder of Jean-Michel Kraveichvili and Nadine Mauriot."

As the judge's stentorian voice boomed out the final "guilty," Pacciani placed his hand upon his heart, closed his eyes, and murmured, "An innocent dies."

CHAPTER 26.

One chilly February in 1996, Mario Spezi crossed the little piazza toward the carabinieri barracks in the village of San Casciano. He was out of breath, and not just because of the Gauloises he smoked unceasingly; he was wearing a ma.s.sive and exceedingly ugly overcoat, in garish colors, dangling with zippers, belts, and buckles that served no purpose except to obscure the real function of the garment. A small b.u.t.ton near the collar was a microphone. Behind the silly plastic label on the breast was a video camera. Between the outer material and the lining was a recorder, a battery, and wires. The electronic apparatus hidden among the stuffing did not emit even a faint buzz. A technician from the television station had activated it inside the church of the Collegiata di San Ca.s.siano, behind a stone column between the confessional and the baptismal font. There had been no one in the Collegiata, aside from an old lame woman kneeling on the prayer stand in front of a forest of plastic candles that spread their electric light against the darkness.

In the two years since Pacciani had been convicted, Spezi had written many articles casting doubt on the peasant's guilt. But this one promised to be the scoop to end all scoops.

The video camera would run for an hour. In those sixty minutes Spezi had to convince Arturo Minoliti, the marshal of the carabinieri barracks of San Casciano, to talk. He had to get the man to tell him the truth about Perugini's discovery of the cartridge in Pacciani's vegetable garden. Minoliti, as the local carabinieri official, had been present during the twelve-day search, the only one there not connected with SAM or the police to witness the recovery of the infamous cartridge.

Spezi had always had deep misgivings about this type of journalism, and he had often sworn he would never do it. It was dirty, it was shaking down someone for a scoop. But just before entering the barracks, where Minoliti was waiting, his scruples vanished like holy water on the tip of a finger. Taping Minoliti surrept.i.tiously was, perhaps, the only way to arrive at the truth, or at least a piece of it. The stakes were high: Spezi was convinced that Pacciani was innocent, and that a huge miscarriage of justice had taken place.

Spezi stopped in front of the entrance to the barracks and turned so that his breast would film the sign that read "Carabinieri." He pressed the buzzer and waited. A dog barked somewhere and an icy wind cut his face. He didn't even think for a minute that he ran the risk of being discovered. The desire for a scoop made him feel invincible.

The door was opened by a man in a blue uniform, his eyes wary.

"I'm Mario Spezi. I have an appointment with Marshal Minoliti."

They left him in a small room long enough to smoke another Gauloise. From where he sat Spezi could see the empty office of the minor functionary from whom he hoped to steal the truth. He noted that the seat in front of the writing desk, the one that Minoliti would occupy, was placed on the right-hand side and he calculated that the lens of the camera, on the left side of his chest, would film only a wall. He said to himself that as soon as he sat down, he would have to turn the seat, with a casual gesture, in order to frame the carabinieri officer while he spoke.

Nothing will come if it, Spezi thought, suddenly feeling insecure. Spezi thought, suddenly feeling insecure. This is like a Hollywood film, and only a bunch of overexcited television people could possibly think that it would succeed. This is like a Hollywood film, and only a bunch of overexcited television people could possibly think that it would succeed.

Minoliti arrived. Tall, nearly forty, off-the-rack suit, gold-rimmed shades not quite covering the face of an intelligent man. "Sorry that I kept you waiting."

Spezi had worked up a plan for bringing him around to the crucial point. He counted on chipping away at his resistance by arousing his conscience as an upholder and enforcer of the law, and to play a little on his vanity, if he had any.

Minoliti indicated a chair. Spezi took the seatback and rearranged it with a single, easy move. He seated himself facing the marshal and placed his cigarettes and lighter on the desktop. He was certain he now had Minoliti in the camera's sights.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you," he began hesitatingly, "but tomorrow I have a meeting with my editor in Milan, and I'm looking for something on the Monster of Florence. New stuff, real news. By now, you know better than me, everything and its opposite has been said and n.o.body gives a d.a.m.n about it any longer."

Minoliti fidgeted in his seat and twisted his neck in a funny way. He moved his gaze from Spezi to the window and back. In the end he sought help in a cigarette.

"What do you want to know?" he said, blowing the smoke from his nostrils.

"Arturo," Spezi said, leaning forward confidentially. "Florence is small. You and I move in the same circles. We've both heard certain rumors, it's inevitable. Excuse me for being direct, but it seems you have doubts about the investigation against Pacciani. Grave doubts...?"

The marshal took his chin between his hands and, this time, twisted his lips strangely. Then the words came like a gust of relief. "Well, yes...In the sense that...In short, if there's a strange coincidence, you let it pa.s.s. If there are two, you can still let it go. When it gets to three, well, in the end you have to say that it's no longer a coincidence. And here, with the coincidences, or more like strange happenings, there have been a few too many."

Under the lens of the microcamera Spezi's heart began to accelerate.

"What do you mean? Is there something that doesn't seem right about the investigation?"

"Well, yes. Look, I'm convinced that Pacciani is guilty. But it was up to us to prove it...You can't cut corners."

"Which is to say?"

"Which is to say...the rag, for instance. That rag just doesn't make sense to me, it just doesn't."

The rag he was alluding to was a hard piece of evidence against Pacciani. A month after the maxi-search of his property that had brought to light the cartridge, Minoliti had received an anonymous package. Inside was a spring guide rod from a gun, wrapped in a piece of rag. There was a piece of paper written in capital letters. It said: THIS IS A PIECE OF THE PISTOL BELONGING TO THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE. IT WAS IN A GLa.s.s JAR REPLACED (SOMEONE HAD FOUND IT BEFORE ME) UNDER A TREE IN LUIANO. PACCIANI USED TO WALK THERE. PACCIANI IS A DEVIL AND I KNOW HIM WELL AND YOU KNOW HIM TOO. PUNISH HIM AND G.o.d WILL BLESS YOU BECAUSE HE IS NOT A MAN BUT A BEAST. THANK YOU.

The business had seemed decidedly odd right away. And then, a few days after this fact, in the course of yet another search of Pacciani's garage, the agents of SAM had found a similar piece of rag that they had somehow overlooked in the twelve-day search. When the two pieces were brought together, they matched up perfectly.

Perugini theorized that the Monster himself had mailed the letter with the rag, in an unconscious wish to incriminate himself.

"This rag stinks," said Minoliti, turning toward the telecamera hidden on Spezi. "Because I wasn't called when it was found. All the operations were supposed to be conducted jointly by SAM and the carabinieri of San Casciano. But when the rag was found, I wasn't called. Strange. The rag, I say to you, is dirty. We were already in that garage and found many pieces of material, which we took and catalogued. That rag wasn't there."

Spezi lit another Gauloise to control his excitement. This was a major scoop and they had yet to arrive at the bullet found in the garden.

"In your opinion, where did the rag come from?"

The carabiniere opened his arms. "Eh, I don't know. I wasn't there. That's the trouble. And then why send a spring guide rod? Of all the parts of a pistol it's the only one that can't be matched to a specific firearm. And they just happened to mail that one!"

Spezi decided to nudge him toward the Winchester bullet. "And the cartridge. Does that also stink?"

Minoliti took a deep breath and was silent for several seconds. He turned and suddenly began, "It really burned me the way that cartridge was found. I resented how Chief Inspector Perugini put us in such a difficult situation with the truth..."

It was all Spezi could do to remain calm, his heart was pounding so hard.

"We were in Pacciani's garden," said the marshal, "I, Perugini, and two other agents of the squad. Those two were sc.r.a.ping the soles of their shoes on a cement grapevine post that lay on the ground and were joking about the fact that they both were wearing the same shoes. At a certain moment, near the shoe of one of them, the base of the cartridge just appeared."

"But," Spezi interrupted in order to make sure that the business was very clear on the tape, "Perugini described it quite differently in his book."

"Right! Right, because he says, 'The ray of light made the cartridge glisten.' What ray of light! Look, maybe he just wanted to dress up the discovery a bit."

Spezi asked, "Minoliti, did they put it there?"

The marshal's face darkened. "That's one hypothesis. More than a hypothesis even...I'm not saying that I'm certain...I have to consider this against my will. It's a quasi-certainty..."

"A quasi-certainty?"

"Eh, yes, because in light of the facts I can't find another explanation...Then, I say, when Perugini wrote about witnessing this glimmer of light, it really frosted me. I say, 'Chief Inspector, you disrespect me. If I go and contradict you, I'm f.u.c.ked.' What I mean is, who're the judges going to believe? A marshal or a chief inspector? At a certain point I'm forced to back up his story."

Spezi felt like he was filming an Oscar winner, the acting was so superb, and the Neapolitan accent of Minoliti just added that much more color. The journalist saw that he had fifteen minutes of tape by the clock. He had to press him. "Arturo, did they plant it?"

Minoliti was suffering. "I just can't believe that my colleagues, my friends..."

Spezi couldn't lose any more time. "Okay, I understand you. But, if for a moment you were to forget they were colleagues you had known for a long time, would the facts cause you to say that this bullet had been planted?"

Minoliti became like stone. "In the light of reason, yes. I must say it was planted. I arrived at that conclusion that certain evidence is dirty: the cartridge, the spring guide rod, and the rag." Minoliti continued to speak in a low tone, almost as if to himself. "I am up against an extremely difficult situation...They've got my telephone tapped...I'm afraid...I am truly afraid..."

Spezi tried to find out if he had told anyone of this, by way of confirmation. "You never spoke to anyone?"

"I talked to Canessa." Paolo Canessa was one of the prosecutors.

"And what did he say?"

"Nothing."

A few minutes later, at the door of the barracks, Minoliti said good-bye to Spezi. "Mario," he said, "forget what I told you. It was just venting. I spoke to you because I trust you. But your colleagues, before they come in here, I order them searched!"

Feeling like a worm, Spezi crossed the piazza and walked along the sidewalk, his left shoulder almost brus.h.i.+ng the walls of the houses, his arms rigid. He no longer felt the cold wind.

My G.o.d, he thought, he thought, it worked it worked!

He went into the local Casa del Popolo where the people from the TV channel were waiting for him and drinking beer. Angling over to their table, he seated himself without saying a word. He felt their gaze on him. He continued to say nothing, and they asked him nothing. They all somehow understood it had been a success.

Later that evening, reunited at dinner after having seen the film of Minoliti, they let themselves feel euphoric. It was the scoop of the century. Spezi felt sorry to stick in the meat grinder the unwitting Marshal Minoliti. But, he told himself, even the truth must have its victims.

The next day, the Italian news agency ANSA, which had heard about the taping, ran an item on it. As soon as it was published, all three national television channels called to interview Spezi. At the news hour, Spezi parked himself on the sofa, remote in hand, to see how the news would be reported.

Not one word was aired. The following morning the newspapers did not speak of it, not even a line. Rai Tre, the national television channel that had arranged for the taping of Minoliti, canceled the segment.

Clearly, someone in a position of power had spiked it.

CHAPTER 27.

In Italy, a man condemned to a life sentence is automatically granted an appeal before the Corte d'a.s.sise d'Appello, with a new prosecutor and a fresh panel of judges. In 1996, two years after the conviction, Pacciani's case came up for appeal before the Corte d'a.s.sise. The head prosecutor was Piero Tony, an aristocratic Venetian and lover of cla.s.sical music, bald with a fringe of hair that fell below his collar. The president of the court was the aged and imposing Francesco Ferri, a jurist with a long and distinguished career.

Piero Tony had no stake in the original conviction of Pacciani, no face to save. One of the great strengths of the Italian judicial system is this appeals process, in which none of the players involved in the appeal-prosecutors or judges-have an ax to grind.

Tony, charged with upholding Pacciani's conviction, reviewed all the evidence against the peasant with dispa.s.sion and objectivity.

And he was aghast.