September 7, 2018 • 59 mins
If you're an American, you're probably familiar with the famous 'Satanic Panic' of the 80s and 90s -- but did you know Italy experienced something extremely similar? And, even crazier, did you know that Italy has a documented case of an active Satanic conspiracy? Listen in to learn more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. They called me Ben. It's good to be back.
We're joined with our super producer Paul Decant as always
and most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
that bend shaped whole from last time is filled in
with a bend shaped figure. Oh my gosh, it's filled
(00:46):
in so much like he. Not only did he go
on adventures and come back, he brought us gifts he did.
Oh thanks, Yeah. Behind the behind the curtain, all of
our birth days occur in a very close span of time,
totally unplanned, totally unplanned unless our parents are part of
(01:08):
a conspiracy we have yet to discern. And we were
all accidental births as well. And I did not know
that about you know. And uh. One of the practices
that I personally like to do, and the highly recommend
anyone listening, is that when you celebrate your birthday, the
only real New Year's you get take some time to
(01:28):
appreciate your friends and family, give them presents instead. Think
of it as a loyalty program, but not as creepy
as the big data grocery store cards. Okay, I think
we can all do that. Wait, are you saying you
don't use a Kroger Plus card? Man? I still don't think.
But to give you such value and the gas points,
(01:49):
it's the only way I can afford food for my family.
It's interesting, though, because if you're old enough to remember
the times before the introduction of those cards, the prices
were initially lower if you used the card, but then
they just upped the prices gradually on all the other products,
so you're getting the normal price for a ride. I'm
(02:10):
saying they're taking your data for a ride, for sure.
But speaking of rides, speaking of traveling, I want to
thank you guys for doing what I hear is a
fantastic episode while while I was away? Who told you that?
You told me that we got we got through it?
We did get We did get through it? Listeners right in?
Did we did? We? Was it? Okay? But yeah, I
(02:34):
can't wait to hear it. It's only the it's only
the second episode. I've ever missed, and I was. I
really missed you guys, So it's great to be back.
And one place that I have not traveled to in
all this gallivanting and globe trotting is Italy. Have you
guys ever been to Italy? Not once, but definitely I
want to go there. I would very much like to go,
(02:55):
but not so much after this episode. Maybe not to Florence,
right spoilers, Hey, Paul, have you ever been to Italy?
Oh my gosh, so Paul just said he's been to
Italy and Florence. We might we might consult you a
little bit for some background information today, Paul, what do
(03:16):
we think of when we think of Italy? Just just
like off the top of the dome, first impressions? Olives
there we go? Yeah, I would say the Canals of Venice.
Maybe Gondola's also in Venice. Pizza clear, the popa, yeah,
making a return? Yeah, the Pope in the Vatican, Uh,
(03:41):
fresh steaming pasta maybe right. I thought you're gonna say
something else. Perhaps that as well. Uh, let's go the
whole nine with the stereotypes. Maybe somebody's singing a moore
a right, possibly while piloting a gondola and wearing a
black and white striped shirt very similar to the one
you're wearing right now, Ben, I mean, yeah, this one
is Uh. I think this is from Korea. It was
(04:02):
way hotter there than I thought it would be. But
beyond these images we see of Italy, the country also
has a dark side, a history of violent murders that
some alleged border on the occult. And here are the facts.
In today's episode, we're exploring some of the most well
(04:23):
known homicide cases in modern Italian history. Will start with
the Beasts of Satan and then eventually will meet maybe
the Monster of Florence. So the Beasts of Satan. This
is beasts plural, beasts plural monster singular, but asterix right,
(04:45):
so the Beast of Satan. This story begins in January
when two young people to utes of Italy, Fabio Tullus
and Chara Marino Uh disappear their teena just the both
just around sixteen. They have been drinking at a pub
called The Midnight. Sounds like a respectable neighborhood watering hole,
(05:09):
real family place, but no. As it turns out, it
was sort of a meet up spot for folks in
like the black metal scene, right, yeah, suf, which is
you know this stuff like you hear about with the
Swedish death metal bands, well black metal, I think if
we're talking stylistically, black metal has the witchier vocal. It's
like dot and death metals more right right there, they
(05:33):
were both involved in black metal and death metal. I'm
glad you brought up Scandinavia, old because a lot of
members of black metal and death metal bands in Scandinavia
were implicated in church burnings, right, That's what I was
getting to. And also even like the ones that maybe
didn't actually murder each other, like members of the band Mayhem.
I think you may remember hell Hammer, yeah exactly, or
(05:56):
that was that a guy or a band? They all
I can never I always confuse them because they all
have these crazy names. But there's there's a story where, um,
the cover of a Mayhem record I believe had an
actual image of a dude's suicide. Like they walked in
and this former band member had blown his brains out
and they took a picture of it. And then there
was a whole thing where one of the members was
(06:16):
implicated and stabbing one of the other members to death
many many times then the church burning all in service
of Satan, yeah, I guess yeah, or just psychological issues.
There was also a little bit of cannibalism alleged in
that case. So let's get let's get back to uh. Fabio,
(06:37):
Fabio and Chiara Kiara Shara. Yeah, they were as we said,
they had sixteen. They were out drinking at the midnight,
participating in the heavy metal scene in Milan, and they
never came home. A lot of their friends claimed that
the two would just run off together, and the police
initially seemed to accept this explanation as well. However, for
(07:00):
Fabio's father, a guy named Michelle Tollis, didn't buy it.
He started doing his own research, which we always applaud.
He attended metal concerts in this scene, and he went
to festivals not just in Italy but across Europe searching
for his son. And as we mentioned, Fabio and those
(07:21):
in his circle were into extremely, extremely dark metal. The
genres of death metal and black metal both known for
their use of gruesome satanic imagery like corpse paint. Corpse paint,
which is the white and black stuff meant to give
you a paller think of a less cartoonish kiss yeah,
(07:42):
I mean a little more hardcore. And there they were
even known for like carrying around severed um or dead
animals and bags that they would smell before going on
stage of a real kind I don't know. And some
of it you read these stories and you're like, is
this all just for show and kind of just like
a sort of an extreme version of punk rock or something,
(08:03):
or was their actual satanic ritual going on? Not really
clear even when you read the stories about these Scandinavian bands. Yeah,
how much of it is sort of Alice Cooper performative
stuff and how much of it is a reflection of
their genuine beliefs. The weird thing here is that Fabio
was very into this stuff, and it turned out that
(08:23):
his girlfriend also had a pretty extensive collection of satanic
literature and quote paraphernalia. So paraphernalia, as we know, is
a pretty large term, right Yeah, like glass pipes, right yeah, right,
like last pipes. So this could have been uh, just
chalice is could have been pentagrams, could have just been
(08:44):
jewelry or things that maybe we're even interpreted as Satanic
investigators yea. And in his search, Fabio's father became convinced
that the two would not just disappeared. He became convinced
that Satanism as something to do with his son's disappearance.
It did not help that Michelle felt his son's former
(09:06):
friends grew increasingly squirrelly and evasive when he asked them
about the disappearance. His friends, the people who should be
there like worried. Yeah, can we also point out real quick,
this is something that's probably obvious to everybody, or that
that's that's looked into this stuff. The idea of Satanism
(09:27):
is often a huge misnomer because like the Church of
Satan and like Anton Lavy, it's much more of a
it's not a joke religion, but it's like much more
anti God than pro Satan, or like anti religion in
general than pro the deity of Satan. He's more symbol
of like you know, revolution or liberation, liberation and and
(09:51):
kind of liberty, like the French notion of that. So
it's interesting to see these things referred to as Satanic panics,
like the murders at robin Hood Hills. The ment was six,
how many of them? When they're you know those kids,
their documentary is made about them getting railroaded for these
supposedly satanic ritualistic murders. Satanism is that they're not they're
not really about that kind of stuff. Well it's okay,
(10:12):
so this is an interesting thing. Long time listeners will
probably remember how we had covered this in some earlier episodes,
I believe. So there's the Satanism that is typically referred
to here in the US as exactly what you're describing.
All the Anton LaVey do as thou wilt shall be
the whole of the law, and that's more about a
(10:32):
spiritual liberation from rigid metaphysical hierarchies, right, whether they're treated
as metaphors or actual things. But there's another genre of
Satanism called deistic satanism, meaning that yes, there is a God,
Yes there is a great adversary, and we're cool with
(10:53):
the latter. Yeah. So so there there is a difference.
I think often for who are experiencing or civilizations, whether
they're experiencing a Satanic panic, they're thinking not of the
more philosophical free yourself from uh, free yourself from Christian
ideology kind of satanism. They're thinking of the deistic the
(11:17):
devil is alive. I hear him breathing kind of Satanists. Absolutely.
I think what I was saying was more in reference
to the whole idea of the death metal bands and
the black metal and all that. I don't know that
that is necessarily based on like doing any kind of
devil worship per se. It's more just like we hate
God and hate religion and think what it represents is
(11:38):
bad for humanity in some way. Yeah, and it, interestingly enough,
it's it's a misnumber that goes beyond the label of Satanism,
because a lot of Scandinavian metal bands in particular are
rejecting Christianity and in turn embracing a neopagan approach. So
they're worshiping Wooden and things like that. So to them,
(12:00):
Christianity is an impressive force, which historically is very true.
It can be a little heavy handed, as as history
has shown. But let's get back into the beasts. So,
as I was saying, Michelle spent six years on his own,
out in the cold on this search, and he was
extensively documenting connections between the people his son knew, his
(12:24):
quote unquote friends from the metal scene, and there areas
where they hung out, their haunts if I could use
that word. Yeah, their bands and their mutual associates and connections.
And in two thousand and four, Michelle is watching the
news when he learns of a brutal murder in a
nearby town, Soma, Lombardo. A young man named Andrea Volpe
(12:47):
is arrested for killing his ex girlfriend, woman named Mary
Angela Pezzotta, and Volpe quickly admits to the crime. You
got me, I did it, not framed. Michelle, however, recognizes
this name. You see. It turns out that Volpe played
in a band with Michelle's son, Fabio. Oh jeez. So
(13:10):
six years later, he decides to call the police, and
they're impressed, but initially they're skeptical. Of course, there's nothing
law enforcement hates more than a self impointed law expert,
and so they find when he presents his evidence that
he has actually done a bang up job with his investigation.
They're impressed by the thoroughness of it and the quality
(13:31):
They actually use his work, his research. When they're interrogating
Vulpa about the disappearances, and he breaks. He confesses. He says,
your son and his girlfriend didn't just disappear, they were murdered. Furthermore,
(13:52):
he tells police, I can show you where they are buried. Yeah,
my god. And it turned is out that, Um, this
other dude, another one of Fabio's friends, this guy named
Mario Marcione or Marcione, he confessed himself to the murder
of these two individuals. He said he'd beaten Fabio to
(14:14):
death with a hammer of all things. Uh. And then
he also revealed that he was not the only person
involved in these murders. Um. And there were actually a
group of them, a group of boys. They were part
of this network. It was a Satanic community that called
itself the Beasts of Satan. Was that also the name
(14:36):
of their band, because that is a real missed opportunity.
If it wasn't, I believe it was the I believe
it was the network's name. It may have been a
name for a band as well, but it was definitely
the name of this conspiracy. And this is an active conspiracy.
Police also learned that, in addition to murdering these two children,
(14:57):
there was a drummer in the metal scene named Andrea
Bontade who had been driven to suicide by the same group.
They gas lit him, they got in his head, They emotionally,
mentally terrorized him until one day he committed suicidey ended
his life by purposely crashing his car while inebriated. And
(15:18):
we have to stop for one note here. It's it's
a little bit difficult in those sorts of cases to
know for sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
a weather junk driver meant to kill themselves in a vehicle.
So it could have been that he was just depressed
and too drunk to drive, But the press and law
(15:39):
enforcement treated it as a suicide. And while this is
all happening Italy at the time, a very conservative, very
Catholic country, already has this boiling fear right just simmering
right under the surface. Uh. And the fear is that
there would be some arc hayne, some hidden some occulted,
(16:02):
occult network, little word play there that is actively undermining
the power of the Church and is a threat to
good Christians or good Catholics everywhere. And this story the
Beast of Satan, this is the powder caag that ignites
an Italian culture and a genuine Satanic panic hits the zeitgeist. Again,
(16:28):
it had already been there under the surface. And if
you look at the timeline. Similar things are happening in
the United States. I'm sure anybody alive during the late
eighties early nineties can recall that it goes back to
Memphis to like you have just mentioned, to talk shows. Yeah,
and it goes back to talk shows too. That you're right,
(16:49):
I blame Marilyn Manson. You leave Brian out of this.
Have you seen him lately? He is a mess. He
is a big, old, sloppy mass. He's not quite Billy Oregon, miss. I.
When I say a mess, that just mean like every
time he's on camera talking that he seems like completely
drunk out. Yeah. Yeah, fames of fickle Mistress for sure.
(17:11):
And this panic, Yeah, panic is a good word for it.
This panic hit police just as much as it hit
the public and the tabloids, so much so that in
the course of this investigation, they decide they will create
a special unit focusing on quote new religious sects, particularly
(17:32):
Satanist of any variety and violent quote ritualistic groups. They
want to coordinate nationwide investigations into potentially dangerous new religious movements,
and they plan to include not only psychologists and investigators,
but a priest who is an expert on the occult
that sounds like a comic book in the making, doesn't it.
(17:52):
It really does, but it seems like probably the right
move if this is the kind of thing you're targeting.
And if you want to learn more about the context
of Italy at this time, check out our episode on
the Vatican and exorcism, especially the chief exorcist, right is
what is it? Father a More which you can find
(18:16):
a documentary on Neckflix Netflix about right now, and he
is a very conservative man. He also associate Terry Potter
with the rise of Satanism. Several other people are convicted
in the trials that result in this Beast of Satan investigation,
Paolo Leoni, Marcos Ampolo Eros monter Roso, Elizabetta Ballarat and
(18:39):
the leader, a plumber named Nicola Sapone, who is not
a musician but is the spiritual guru of this group
and is thought to have been the the sort of
Charles Manson behind the murders. Right, so maybe not himself
wielding the hammer in this case, but being the operative
(19:04):
mental force behind it. And this means that in at
least one case, although people will say that Satanic panics
are often overblown, in at least one case here there
was an active satanic conspiracy occurring in Italy, confirmed, proven
and real and luckily fortunately officially solved. Officially. You're right, officially,
(19:29):
but that takes us to another case and something even
more I guess notorious would be a good word. Uh.
This is going to contain some graphics sexual content. Want
you to know that before heading in. This may not
be suitable for all listeners. This is the story of
the Monster of Florence, which we will get to right
(19:52):
after a quick break and we're back. We're gonna jump
into the Monster of Florence. In the nineteen eighties, there
were a series of murders, the first of which that
was discovered by police. It looked a little something like
this and has been mentioned before. This is gonna get graphic,
(20:15):
so please stop listening if if you need to. Someone
was finding cars that were out in the in the
countryside around Florence, and inside these cars there were usually
a male and a female who were a bit younger,
or at least one of them was a bit younger,
(20:36):
usually unmarried, and they were engaging in amorous acts in
their vehicles. And it's really interesting. There's an article really
more of a account a true crime story called The
Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston from The Atlantic Um
where he points out that for it's just kind of
historical thing in Italy that folks would live with their
(20:57):
parents until they got married, and said, this culture of
like having sex and cars very much a thing. And
they were even kind of creepers that were called like Indianni.
I believe it is a little bit of a racially
problematic term because it translates to Indians. It meant kind
of people kind of creeping around, you know, so not
not the best look in terms of racial sensitivity there.
(21:19):
But they would even like have like listening devices, and
it was like a total culture of this kind of behavior. Um,
So I just want to point that out of front.
And this wasn't just like an isolated yet and and
it was a total hunting ground for the person we're
about to talk about. Yes, so lovers lanes. Yeah, even
people who were engaged to be married would still participate
(21:40):
in this. So in June of one June six, this
is one of the first cases they find initially, although
there's another there are another couple that we'll get too later.
A couple of cases. Rather. Uh. There's a guy named
Giovanni foji f O g g I. He works at
a warehouse. He's the eighty years old. His fiancee is
(22:03):
one a little southern there. His fiance is a shop
assistant named Carmela di Nuccio. And they are found shot
to death and stabbed near the town where they both live,
an area called Scandici. Denuco's body was pulled out of
the car, and this is the graphic part. The killer
had cut out her pubic area, her the entire her
(22:25):
reproductive work, and not just cut out like some sort
of brutal, you know, blunt instrument act. It was a
an act of precision, of almost surgical precision. And the
next morning, guy who was known to be one of
these Peeping Tom characters, a paramedic by trade named Enzo Spilatti,
(22:46):
went around and apparently was talking in town about the
murder before the corpses have been officially discovered. So he
gets arrested. Just bracket him will come back. He's in
jail for about three months at this time, and the
police don't really have any leads, but let me let
me clarify something here. So we said one right, June.
(23:10):
That's when the police find the bodies of Giovanni and Carmela.
They also at some point think there there might be
other things occurring. Other murders start happening. In October three
of the same year, a couple, Stefano Baldy and Susannah Canby,
(23:35):
are also engaged. They're going to be married. They're in
a car and they are found shot to death and stabbed.
Another wrinkle occurs here because an anonymous person calls Susannah
Cambi's mother the morning after the murder to talk about
her daughter, and a few days before the murder, it
(23:57):
turns out Susannah had told her mother that there was
some one and stalking or chasing her by car. And
then another murder occurs in June nine nine two. Paolo
Maynardi and Antonola miguel Orini. I should say apologies for
our pronunciation of the Italian names here, also engaged. They
(24:17):
are They are found shot to death, but this time
the killer does not mutilate the female victim. She is
still alive when she has found, but she dies a
few hours later at the hospital. And it looks like
when the police are trying to reconstruct this that the
killer drove the car a few feet to hide the
(24:41):
vehicle and corpses in a wooded area, but then lost
control of the car and eventually abandoned the scene. And
that's when something even more strange happened, because originally now
the police believe these murders begin sometime in the eighties, right,
But twelve days after that murder, in June of nine two,
(25:05):
the police and Florence received an anonymous letter that's right um.
Inside was a an aged clipping from La Nazione, which
was the paper of note Um, and it was about
a kind of long forgotten double murder from nineteen sixty
eight where a man and a woman were slain while
(25:28):
having sex in a part car um and scrawled on
the article was a little bit of advice said take
another look at this crime. And that's it. No fingerprints,
no forensic evidence. This was clean. So someone had at
least taken the care to make sure it was truly anonymous. Right.
(25:49):
The nineteen sixty eight murder had previously been considered solved.
It occurred on August one, worker a mason worker named
Tonio loo Bianco and Barbara Locchi were shot to death
with a twenty two, Burretta in a small town west
of Florence. Unfortunately, there was a kid sleep in the car,
(26:15):
woke up, found some mother dead. Ran to a nearby
house like two in the morning. Open the door, let
me in. Get this. I'm tired and my dad's sick
in bed. He has to drive me home. My mom
and my uncle are dead in the car. That's right.
(26:35):
The woman who was in the car was married, and
she was not The guy she was sleeping with was
not her husband. Her husband was a man named Stefano Mela,
and he was arrested for this crime. That's right. He
was an immigrant from Sardinia. And they actually did a
test on him that showed that he had recently fired
(26:57):
a gun, a handgun, and he can fast to doing
this murder. These murders um in uh an act of
just you know, complete passionate jealousy. Yes, not premeditated. That
was his that was his initial argument. He would spend
six years in jail, and it was considered an open
(27:18):
and shut case until other very similar murders occurred, and
when the nine murders were committed, and it was demonstrably
true that he could not have committed these because he
was uh yeah, he was incarcerated at the time, right,
he would not have been capable physically doing these murders.
(27:38):
And he became the number one interview that Italian journalists
wanted to acquire. And then he said something very troubling
in an interview with Spezi which I had found in
the Atlantic article that I think we mentioned earlier. He
is pacing around. He seems a little discombobulated, but he mutters,
(28:00):
they need to figure out where that pistol is otherwise
there will be more murders. They will continue to kill.
They will continue. That's right, folks. They yeah, a single pistol,
end of the they So when I take a quick
moment to give props to this guy, Mario Spezi, who
kind of became a hot shot crime reporter in Italy
(28:21):
around this time and was the guy who Um the
inspector in Thomas Harris's um sequel to Silence of the
Lambs Hannibal was based on, and in fact that story
in general was inspired by these cases, and Harris himself
went to a lot of the trials and spoke to
Spezi in person and was a big part of this
(28:42):
whole world. And I believe Spezi was even a little
irritated that spoiler alert for Hannibal Um, the character that
was based on him, gets hung by his own guts
out of the balcony of a piazza. And this, this statement,
this plural statement, they will continue to hill led journalists
and investigators in police to believe that Mela, while responsible
(29:07):
for the nineteen sixty eight murder, had not acted alone,
had not acted in a fit of passion. It had
not been a spontaneous crime, but rather what they call
a delicto de clan, a clan killing in which others
from what would later be called the Sardinian circle had participated.
(29:28):
So investigators started to theorize that one of the killers
had enjoyed this experience in nineteen sixty eight, so much
so that he had gone on to become the Monster
of Florence, using, in a massive stroke of stupidity, the
same gun. And the next murder cases that proceed after this,
after nineteen eighty two on through nineteen eighty three and
(29:52):
up to nineteen five, they were all connected by location type,
by the m O you know, people in Kars been together,
and the same twenty two caliber case scenes that were
found at crime scenes, and I believe that they all
had the same unique signature of the muzzle of that
baretta in question that's persisted throughout these cases. That's correct,
(30:16):
and we know a little bit about the method of attack.
The killer would wait until the couple was engaged in
intimate activity so their guard would be down right, and
then typically shoot the male first and use a flashlight
to both illuminate the vehicle and lower the chances of
(30:39):
the killer being clearly identified, And then they would shoot
the female occupant. Then they would use a knife to
stab both victims multiple times, which tells us a little
bit about the emotional state of the killer, because a
gunshot would already have for lack of a better phrase,
done done the task, at least in theory, right. Uh.
(31:02):
Depending on how you shoot someone with the twenty two,
they could die quite quickly, right, So the stabbing seems
to be an act of rage of some sort. Then
the body of the funerale victim was dragged away and
the knife was used to mutilate them. The same knife
most likely used to do the stabbing after the initial shooting,
(31:23):
which I think I read would have been the kind
of knife that a scuba diver would use that has
kind of a hook on it, not notches. Yeah, and
again that very surgical precision and one of the one
of the murders, I think only one um A, I
believe a breast was removed as well. Um so that
was it was definitely someone was theorized that they might
have been a butcher or possibly someone that had some
(31:45):
experience and in a surgical theater. And there was a
layer correspondence where in a single left nipple was mailed
to law enforcement. Yeah. Okay, so we haven't got into
There's a lot more about this case and we need
to keep exploring, and we'll do that right after a
quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(32:14):
To this day as we record this in Despite multiple investigations,
despite numerous trials, the case of the Monster of Florence
remains officially unsolved. Multiple people were arrested and even convicted
over the years, but further killings using the same gun
(32:35):
that twenty two under the same circumstances. While these suspects
were imprisoned, ultimately exonerated them. Investigators questioned more than one
hundred thousand people some degree in hopes of gathering new evidence,
and they had. They had numerous suspects. Remember Enzo Spilatti
we have mentioned earlier. He was the ambulance driver who
(32:56):
was initially suspected his car been parked near the scene
of the crime, and as law enforcement officers asked him
more and more questions, he gave vague, conflicting alibis, probably
because he didn't want to say that he was a
voyeur part of the culture we mentioned earlier. Uh More
(33:16):
evidence revealed that he had told his wife about this
incident before it was announced in the paper. He was
charged with two counts a homicide. He was sent to
prison to stand trial. Several months later. However, a new
murder led police to believe they got the wrong guy.
He was just a creepy dude, not a murderer. But
they also questioned a farmer named Pietro Pazziani, who was
(33:40):
a former rapist and murderer who had been arrested in
nineteen fifty one when he caught his fiance sleeping with
a traveling salesman and killed the guy. Here's the thing
about him. To even his family, who admittedly hated the
guy because he was a drunk and in an abusive bully.
Even they said, yeah, this guy's the worst, but he
(34:03):
didn't do this, and yeah, and and the you know,
our our journalist friend Um Spetsy also didn't buy it
because you know, these were very precisely carried out acts
um with that surgical attention to detail. And this guy
was kind of a big, bumbling, drunken buffoon. Yeah, but
they also investigators thought he was quite intelligent. Investigators thought
(34:28):
he was quite intelligent. His alcoholism, yes, and he was.
He stated, like, let's just listen to this. That where
he found his fiance in the car with a traveling salesman.
He said in the trial that he he saw the
image of her left breast when he like looked in
the car and saw her left breast with another man
(34:50):
in the car, it sent him into a rage and
he killed the man. Wasn't that one of the things
that led them to connected with him because of the
severed left breast and us the you know, his fiance,
the love of his life supposedly or whatever was cheating
on him and all this, and it's just like the
rage that he went through, right, but it was less
(35:10):
rest of one of the victims. Get this, at the
time of this new investigation. He's already been released after
serving check it out, thirteen years in prison for murdering
this guy in fifty one. That's it. Thirteen years. Yeah,
he's been out of prison for a while. Yeah, that's
the price you pay, thirteen years. Think about it when
you're in Italy. But in a trial in nine he
(35:36):
is convicted for fourteen of the sixteen counts of murder
attributed to the Monster of Florence. All you know, many
tied together with the use of this twenty two because
there is supposedly a twenty two caliber round found in
his garden more or less the European word for yards
(35:58):
or something that we would used in the States, and
this round matched the rounds used in the Monster Slanes. However,
I believe it was Specy who, when he was on
assignment from a television station, videotaped a police officer at
the search of the property, saying that this is the
police officer talking in. The police officer said he believed
(36:20):
the chief inspector had planted this round in that guy's garden,
and it was an unspent round. It wasn't it wasn't
a casing, and it certainly didn't have them the markings
in question of the of the weapon we're talking about, right, right,
So it's not it's not anywhere near as rock solid
as perhaps some factions of law enforcement wanted people to believe.
(36:42):
And in appeals court overturns this conviction. They say, a
lack of solid evidence. Yeah, it's crazy, because in fact,
this is something you just don't even hear happening. The
prosecutor who was on the case actually refused to prosecute
because it had been such a uh, just an abomination
(37:03):
of justice. He said it was something like the level
of it was like the work of Inspector Cluseau, the
famous bumbling pink panther detective. And he was acquitted, um,
and it was sent back to be retried. But he
actually Pacciani passed away in February of before this new
trial could could happen. So there's some stuff that happens
(37:27):
before he passes away. The investigators, despite the overturning for
the lack of evidence, and despite the advocacy of the
former prosecutor, the investigators still believe that Passiani is guilty. Yeah,
even though he's you know, it's been overturned, right, They
believe they found evidence the monsters not acting alone, and
(37:48):
they get a confession from two other guys that are
friends of Passis. Yeah, Mario Vanni and gian Carlo Latti,
and um, they confessed like they that down when they confess, yes,
we helped Pacciani kill these guys, kill these people. Um.
And these two men end up getting convicted for four
(38:08):
of the double murders. Vanni was given life in prison
and Lottie was given a reduced sentence of twenty six years.
And at this point in the investigation, this is you know,
we've gone back a little. PASSIONI is still alive. The
investigators believe that Passiani is the leader of a group
of killers, and that's when they begin this retrial. And
(38:28):
as we said, days before this retrial, passion is found
dead in his home, allegedly officially from heart related issues.
But there are some questions about that, right, big ones
that that tie back into the saying the aforementioned satanic
panic of the beasts of Satan case that we talked
(38:50):
about at the top of the show. Was he dead
due to simple health issues or was there something rotten
in Florence? Right, So, then there's the Sardinian connection, which
we mentioned earlier. At one time, the investigation focuses on
three Sardinian brothers, Francesco Salvatore and Giovanni Vinci. All three
(39:15):
had been lovers of the woman who has murdered in
nine and one or more have been present at her death. First,
the police arrest Francesco in September of three. With Francesco
Vinci in jail, the monster strikes again. So it keeps happening,
(39:37):
It keeps happening, and so initially police think, well, maybe
one of Francesco's affiliates has committed a new murder matching
the m O just to create a false lead, so
cold blooded that they said, let's kill two people and
make them just to make a red herring. Right, So
(39:57):
the police arrest Antonio van she on firearms charges, which
are admittedly kind of trumped up. There an excuse for
them to get him in the room, and they question
him intensely, but they're unable to break him and eventually
they have to release him. Francesco remains in prison. So
the police believe Francesco, while perhaps not be the murderer,
(40:18):
knows the identity of the true killer. And then later
there's a another guy who becomes implicated in this, a
fellow named Ricardo Viti. Viti is arrested for the suspected
murder of several prostitutes in areas of Florence very close
to the site of the monsters murders. Currently is not
(40:38):
considered the murderer, and a lot of people will say
that the Italian courts and law enforcement were just trying
to get their man to get the case closed. But then,
you know, we go back to the thing we've been
we've been talking about this entire time, which is is
this a loan serial killer or is this something deeper?
(41:01):
Is there a cult at play? Like similar to Berkowitz
and the Son of Sam murders. Various investigators and criminologists
have all argued that the Monster of Florence homicides are
the results of not only a group, but maybe even
a group practicing a cult esoteric rituals. Yikes. Yeah, this
(41:24):
whole notion that um, this this man who you know,
took the fall for these murders not only wasn't acting alone,
but was like the least of the involved parties, that
he was something more along the lines of a courier
um providing these sex organs for the purposes of Satanic
(41:45):
rituals or black masses. Right. Um, there's an article in
the Guardian called Italian mass killer was quote servant of
Satanic Sect. Yeah, yeah, and that that comes in two
thousand and one, right, pretty pretty recent and cons iteration
of the times in which these murders occurred. And we
should also note here that if there's any sand to this,
(42:07):
that means the time of which the murders we know
about occurred. So Noel, can you tell us a little
bit about what happens in this Guardian article? I do,
but first I need to make a quick correction and
I'm so sorry. Earlier I said that it was the
journalist who was um used as the inspiration for the
character and Thomas Harris's Hannibal. It was actually the chief inspector,
(42:29):
Ruggero Perugini who was used as that inspiration. So I
just clarify that quick. But yes, Italian mass killer was
the servant of Satanic sect. And our Guardian article by
Rory Carroll writing from Rome, and like he said, it's
from two thousand one. It it's just the notion that
(42:51):
there was some kind of high level society of Tuscan elite,
that we're carrying out these murders, or at least it
was on their behalf. Um. There was an investigation, a
raid that took place in the offices of um A,
a leading psychologist who was a member of the Secret
(43:12):
Service UM and it uncovered computer disks and notes and
books and all kinds of things detailing the killings and
these men who were rated, and they were necessarily considered suspects.
But it kind of points to some kind of deeper
(43:33):
cover up involving um Paciani, that he was a patsy
more or less, or that he, you know, maybe did
carry out the murders, but it was that it was
at the behest of some much more sinister figures in
high society. They were kind of pulling the strings and
the detrou affair in Belgium exactly. Yeah. But in this
case you've got two guys, Aurelio Mattie he's a psychologist
(43:58):
with the Secret Service, and this other dude, Francesco Bruno,
who was a leading criminal criminal psychologist, who are actually
working on the case of the Florence, the Monster of Florence.
And what's alleged here is that uh, these guys were
actually kind of withholding certain parts. As Pacciani is going
to trial and evidence is coming up because they're actually
(44:19):
implicated in it or part of the major reasons for
it happening. Yeah, and the mystery deepens as well, because
in two thousand and four there's a another inquiry that reopens.
The wife of a or the ex wife of a
chemist named Francesco Klamandre comes forward and accuses her husband,
(44:44):
Francesco or ex husband, of being associated with the killings.
There's an article in the Telegraph Monster of Florence killed
on cults order. In this In this description, the pharmacist
or the chemist is sixty years old and his home
has searched for eleven hours. Police find ten boxes of
(45:05):
pornographic material and associated paperwork, and Francesco is one of
thirteen people that are put under investigation. Officials at this
point in two thousand four say they have concrete proof
to unmask those behind the murders, and they have been
carried out according to a quote precise esoteric ritual. WHOA.
(45:26):
So it goes deeper, right, and still, let's say we
have to point out still this case is considered officially
unsolved and as crazy as it might sound to say
there's some kind of possible occult angle or cover up occurring,
there are a lot of troubling, circumstantial things to this case. Yeah,
(45:47):
And one of them in particular was in when, um,
when Pacciani died of this supposed heart attack, a magistrate
who was investigating the case, a guy named Paolo kansa
he Be, actually sat on the record that he believed
that this death was the cause of some kind of
poisoning to silence him from pointing the finger at the
(46:09):
real killers. And the last lie in this article in
the Guardian is what kind of leaves me with some chills.
And I don't really know where to go from here,
but I'm gonna give it to you. Um. Apparently Pacciani
died with quite a bit of assets. He had two
homes and about fifty thousand lira in the bank, and
(46:31):
the idea is that this was money that he had
been paid hush money. And they conjecture that the leader
of this sect could have been someone like a doctor
or a lawyer, or someone you know, very high up
in in that society. Um. So I don't know, Yeah,
very troubling. I found some other strange stuff too about
(46:54):
purported collateral deaths are created. In the Monster Florence case.
You can find in various forms lists of numbers of
suspicious murders, deaths, or suicides that surround the case. And
there's a lot of I would say, allegation or maybe
speculation that these might be related. Uh. These are names
(47:18):
of everyone from prostitutes to hotel workers, psychologists, also active
we're active at the time that they were alive, active wizards, warlocks, magicians.
It gets very fuzzy, very very quickly. And the allegations
here Again, one of the things that I keep going
(47:40):
back to in this case is that the question of
collaboration and conspiracy seems pretty it seems very possible. The
question to me now is just like, what what is
the nature of this group? Is it a group of
people who are related to each other and making repeated killings.
(48:04):
Is it a group of a network enacting rituals, a
network with enough influence to cover it up or keep
it keep it from being officially solved? You know, I
think I think off air nol you had compared it
to true Detective. Oh yeah, I mean, that's it's got
it's got that vibe. And then, like we said, Thomas
Harris definitely drew a lot of inspiration for this for
(48:26):
his fictional book Hannibal. So I mean, it certainly has
the stuff of great storytelling. And I read another I've
read another allegation that didn't relate to clan killings or
two serial killers. An article from July seventeen, the Italian
(48:48):
Insider mentions the reopening of the Monster of Florence murders
and also mentions a new suspect, a guy named Jump
Hairy Vigilante, who was eighty six years old at the time,
and the investigation argues that this series of murders occurs
(49:11):
to function as a false flag, a pista netta, meaning
that according to the lawyers arguing this uh Vieira ad Rani.
He says that the crime serve as distractions from magistrates
in public opinion from what was happening in Italy during
the Strategy of Tension, the series of terrorist acts throughout
(49:34):
the seventies and eighties committed by right wing extremists, such
as the Bologna bombing, which aimed to shift the blame
onto communists to quell communist movements, to gain support for
right wing causes. Wow, that's a big conspiracy. Yeah, you
gotta like the simplicity of it, right, And they were like,
what if the game mouse trap was what if we
just did that? Yeah, but what if that's actually what happened.
(49:58):
I don't know. It seems kind it seems sort far fetched,
doesn't it. It certainly does. I mean, I guess we
could see some of that tailwagon the dog in other
journalistic aspects, But it seems like a lot to murder
people because whatever the motivation of the causes, the truth
is that real people did die, and that seems it
(50:18):
seems like actually murdering people is going a bit far
to distract from this. But again, the Bologna ball ing
was a real thing. So we have at this point
no official conclusions or answers, And I don't know what
do you guys think. Do you think there's uh, do
(50:38):
you think there's a cover up a foot? Yes? I
think there is. There was some kind of cover up,
But you know, there are two guys who went to
jail for most of it, and maybe they were just Patsy's,
but they did give confessions. I think weird rich dudes
do stuff like this all the time. Probably. I'm not kidding,
I really really, Oh, I definitely do. Yeah. I mean
(51:01):
I think any I think as as perverse and twisted
a thing as you can imagine. Somebody is paying a
bunch of money to do it and and are able
to continue doing it because of their position of power
and prominence. I have no doubt in my mind that's true.
I argue that there's another force. I bet that could
be true. But I argue there's another force that actively
aids and in bets this, which is that governments and
(51:25):
especially intelligence agencies, when they're functioning on rogue level, do
encourage these things in order to have I'm not saying
these murders in particular, but do encourage illegal activities in
order to have dirt on people. It's blackmail later if
you can get somebody in a honey pot situation. I'm
not saying it has to be something wild and out
(51:45):
there like cannibalism or crazy abuse. You could just be tape. Yeah,
it could be a pe tape. It could be a prostitute,
it could be anything like that. And that that is
a proven tactic of intelligence agencies. We've also heard allegations
that that stands too much darker and more twisted territory
than the public knows about. But yeah, that's the scary
(52:06):
thing about this. We don't have definitive proof that it happened,
but we have pretty good evidence that it's plausible. We
have pretty good evidence of like the level of depravity
that human nature can push people to. That's true, especially
when it's slowly escalates and when they're corrupted by ultimate power.
I don't know, I hate to sound like such a
(52:27):
downer on the human race, but man, I we've seen
some stuff, and yeah, I would even say just lack
of consequences is enough. It might not even have a benefit.
Oh man, Well, the terrible news is that modern ritual
murders do continue to occur in Italy even today. In February,
(52:50):
and eighteen year old girl named Pamela Mastro Pietro was
discovered in two suitcases. Yes, her dismembered body had been
left alongside this rural room near mar Mascerata, Italy. And
this is gruesome again here you go. Her heart and
internal organs were all missing and um m hmm. She
(53:14):
she's been struggling with drug problems. She recently went to
this recovery clinic. To try and get some help, and
she was to some degree familiar with the area as
well as the you know, the criminal underground. That's they're
the people who are moving in the shadows, giving her
past with drug abuse, right, yes, just getting it. So
the investigation led law enforcement to the home of a
(53:36):
twenty nine year old man named Innocent. Well, he's fine then, right, right, right,
nominative determinism all the way. He is in a legal
immigrant at the time, and he has a criminal record
for drug dealing and it's probably still selling drugs at
the time. They believed two of his associates are also arrested.
Police find blood covered clothing belonging to Mastro Pietro, along
(54:00):
if knives and blades with her blood on them, and
her body had been washed with bleach. He had washed
his hands with bleach. The absence of her heart, internal organs,
and sexual organs led police to suspect the girl may
have been sacrificed in what and this is the law
enforcement's term, and what they called quote some kind of
(54:22):
voodoo ritual. According to criminologist Alessandro Malusi, it is a
routine to cut victims into pieces and in some cases
to eat parts of their body in this criminal underworld.
Umlusi claims that cannibalism is more of a rule than
an exception in these situations, and then people often refuse
to speak out about the practice due to concerns being
(54:44):
called racist. So again we see racism raising its head
here in Italy because there is in these reports. We'll
see things where someone will say otto immigrants, or murdering
people and eating them and what every other scary thing
you can think about. But in this case it does
appear that at least this guy did kill someone ritualistically
(55:08):
in order to through supernatural means, accomplished some task in
the material world. That's what we mean when we say
ritual murders. Ritual ritual murder is not just too uh,
kill someone in a way that the killer finds interesting
for its own sake. It is supposed to create some
(55:29):
sort of effect in the world. Italian law enforcement claims
other drug dealers participate in ritual murders with the goal
of causing madness and death amongst the police population. Yeah.
In December of a forty six year old Moroccan woman
was found in a forest near Verona and her body
was dismembered into approximately a dozen pieces their number. There
(55:53):
are a number of other cases like this you can
unfortunately find in Italian media. However, big the big question
is are these actually ritualistic murders or is law enforcement
portraying them as such? And there's a huge historical and
cultural context bubbling again just under the surface here. How
(56:14):
much of the motivation for the betrayal of these things
as religiously motivated ritual murders, how much, how much of
that motivation comes from religiously motivated hysteria, how much of
it is corruption or incompetence in the Italian law enforcement system,
and how much in recent cases could be attributed to racism.
(56:34):
These are questions that are tough to answer, but one
thing is for sure. There was at least one proven
active Satanic conspiracy slash ritual murder group in Italy, and
the case of the Monster of Florence remains to this
day unsolved. So don't listen to death metal if you're
in Italy. That's a bad idea because there's probably some
(56:55):
ritualistic murders happening somewhere near you within that scene. And
then too, don't park your car and get amorous with
someone in the countryside. Ever, unless you're married and you've
got documents on the windows. This is like Jason Vorhees rules. Dude, Yeah,
that's where That's where we're at. Can you do it
in a tent? No? There, I don't think we talked
(57:18):
about there. You want to get stabbed in his head
or shot in the hand. How about we just be
safe and to say no sex before marriage. That's it.
Don't do it hard pass don't wait, both of you
guys stop right now? Oh that's right. Bah so um.
(57:40):
At this point we end on a question too. We
would like to hear your perspective on these murders. Do
you do you think this stuff is being I don't know,
like falsely advertised as a cult in nature or do
you think that there's and there is an act of
cover up and if so, does it continue today? And
(58:02):
if and if that is the case, then who's doing
the covering? Is it the Secret Service? Is it an
elite group of disgusting, perverse aristocrats. Is it a family
with a dark secret. We'd like to know. You can
tell us about it on Instagram. You can reach us
on Facebook, you can reach us on Twitter. Hey, don't forget.
(58:23):
We're coming to a city near you very soon on
our first ever live tour. Yes, we're gonna be on
tour in the Northeast. You can find more information about
it right now if you go to stuff they Don't
Want you to Know dot com and click on the
live shows tab. You'll see everything there and you can
get tickets directly. He knows it might be talking about
more Satan stuff. Yeah, maybe we're not. It could be anything. Yeah,
(58:45):
we don't really know yet that we're figuring it out.
That's right. And if you don't want to do that stuff,
you can just call our phone number and leave a message.
We are concocting some things with your messages right now.
You can call one eight three three S T D
E W y t K in the morning. There's a lot,
but you can do it. Call us. We've got a
(59:06):
ton of great messages already and you'll you may hear
yourself on the show very soon. And in the meantime,
if you don't want to do any of that, you
can reach out to us on the usual social media channels,
or we are either Conspiracy Stuff or on Instagram or
Conspiracy Stuff Show. Conspiracy Stuff I believe is just the
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does it for you, um, you can just send us
a good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at
(59:29):
how stuff works dot com. Sleep Tight
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. Welcome
(00:24):
back to the show. My name is Matt, my name
is Noel. They called me Ben. It's good to be back.
We're joined with our super producer Paul Decant as always
and most importantly, you are you. You are here, and
that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Matt,
that bend shaped whole from last time is filled in
with a bend shaped figure. Oh my gosh, it's filled
(00:46):
in so much like he. Not only did he go
on adventures and come back, he brought us gifts he did.
Oh thanks, Yeah. Behind the behind the curtain, all of
our birth days occur in a very close span of time,
totally unplanned, totally unplanned unless our parents are part of
(01:08):
a conspiracy we have yet to discern. And we were
all accidental births as well. And I did not know
that about you know. And uh. One of the practices
that I personally like to do, and the highly recommend
anyone listening, is that when you celebrate your birthday, the
only real New Year's you get take some time to
(01:28):
appreciate your friends and family, give them presents instead. Think
of it as a loyalty program, but not as creepy
as the big data grocery store cards. Okay, I think
we can all do that. Wait, are you saying you
don't use a Kroger Plus card? Man? I still don't think.
But to give you such value and the gas points,
(01:49):
it's the only way I can afford food for my family.
It's interesting, though, because if you're old enough to remember
the times before the introduction of those cards, the prices
were initially lower if you used the card, but then
they just upped the prices gradually on all the other products,
so you're getting the normal price for a ride. I'm
(02:10):
saying they're taking your data for a ride, for sure.
But speaking of rides, speaking of traveling, I want to
thank you guys for doing what I hear is a
fantastic episode while while I was away? Who told you that?
You told me that we got we got through it?
We did get We did get through it? Listeners right in?
Did we did? We? Was it? Okay? But yeah, I
(02:34):
can't wait to hear it. It's only the it's only
the second episode. I've ever missed, and I was. I
really missed you guys, So it's great to be back.
And one place that I have not traveled to in
all this gallivanting and globe trotting is Italy. Have you
guys ever been to Italy? Not once, but definitely I
want to go there. I would very much like to go,
(02:55):
but not so much after this episode. Maybe not to Florence,
right spoilers, Hey, Paul, have you ever been to Italy?
Oh my gosh, so Paul just said he's been to
Italy and Florence. We might we might consult you a
little bit for some background information today, Paul, what do
(03:16):
we think of when we think of Italy? Just just
like off the top of the dome, first impressions? Olives
there we go? Yeah, I would say the Canals of Venice.
Maybe Gondola's also in Venice. Pizza clear, the popa, yeah,
making a return? Yeah, the Pope in the Vatican, Uh,
(03:41):
fresh steaming pasta maybe right. I thought you're gonna say
something else. Perhaps that as well. Uh, let's go the
whole nine with the stereotypes. Maybe somebody's singing a moore
a right, possibly while piloting a gondola and wearing a
black and white striped shirt very similar to the one
you're wearing right now, Ben, I mean, yeah, this one
is Uh. I think this is from Korea. It was
(04:02):
way hotter there than I thought it would be. But
beyond these images we see of Italy, the country also
has a dark side, a history of violent murders that
some alleged border on the occult. And here are the facts.
In today's episode, we're exploring some of the most well
(04:23):
known homicide cases in modern Italian history. Will start with
the Beasts of Satan and then eventually will meet maybe
the Monster of Florence. So the Beasts of Satan. This
is beasts plural, beasts plural monster singular, but asterix right,
(04:45):
so the Beast of Satan. This story begins in January
when two young people to utes of Italy, Fabio Tullus
and Chara Marino Uh disappear their teena just the both
just around sixteen. They have been drinking at a pub
called The Midnight. Sounds like a respectable neighborhood watering hole,
(05:09):
real family place, but no. As it turns out, it
was sort of a meet up spot for folks in
like the black metal scene, right, yeah, suf, which is
you know this stuff like you hear about with the
Swedish death metal bands, well black metal, I think if
we're talking stylistically, black metal has the witchier vocal. It's
like dot and death metals more right right there, they
(05:33):
were both involved in black metal and death metal. I'm
glad you brought up Scandinavia, old because a lot of
members of black metal and death metal bands in Scandinavia
were implicated in church burnings, right, That's what I was
getting to. And also even like the ones that maybe
didn't actually murder each other, like members of the band Mayhem.
I think you may remember hell Hammer, yeah exactly, or
(05:56):
that was that a guy or a band? They all
I can never I always confuse them because they all
have these crazy names. But there's there's a story where, um,
the cover of a Mayhem record I believe had an
actual image of a dude's suicide. Like they walked in
and this former band member had blown his brains out
and they took a picture of it. And then there
was a whole thing where one of the members was
(06:16):
implicated and stabbing one of the other members to death
many many times then the church burning all in service
of Satan, yeah, I guess yeah, or just psychological issues.
There was also a little bit of cannibalism alleged in
that case. So let's get let's get back to uh. Fabio,
(06:37):
Fabio and Chiara Kiara Shara. Yeah, they were as we said,
they had sixteen. They were out drinking at the midnight,
participating in the heavy metal scene in Milan, and they
never came home. A lot of their friends claimed that
the two would just run off together, and the police
initially seemed to accept this explanation as well. However, for
(07:00):
Fabio's father, a guy named Michelle Tollis, didn't buy it.
He started doing his own research, which we always applaud.
He attended metal concerts in this scene, and he went
to festivals not just in Italy but across Europe searching
for his son. And as we mentioned, Fabio and those
(07:21):
in his circle were into extremely, extremely dark metal. The
genres of death metal and black metal both known for
their use of gruesome satanic imagery like corpse paint. Corpse paint,
which is the white and black stuff meant to give
you a paller think of a less cartoonish kiss yeah,
(07:42):
I mean a little more hardcore. And there they were
even known for like carrying around severed um or dead
animals and bags that they would smell before going on
stage of a real kind I don't know. And some
of it you read these stories and you're like, is
this all just for show and kind of just like
a sort of an extreme version of punk rock or something,
(08:03):
or was their actual satanic ritual going on? Not really
clear even when you read the stories about these Scandinavian bands. Yeah,
how much of it is sort of Alice Cooper performative
stuff and how much of it is a reflection of
their genuine beliefs. The weird thing here is that Fabio
was very into this stuff, and it turned out that
(08:23):
his girlfriend also had a pretty extensive collection of satanic
literature and quote paraphernalia. So paraphernalia, as we know, is
a pretty large term, right Yeah, like glass pipes, right yeah, right,
like last pipes. So this could have been uh, just
chalice is could have been pentagrams, could have just been
(08:44):
jewelry or things that maybe we're even interpreted as Satanic
investigators yea. And in his search, Fabio's father became convinced
that the two would not just disappeared. He became convinced
that Satanism as something to do with his son's disappearance.
It did not help that Michelle felt his son's former
(09:06):
friends grew increasingly squirrelly and evasive when he asked them
about the disappearance. His friends, the people who should be
there like worried. Yeah, can we also point out real quick,
this is something that's probably obvious to everybody, or that
that's that's looked into this stuff. The idea of Satanism
(09:27):
is often a huge misnomer because like the Church of
Satan and like Anton Lavy, it's much more of a
it's not a joke religion, but it's like much more
anti God than pro Satan, or like anti religion in
general than pro the deity of Satan. He's more symbol
of like you know, revolution or liberation, liberation and and
(09:51):
kind of liberty, like the French notion of that. So
it's interesting to see these things referred to as Satanic panics,
like the murders at robin Hood Hills. The ment was six,
how many of them? When they're you know those kids,
their documentary is made about them getting railroaded for these
supposedly satanic ritualistic murders. Satanism is that they're not they're
not really about that kind of stuff. Well it's okay,
(10:12):
so this is an interesting thing. Long time listeners will
probably remember how we had covered this in some earlier episodes,
I believe. So there's the Satanism that is typically referred
to here in the US as exactly what you're describing.
All the Anton LaVey do as thou wilt shall be
the whole of the law, and that's more about a
(10:32):
spiritual liberation from rigid metaphysical hierarchies, right, whether they're treated
as metaphors or actual things. But there's another genre of
Satanism called deistic satanism, meaning that yes, there is a God,
Yes there is a great adversary, and we're cool with
(10:53):
the latter. Yeah. So so there there is a difference.
I think often for who are experiencing or civilizations, whether
they're experiencing a Satanic panic, they're thinking not of the
more philosophical free yourself from uh, free yourself from Christian
ideology kind of satanism. They're thinking of the deistic the
(11:17):
devil is alive. I hear him breathing kind of Satanists. Absolutely.
I think what I was saying was more in reference
to the whole idea of the death metal bands and
the black metal and all that. I don't know that
that is necessarily based on like doing any kind of
devil worship per se. It's more just like we hate
God and hate religion and think what it represents is
(11:38):
bad for humanity in some way. Yeah, and it, interestingly enough,
it's it's a misnumber that goes beyond the label of Satanism,
because a lot of Scandinavian metal bands in particular are
rejecting Christianity and in turn embracing a neopagan approach. So
they're worshiping Wooden and things like that. So to them,
(12:00):
Christianity is an impressive force, which historically is very true.
It can be a little heavy handed, as as history
has shown. But let's get back into the beasts. So,
as I was saying, Michelle spent six years on his own,
out in the cold on this search, and he was
extensively documenting connections between the people his son knew, his
(12:24):
quote unquote friends from the metal scene, and there areas
where they hung out, their haunts if I could use
that word. Yeah, their bands and their mutual associates and connections.
And in two thousand and four, Michelle is watching the
news when he learns of a brutal murder in a
nearby town, Soma, Lombardo. A young man named Andrea Volpe
(12:47):
is arrested for killing his ex girlfriend, woman named Mary
Angela Pezzotta, and Volpe quickly admits to the crime. You
got me, I did it, not framed. Michelle, however, recognizes
this name. You see. It turns out that Volpe played
in a band with Michelle's son, Fabio. Oh jeez. So
(13:10):
six years later, he decides to call the police, and
they're impressed, but initially they're skeptical. Of course, there's nothing
law enforcement hates more than a self impointed law expert,
and so they find when he presents his evidence that
he has actually done a bang up job with his investigation.
They're impressed by the thoroughness of it and the quality
(13:31):
They actually use his work, his research. When they're interrogating
Vulpa about the disappearances, and he breaks. He confesses. He says,
your son and his girlfriend didn't just disappear, they were murdered. Furthermore,
(13:52):
he tells police, I can show you where they are buried. Yeah,
my god. And it turned is out that, Um, this
other dude, another one of Fabio's friends, this guy named
Mario Marcione or Marcione, he confessed himself to the murder
of these two individuals. He said he'd beaten Fabio to
(14:14):
death with a hammer of all things. Uh. And then
he also revealed that he was not the only person
involved in these murders. Um. And there were actually a
group of them, a group of boys. They were part
of this network. It was a Satanic community that called
itself the Beasts of Satan. Was that also the name
(14:36):
of their band, because that is a real missed opportunity.
If it wasn't, I believe it was the I believe
it was the network's name. It may have been a
name for a band as well, but it was definitely
the name of this conspiracy. And this is an active conspiracy.
Police also learned that, in addition to murdering these two children,
(14:57):
there was a drummer in the metal scene named Andrea
Bontade who had been driven to suicide by the same group.
They gas lit him, they got in his head, They emotionally,
mentally terrorized him until one day he committed suicidey ended
his life by purposely crashing his car while inebriated. And
(15:18):
we have to stop for one note here. It's it's
a little bit difficult in those sorts of cases to
know for sure, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that
a weather junk driver meant to kill themselves in a vehicle.
So it could have been that he was just depressed
and too drunk to drive, But the press and law
(15:39):
enforcement treated it as a suicide. And while this is
all happening Italy at the time, a very conservative, very
Catholic country, already has this boiling fear right just simmering
right under the surface. Uh. And the fear is that
there would be some arc hayne, some hidden some occulted,
(16:02):
occult network, little word play there that is actively undermining
the power of the Church and is a threat to
good Christians or good Catholics everywhere. And this story the
Beast of Satan, this is the powder caag that ignites
an Italian culture and a genuine Satanic panic hits the zeitgeist. Again,
(16:28):
it had already been there under the surface. And if
you look at the timeline. Similar things are happening in
the United States. I'm sure anybody alive during the late
eighties early nineties can recall that it goes back to
Memphis to like you have just mentioned, to talk shows. Yeah,
and it goes back to talk shows too. That you're right,
(16:49):
I blame Marilyn Manson. You leave Brian out of this.
Have you seen him lately? He is a mess. He
is a big, old, sloppy mass. He's not quite Billy Oregon, miss. I.
When I say a mess, that just mean like every
time he's on camera talking that he seems like completely
drunk out. Yeah. Yeah, fames of fickle Mistress for sure.
(17:11):
And this panic, Yeah, panic is a good word for it.
This panic hit police just as much as it hit
the public and the tabloids, so much so that in
the course of this investigation, they decide they will create
a special unit focusing on quote new religious sects, particularly
(17:32):
Satanist of any variety and violent quote ritualistic groups. They
want to coordinate nationwide investigations into potentially dangerous new religious movements,
and they plan to include not only psychologists and investigators,
but a priest who is an expert on the occult
that sounds like a comic book in the making, doesn't it.
(17:52):
It really does, but it seems like probably the right
move if this is the kind of thing you're targeting.
And if you want to learn more about the context
of Italy at this time, check out our episode on
the Vatican and exorcism, especially the chief exorcist, right is
what is it? Father a More which you can find
(18:16):
a documentary on Neckflix Netflix about right now, and he
is a very conservative man. He also associate Terry Potter
with the rise of Satanism. Several other people are convicted
in the trials that result in this Beast of Satan investigation,
Paolo Leoni, Marcos Ampolo Eros monter Roso, Elizabetta Ballarat and
(18:39):
the leader, a plumber named Nicola Sapone, who is not
a musician but is the spiritual guru of this group
and is thought to have been the the sort of
Charles Manson behind the murders. Right, so maybe not himself
wielding the hammer in this case, but being the operative
(19:04):
mental force behind it. And this means that in at
least one case, although people will say that Satanic panics
are often overblown, in at least one case here there
was an active satanic conspiracy occurring in Italy, confirmed, proven
and real and luckily fortunately officially solved. Officially. You're right, officially,
(19:29):
but that takes us to another case and something even
more I guess notorious would be a good word. Uh.
This is going to contain some graphics sexual content. Want
you to know that before heading in. This may not
be suitable for all listeners. This is the story of
the Monster of Florence, which we will get to right
(19:52):
after a quick break and we're back. We're gonna jump
into the Monster of Florence. In the nineteen eighties, there
were a series of murders, the first of which that
was discovered by police. It looked a little something like
this and has been mentioned before. This is gonna get graphic,
(20:15):
so please stop listening if if you need to. Someone
was finding cars that were out in the in the
countryside around Florence, and inside these cars there were usually
a male and a female who were a bit younger,
or at least one of them was a bit younger,
(20:36):
usually unmarried, and they were engaging in amorous acts in
their vehicles. And it's really interesting. There's an article really
more of a account a true crime story called The
Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston from The Atlantic Um
where he points out that for it's just kind of
historical thing in Italy that folks would live with their
(20:57):
parents until they got married, and said, this culture of
like having sex and cars very much a thing. And
they were even kind of creepers that were called like Indianni.
I believe it is a little bit of a racially
problematic term because it translates to Indians. It meant kind
of people kind of creeping around, you know, so not
not the best look in terms of racial sensitivity there.
(21:19):
But they would even like have like listening devices, and
it was like a total culture of this kind of behavior. Um,
So I just want to point that out of front.
And this wasn't just like an isolated yet and and
it was a total hunting ground for the person we're
about to talk about. Yes, so lovers lanes. Yeah, even
people who were engaged to be married would still participate
(21:40):
in this. So in June of one June six, this
is one of the first cases they find initially, although
there's another there are another couple that we'll get too later.
A couple of cases. Rather. Uh. There's a guy named
Giovanni foji f O g g I. He works at
a warehouse. He's the eighty years old. His fiancee is
(22:03):
one a little southern there. His fiance is a shop
assistant named Carmela di Nuccio. And they are found shot
to death and stabbed near the town where they both live,
an area called Scandici. Denuco's body was pulled out of
the car, and this is the graphic part. The killer
had cut out her pubic area, her the entire her
(22:25):
reproductive work, and not just cut out like some sort
of brutal, you know, blunt instrument act. It was a
an act of precision, of almost surgical precision. And the
next morning, guy who was known to be one of
these Peeping Tom characters, a paramedic by trade named Enzo Spilatti,
(22:46):
went around and apparently was talking in town about the
murder before the corpses have been officially discovered. So he
gets arrested. Just bracket him will come back. He's in
jail for about three months at this time, and the
police don't really have any leads, but let me let
me clarify something here. So we said one right, June.
(23:10):
That's when the police find the bodies of Giovanni and Carmela.
They also at some point think there there might be
other things occurring. Other murders start happening. In October three
of the same year, a couple, Stefano Baldy and Susannah Canby,
(23:35):
are also engaged. They're going to be married. They're in
a car and they are found shot to death and stabbed.
Another wrinkle occurs here because an anonymous person calls Susannah
Cambi's mother the morning after the murder to talk about
her daughter, and a few days before the murder, it
(23:57):
turns out Susannah had told her mother that there was
some one and stalking or chasing her by car. And
then another murder occurs in June nine nine two. Paolo
Maynardi and Antonola miguel Orini. I should say apologies for
our pronunciation of the Italian names here, also engaged. They
(24:17):
are They are found shot to death, but this time
the killer does not mutilate the female victim. She is
still alive when she has found, but she dies a
few hours later at the hospital. And it looks like
when the police are trying to reconstruct this that the
killer drove the car a few feet to hide the
(24:41):
vehicle and corpses in a wooded area, but then lost
control of the car and eventually abandoned the scene. And
that's when something even more strange happened, because originally now
the police believe these murders begin sometime in the eighties, right,
But twelve days after that murder, in June of nine two,
(25:05):
the police and Florence received an anonymous letter that's right um.
Inside was a an aged clipping from La Nazione, which
was the paper of note Um, and it was about
a kind of long forgotten double murder from nineteen sixty
eight where a man and a woman were slain while
(25:28):
having sex in a part car um and scrawled on
the article was a little bit of advice said take
another look at this crime. And that's it. No fingerprints,
no forensic evidence. This was clean. So someone had at
least taken the care to make sure it was truly anonymous. Right.
(25:49):
The nineteen sixty eight murder had previously been considered solved.
It occurred on August one, worker a mason worker named
Tonio loo Bianco and Barbara Locchi were shot to death
with a twenty two, Burretta in a small town west
of Florence. Unfortunately, there was a kid sleep in the car,
(26:15):
woke up, found some mother dead. Ran to a nearby
house like two in the morning. Open the door, let
me in. Get this. I'm tired and my dad's sick
in bed. He has to drive me home. My mom
and my uncle are dead in the car. That's right.
(26:35):
The woman who was in the car was married, and
she was not The guy she was sleeping with was
not her husband. Her husband was a man named Stefano Mela,
and he was arrested for this crime. That's right. He
was an immigrant from Sardinia. And they actually did a
test on him that showed that he had recently fired
(26:57):
a gun, a handgun, and he can fast to doing
this murder. These murders um in uh an act of
just you know, complete passionate jealousy. Yes, not premeditated. That
was his that was his initial argument. He would spend
six years in jail, and it was considered an open
(27:18):
and shut case until other very similar murders occurred, and
when the nine murders were committed, and it was demonstrably
true that he could not have committed these because he
was uh yeah, he was incarcerated at the time, right,
he would not have been capable physically doing these murders.
(27:38):
And he became the number one interview that Italian journalists
wanted to acquire. And then he said something very troubling
in an interview with Spezi which I had found in
the Atlantic article that I think we mentioned earlier. He
is pacing around. He seems a little discombobulated, but he mutters,
(28:00):
they need to figure out where that pistol is otherwise
there will be more murders. They will continue to kill.
They will continue. That's right, folks. They yeah, a single pistol,
end of the they So when I take a quick
moment to give props to this guy, Mario Spezi, who
kind of became a hot shot crime reporter in Italy
(28:21):
around this time and was the guy who Um the
inspector in Thomas Harris's um sequel to Silence of the
Lambs Hannibal was based on, and in fact that story
in general was inspired by these cases, and Harris himself
went to a lot of the trials and spoke to
Spezi in person and was a big part of this
(28:42):
whole world. And I believe Spezi was even a little
irritated that spoiler alert for Hannibal Um, the character that
was based on him, gets hung by his own guts
out of the balcony of a piazza. And this, this statement,
this plural statement, they will continue to hill led journalists
and investigators in police to believe that Mela, while responsible
(29:07):
for the nineteen sixty eight murder, had not acted alone,
had not acted in a fit of passion. It had
not been a spontaneous crime, but rather what they call
a delicto de clan, a clan killing in which others
from what would later be called the Sardinian circle had participated.
(29:28):
So investigators started to theorize that one of the killers
had enjoyed this experience in nineteen sixty eight, so much
so that he had gone on to become the Monster
of Florence, using, in a massive stroke of stupidity, the
same gun. And the next murder cases that proceed after this,
after nineteen eighty two on through nineteen eighty three and
(29:52):
up to nineteen five, they were all connected by location type,
by the m O you know, people in Kars been together,
and the same twenty two caliber case scenes that were
found at crime scenes, and I believe that they all
had the same unique signature of the muzzle of that
baretta in question that's persisted throughout these cases. That's correct,
(30:16):
and we know a little bit about the method of attack.
The killer would wait until the couple was engaged in
intimate activity so their guard would be down right, and
then typically shoot the male first and use a flashlight
to both illuminate the vehicle and lower the chances of
(30:39):
the killer being clearly identified, And then they would shoot
the female occupant. Then they would use a knife to
stab both victims multiple times, which tells us a little
bit about the emotional state of the killer, because a
gunshot would already have for lack of a better phrase,
done done the task, at least in theory, right. Uh.
(31:02):
Depending on how you shoot someone with the twenty two,
they could die quite quickly, right, So the stabbing seems
to be an act of rage of some sort. Then
the body of the funerale victim was dragged away and
the knife was used to mutilate them. The same knife
most likely used to do the stabbing after the initial shooting,
(31:23):
which I think I read would have been the kind
of knife that a scuba diver would use that has
kind of a hook on it, not notches. Yeah, and
again that very surgical precision and one of the one
of the murders, I think only one um A, I
believe a breast was removed as well. Um so that
was it was definitely someone was theorized that they might
have been a butcher or possibly someone that had some
(31:45):
experience and in a surgical theater. And there was a
layer correspondence where in a single left nipple was mailed
to law enforcement. Yeah. Okay, so we haven't got into
There's a lot more about this case and we need
to keep exploring, and we'll do that right after a
quick word from our sponsor. Here's where it gets crazy.
(32:14):
To this day as we record this in Despite multiple investigations,
despite numerous trials, the case of the Monster of Florence
remains officially unsolved. Multiple people were arrested and even convicted
over the years, but further killings using the same gun
(32:35):
that twenty two under the same circumstances. While these suspects
were imprisoned, ultimately exonerated them. Investigators questioned more than one
hundred thousand people some degree in hopes of gathering new evidence,
and they had. They had numerous suspects. Remember Enzo Spilatti
we have mentioned earlier. He was the ambulance driver who
(32:56):
was initially suspected his car been parked near the scene
of the crime, and as law enforcement officers asked him
more and more questions, he gave vague, conflicting alibis, probably
because he didn't want to say that he was a
voyeur part of the culture we mentioned earlier. Uh More
(33:16):
evidence revealed that he had told his wife about this
incident before it was announced in the paper. He was
charged with two counts a homicide. He was sent to
prison to stand trial. Several months later. However, a new
murder led police to believe they got the wrong guy.
He was just a creepy dude, not a murderer. But
they also questioned a farmer named Pietro Pazziani, who was
(33:40):
a former rapist and murderer who had been arrested in
nineteen fifty one when he caught his fiance sleeping with
a traveling salesman and killed the guy. Here's the thing
about him. To even his family, who admittedly hated the
guy because he was a drunk and in an abusive bully.
Even they said, yeah, this guy's the worst, but he
(34:03):
didn't do this, and yeah, and and the you know,
our our journalist friend Um Spetsy also didn't buy it
because you know, these were very precisely carried out acts
um with that surgical attention to detail. And this guy
was kind of a big, bumbling, drunken buffoon. Yeah, but
they also investigators thought he was quite intelligent. Investigators thought
(34:28):
he was quite intelligent. His alcoholism, yes, and he was.
He stated, like, let's just listen to this. That where
he found his fiance in the car with a traveling salesman.
He said in the trial that he he saw the
image of her left breast when he like looked in
the car and saw her left breast with another man
(34:50):
in the car, it sent him into a rage and
he killed the man. Wasn't that one of the things
that led them to connected with him because of the
severed left breast and us the you know, his fiance,
the love of his life supposedly or whatever was cheating
on him and all this, and it's just like the
rage that he went through, right, but it was less
(35:10):
rest of one of the victims. Get this, at the
time of this new investigation. He's already been released after
serving check it out, thirteen years in prison for murdering
this guy in fifty one. That's it. Thirteen years. Yeah,
he's been out of prison for a while. Yeah, that's
the price you pay, thirteen years. Think about it when
you're in Italy. But in a trial in nine he
(35:36):
is convicted for fourteen of the sixteen counts of murder
attributed to the Monster of Florence. All you know, many
tied together with the use of this twenty two because
there is supposedly a twenty two caliber round found in
his garden more or less the European word for yards
(35:58):
or something that we would used in the States, and
this round matched the rounds used in the Monster Slanes. However,
I believe it was Specy who, when he was on
assignment from a television station, videotaped a police officer at
the search of the property, saying that this is the
police officer talking in. The police officer said he believed
(36:20):
the chief inspector had planted this round in that guy's garden,
and it was an unspent round. It wasn't it wasn't
a casing, and it certainly didn't have them the markings
in question of the of the weapon we're talking about, right, right,
So it's not it's not anywhere near as rock solid
as perhaps some factions of law enforcement wanted people to believe.
(36:42):
And in appeals court overturns this conviction. They say, a
lack of solid evidence. Yeah, it's crazy, because in fact,
this is something you just don't even hear happening. The
prosecutor who was on the case actually refused to prosecute
because it had been such a uh, just an abomination
(37:03):
of justice. He said it was something like the level
of it was like the work of Inspector Cluseau, the
famous bumbling pink panther detective. And he was acquitted, um,
and it was sent back to be retried. But he
actually Pacciani passed away in February of before this new
trial could could happen. So there's some stuff that happens
(37:27):
before he passes away. The investigators, despite the overturning for
the lack of evidence, and despite the advocacy of the
former prosecutor, the investigators still believe that Passiani is guilty. Yeah,
even though he's you know, it's been overturned, right, They
believe they found evidence the monsters not acting alone, and
(37:48):
they get a confession from two other guys that are
friends of Passis. Yeah, Mario Vanni and gian Carlo Latti,
and um, they confessed like they that down when they confess, yes,
we helped Pacciani kill these guys, kill these people. Um.
And these two men end up getting convicted for four
(38:08):
of the double murders. Vanni was given life in prison
and Lottie was given a reduced sentence of twenty six years.
And at this point in the investigation, this is you know,
we've gone back a little. PASSIONI is still alive. The
investigators believe that Passiani is the leader of a group
of killers, and that's when they begin this retrial. And
(38:28):
as we said, days before this retrial, passion is found
dead in his home, allegedly officially from heart related issues.
But there are some questions about that, right, big ones
that that tie back into the saying the aforementioned satanic
panic of the beasts of Satan case that we talked
(38:50):
about at the top of the show. Was he dead
due to simple health issues or was there something rotten
in Florence? Right, So, then there's the Sardinian connection, which
we mentioned earlier. At one time, the investigation focuses on
three Sardinian brothers, Francesco Salvatore and Giovanni Vinci. All three
(39:15):
had been lovers of the woman who has murdered in
nine and one or more have been present at her death. First,
the police arrest Francesco in September of three. With Francesco
Vinci in jail, the monster strikes again. So it keeps happening,
(39:37):
It keeps happening, and so initially police think, well, maybe
one of Francesco's affiliates has committed a new murder matching
the m O just to create a false lead, so
cold blooded that they said, let's kill two people and
make them just to make a red herring. Right, So
(39:57):
the police arrest Antonio van she on firearms charges, which
are admittedly kind of trumped up. There an excuse for
them to get him in the room, and they question
him intensely, but they're unable to break him and eventually
they have to release him. Francesco remains in prison. So
the police believe Francesco, while perhaps not be the murderer,
(40:18):
knows the identity of the true killer. And then later
there's a another guy who becomes implicated in this, a
fellow named Ricardo Viti. Viti is arrested for the suspected
murder of several prostitutes in areas of Florence very close
to the site of the monsters murders. Currently is not
(40:38):
considered the murderer, and a lot of people will say
that the Italian courts and law enforcement were just trying
to get their man to get the case closed. But then,
you know, we go back to the thing we've been
we've been talking about this entire time, which is is
this a loan serial killer or is this something deeper?
(41:01):
Is there a cult at play? Like similar to Berkowitz
and the Son of Sam murders. Various investigators and criminologists
have all argued that the Monster of Florence homicides are
the results of not only a group, but maybe even
a group practicing a cult esoteric rituals. Yikes. Yeah, this
(41:24):
whole notion that um, this this man who you know,
took the fall for these murders not only wasn't acting alone,
but was like the least of the involved parties, that
he was something more along the lines of a courier
um providing these sex organs for the purposes of Satanic
(41:45):
rituals or black masses. Right. Um, there's an article in
the Guardian called Italian mass killer was quote servant of
Satanic Sect. Yeah, yeah, and that that comes in two
thousand and one, right, pretty pretty recent and cons iteration
of the times in which these murders occurred. And we
should also note here that if there's any sand to this,
(42:07):
that means the time of which the murders we know
about occurred. So Noel, can you tell us a little
bit about what happens in this Guardian article? I do,
but first I need to make a quick correction and
I'm so sorry. Earlier I said that it was the
journalist who was um used as the inspiration for the
character and Thomas Harris's Hannibal. It was actually the chief inspector,
(42:29):
Ruggero Perugini who was used as that inspiration. So I
just clarify that quick. But yes, Italian mass killer was
the servant of Satanic sect. And our Guardian article by
Rory Carroll writing from Rome, and like he said, it's
from two thousand one. It it's just the notion that
(42:51):
there was some kind of high level society of Tuscan elite,
that we're carrying out these murders, or at least it
was on their behalf. Um. There was an investigation, a
raid that took place in the offices of um A,
a leading psychologist who was a member of the Secret
(43:12):
Service UM and it uncovered computer disks and notes and
books and all kinds of things detailing the killings and
these men who were rated, and they were necessarily considered suspects.
But it kind of points to some kind of deeper
(43:33):
cover up involving um Paciani, that he was a patsy
more or less, or that he, you know, maybe did
carry out the murders, but it was that it was
at the behest of some much more sinister figures in
high society. They were kind of pulling the strings and
the detrou affair in Belgium exactly. Yeah. But in this
case you've got two guys, Aurelio Mattie he's a psychologist
(43:58):
with the Secret Service, and this other dude, Francesco Bruno,
who was a leading criminal criminal psychologist, who are actually
working on the case of the Florence, the Monster of Florence.
And what's alleged here is that uh, these guys were
actually kind of withholding certain parts. As Pacciani is going
to trial and evidence is coming up because they're actually
(44:19):
implicated in it or part of the major reasons for
it happening. Yeah, and the mystery deepens as well, because
in two thousand and four there's a another inquiry that reopens.
The wife of a or the ex wife of a
chemist named Francesco Klamandre comes forward and accuses her husband,
(44:44):
Francesco or ex husband, of being associated with the killings.
There's an article in the Telegraph Monster of Florence killed
on cults order. In this In this description, the pharmacist
or the chemist is sixty years old and his home
has searched for eleven hours. Police find ten boxes of
(45:05):
pornographic material and associated paperwork, and Francesco is one of
thirteen people that are put under investigation. Officials at this
point in two thousand four say they have concrete proof
to unmask those behind the murders, and they have been
carried out according to a quote precise esoteric ritual. WHOA.
(45:26):
So it goes deeper, right, and still, let's say we
have to point out still this case is considered officially
unsolved and as crazy as it might sound to say
there's some kind of possible occult angle or cover up occurring,
there are a lot of troubling, circumstantial things to this case. Yeah,
(45:47):
And one of them in particular was in when, um,
when Pacciani died of this supposed heart attack, a magistrate
who was investigating the case, a guy named Paolo kansa
he Be, actually sat on the record that he believed
that this death was the cause of some kind of
poisoning to silence him from pointing the finger at the
(46:09):
real killers. And the last lie in this article in
the Guardian is what kind of leaves me with some chills.
And I don't really know where to go from here,
but I'm gonna give it to you. Um. Apparently Pacciani
died with quite a bit of assets. He had two
homes and about fifty thousand lira in the bank, and
(46:31):
the idea is that this was money that he had
been paid hush money. And they conjecture that the leader
of this sect could have been someone like a doctor
or a lawyer, or someone you know, very high up
in in that society. Um. So I don't know, Yeah,
very troubling. I found some other strange stuff too about
(46:54):
purported collateral deaths are created. In the Monster Florence case.
You can find in various forms lists of numbers of
suspicious murders, deaths, or suicides that surround the case. And
there's a lot of I would say, allegation or maybe
speculation that these might be related. Uh. These are names
(47:18):
of everyone from prostitutes to hotel workers, psychologists, also active
we're active at the time that they were alive, active wizards, warlocks, magicians.
It gets very fuzzy, very very quickly. And the allegations
here Again, one of the things that I keep going
(47:40):
back to in this case is that the question of
collaboration and conspiracy seems pretty it seems very possible. The
question to me now is just like, what what is
the nature of this group? Is it a group of
people who are related to each other and making repeated killings.
(48:04):
Is it a group of a network enacting rituals, a
network with enough influence to cover it up or keep
it keep it from being officially solved? You know, I
think I think off air nol you had compared it
to true Detective. Oh yeah, I mean, that's it's got
it's got that vibe. And then, like we said, Thomas
Harris definitely drew a lot of inspiration for this for
(48:26):
his fictional book Hannibal. So I mean, it certainly has
the stuff of great storytelling. And I read another I've
read another allegation that didn't relate to clan killings or
two serial killers. An article from July seventeen, the Italian
(48:48):
Insider mentions the reopening of the Monster of Florence murders
and also mentions a new suspect, a guy named Jump
Hairy Vigilante, who was eighty six years old at the time,
and the investigation argues that this series of murders occurs
(49:11):
to function as a false flag, a pista netta, meaning
that according to the lawyers arguing this uh Vieira ad Rani.
He says that the crime serve as distractions from magistrates
in public opinion from what was happening in Italy during
the Strategy of Tension, the series of terrorist acts throughout
(49:34):
the seventies and eighties committed by right wing extremists, such
as the Bologna bombing, which aimed to shift the blame
onto communists to quell communist movements, to gain support for
right wing causes. Wow, that's a big conspiracy. Yeah, you
gotta like the simplicity of it, right, And they were like,
what if the game mouse trap was what if we
just did that? Yeah, but what if that's actually what happened.
(49:58):
I don't know. It seems kind it seems sort far fetched,
doesn't it. It certainly does. I mean, I guess we
could see some of that tailwagon the dog in other
journalistic aspects, But it seems like a lot to murder
people because whatever the motivation of the causes, the truth
is that real people did die, and that seems it
(50:18):
seems like actually murdering people is going a bit far
to distract from this. But again, the Bologna ball ing
was a real thing. So we have at this point
no official conclusions or answers, And I don't know what
do you guys think. Do you think there's uh, do
(50:38):
you think there's a cover up a foot? Yes? I
think there is. There was some kind of cover up,
But you know, there are two guys who went to
jail for most of it, and maybe they were just Patsy's,
but they did give confessions. I think weird rich dudes
do stuff like this all the time. Probably. I'm not kidding,
I really really, Oh, I definitely do. Yeah. I mean
(51:01):
I think any I think as as perverse and twisted
a thing as you can imagine. Somebody is paying a
bunch of money to do it and and are able
to continue doing it because of their position of power
and prominence. I have no doubt in my mind that's true.
I argue that there's another force. I bet that could
be true. But I argue there's another force that actively
aids and in bets this, which is that governments and
(51:25):
especially intelligence agencies, when they're functioning on rogue level, do
encourage these things in order to have I'm not saying
these murders in particular, but do encourage illegal activities in
order to have dirt on people. It's blackmail later if
you can get somebody in a honey pot situation. I'm
not saying it has to be something wild and out
(51:45):
there like cannibalism or crazy abuse. You could just be tape. Yeah,
it could be a pe tape. It could be a prostitute,
it could be anything like that. And that that is
a proven tactic of intelligence agencies. We've also heard allegations
that that stands too much darker and more twisted territory
than the public knows about. But yeah, that's the scary
(52:06):
thing about this. We don't have definitive proof that it happened,
but we have pretty good evidence that it's plausible. We
have pretty good evidence of like the level of depravity
that human nature can push people to. That's true, especially
when it's slowly escalates and when they're corrupted by ultimate power.
I don't know, I hate to sound like such a
(52:27):
downer on the human race, but man, I we've seen
some stuff, and yeah, I would even say just lack
of consequences is enough. It might not even have a benefit.
Oh man, Well, the terrible news is that modern ritual
murders do continue to occur in Italy even today. In February,
(52:50):
and eighteen year old girl named Pamela Mastro Pietro was
discovered in two suitcases. Yes, her dismembered body had been
left alongside this rural room near mar Mascerata, Italy. And
this is gruesome again here you go. Her heart and
internal organs were all missing and um m hmm. She
(53:14):
she's been struggling with drug problems. She recently went to
this recovery clinic. To try and get some help, and
she was to some degree familiar with the area as
well as the you know, the criminal underground. That's they're
the people who are moving in the shadows, giving her
past with drug abuse, right, yes, just getting it. So
the investigation led law enforcement to the home of a
(53:36):
twenty nine year old man named Innocent. Well, he's fine then, right, right, right,
nominative determinism all the way. He is in a legal
immigrant at the time, and he has a criminal record
for drug dealing and it's probably still selling drugs at
the time. They believed two of his associates are also arrested.
Police find blood covered clothing belonging to Mastro Pietro, along
(54:00):
if knives and blades with her blood on them, and
her body had been washed with bleach. He had washed
his hands with bleach. The absence of her heart, internal organs,
and sexual organs led police to suspect the girl may
have been sacrificed in what and this is the law
enforcement's term, and what they called quote some kind of
(54:22):
voodoo ritual. According to criminologist Alessandro Malusi, it is a
routine to cut victims into pieces and in some cases
to eat parts of their body in this criminal underworld.
Umlusi claims that cannibalism is more of a rule than
an exception in these situations, and then people often refuse
to speak out about the practice due to concerns being
(54:44):
called racist. So again we see racism raising its head
here in Italy because there is in these reports. We'll
see things where someone will say otto immigrants, or murdering
people and eating them and what every other scary thing
you can think about. But in this case it does
appear that at least this guy did kill someone ritualistically
(55:08):
in order to through supernatural means, accomplished some task in
the material world. That's what we mean when we say
ritual murders. Ritual ritual murder is not just too uh,
kill someone in a way that the killer finds interesting
for its own sake. It is supposed to create some
(55:29):
sort of effect in the world. Italian law enforcement claims
other drug dealers participate in ritual murders with the goal
of causing madness and death amongst the police population. Yeah.
In December of a forty six year old Moroccan woman
was found in a forest near Verona and her body
was dismembered into approximately a dozen pieces their number. There
(55:53):
are a number of other cases like this you can
unfortunately find in Italian media. However, big the big question
is are these actually ritualistic murders or is law enforcement
portraying them as such? And there's a huge historical and
cultural context bubbling again just under the surface here. How
(56:14):
much of the motivation for the betrayal of these things
as religiously motivated ritual murders, how much, how much of
that motivation comes from religiously motivated hysteria, how much of
it is corruption or incompetence in the Italian law enforcement system,
and how much in recent cases could be attributed to racism.
(56:34):
These are questions that are tough to answer, but one
thing is for sure. There was at least one proven
active Satanic conspiracy slash ritual murder group in Italy, and
the case of the Monster of Florence remains to this
day unsolved. So don't listen to death metal if you're
in Italy. That's a bad idea because there's probably some
(56:55):
ritualistic murders happening somewhere near you within that scene. And
then too, don't park your car and get amorous with
someone in the countryside. Ever, unless you're married and you've
got documents on the windows. This is like Jason Vorhees rules. Dude, Yeah,
that's where That's where we're at. Can you do it
in a tent? No? There, I don't think we talked
(57:18):
about there. You want to get stabbed in his head
or shot in the hand. How about we just be
safe and to say no sex before marriage. That's it.
Don't do it hard pass don't wait, both of you
guys stop right now? Oh that's right. Bah so um.
(57:40):
At this point we end on a question too. We
would like to hear your perspective on these murders. Do
you do you think this stuff is being I don't know,
like falsely advertised as a cult in nature or do
you think that there's and there is an act of
cover up and if so, does it continue today? And
(58:02):
if and if that is the case, then who's doing
the covering? Is it the Secret Service? Is it an
elite group of disgusting, perverse aristocrats. Is it a family
with a dark secret. We'd like to know. You can
tell us about it on Instagram. You can reach us
on Facebook, you can reach us on Twitter. Hey, don't forget.
(58:23):
We're coming to a city near you very soon on
our first ever live tour. Yes, we're gonna be on
tour in the Northeast. You can find more information about
it right now if you go to stuff they Don't
Want you to Know dot com and click on the
live shows tab. You'll see everything there and you can
get tickets directly. He knows it might be talking about
more Satan stuff. Yeah, maybe we're not. It could be anything. Yeah,
(58:45):
we don't really know yet that we're figuring it out.
That's right. And if you don't want to do that stuff,
you can just call our phone number and leave a message.
We are concocting some things with your messages right now.
You can call one eight three three S T D
E W y t K in the morning. There's a lot,
but you can do it. Call us. We've got a
(59:06):
ton of great messages already and you'll you may hear
yourself on the show very soon. And in the meantime,
if you don't want to do any of that, you
can reach out to us on the usual social media channels,
or we are either Conspiracy Stuff or on Instagram or
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Facebook and twitters. Uh. And if none of that stuff
does it for you, um, you can just send us
a good old fashioned email where we are conspiracy at
(59:29):
how stuff works dot com. Sleep Tight
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Noel Brown
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