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Rating: "The Story of the Monster of Florence" by Roberto Taddeo is a substantial and captivating trilogy that seeks to shed light on the most controversial and mysterious case of Italian crime news. In a context where terror has crept into everyday life, four young couples have already fallen victim to a ruthless killer. The author, with narrative skill worthy of a detective novel, transports us into the plot of an American horror, where the darkness hides the face of a murderer who strikes with a gun and mutilates his victims. The first volume focused mainly on the so-called Sardinian trail and the dynamics of all the double murders.
In the second volume of the trilogy, titled "The Mystery Continues," Taddeo takes the reader into the fall of 1989, immersing them in the intricate labyrinths of the investigations into the notorious serial killer. The protagonist of the investigations is Ruggero Perugini, the coordinator of the Anti-Monster Squad operations, who finds himself questioning the reasons that led the maniac to stop his chain of murders and identifies the culprit in Pietro Pacciani.
The core of the book focuses on the so-called "Picnic Mates" and the figure of Pietro Pacciani, nicknamed "the Vampa" for his irascible temperament. The character, initially indicated as the sole perpetrator of the crimes, finds himself involved in an intricate judicial short circuit, raising crucial questions about his actual guilt. The evolution of the plot offers the reader a detailed overview of the investigations, showing how the Monster of Florence case was handled by justice and society. In particular, Taddeo highlights how Pietro Pacciani's acquittal on appeal was influenced by a media campaign during the years of Tangentopoli, when justice was ridiculed by Italian politics, marked by Berlusconi's crusade against judges. Pacciani thus became a media figure, and Taddeo even highlights the existence of a video where the porn actress Jessica Massaro from Riccardo Schicchi's agency has sexual intercourse with him. Taddeo's writing is compelling and well-structured, maintaining the fast-paced rhythm of the narrative. His ability to intertwine historical facts and narrative imagination makes the book an engaging read for fans of the investigative genre and those fascinated by the complexity of crime news cases.
In conclusion, Taddeo's analysis is meticulous and engaging: the author, while not endorsing any theory, nevertheless maintains a standard of judgment based on facts from a historical-naturalistic perspective. Rightly, he distances himself from today's innocent monsterology. Undoubtedly, it is true that a character like Giancarlo Lotti is at least controversial (he knows nothing about the Mosciano di Scandicci murder of 1981 and says he has never heard of the voyeur Enzo Spalletti). But there are also many corroborations of what he declared. Certainly, only a partial truth has been reached, and we will probably never know all the dark aspects of this affair. But considering Pacciani innocent (as Gianluigi Nuzzi recently wrote in La Stampa, comparing him to Girolimoni) from my point of view is wrong. Rightly Taddeo (always referring to the theories of the innocent monsterology current) writes that it is "a literary exercise past the deadline that runs along the edges of the Monster of Florence story without hitting its heart." The author cites (both in the previous volume and in this one) also the work of the historian Francesco Maria Petrini (Francis Trinipet) who undoubtedly, through his YouTube channel (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLrqV9aRaRtn8z8IBfqT-5L3g8e4M-_A4a), has delved into (and continues to do so) this disturbing affair. Moreover, Francesco Maria Petrini is the one who coined the nickname «Legionari di merende» for the perpetrators of the long series of murders that bloodied the Tuscan countryside between 1968 and 1985 following the trail of right-wing subversion. And precisely in the third volume, there is talk of Giampiero Vigilanti, a neo-fascist with a past in the foreign legion. Large space is then reserved for the Perugian doctor Francesco Narducci, a Perugian doctor who died under mysterious circumstances, and Francesco Calamandrei, a pharmacist with murky acquaintances. The key question remains: are they involved in the crimes or are they themselves victims of dark power games? The reader is involved in a journey through esoteric suggestions and Masonic plots, while investigators touch the heart of the "second level," suspecting that behind the couple murders hide principals far beyond the culprits already in prison.
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