Special type of sardinian liquor. he was a very intelligent man, and he joked with us. and we proceeded to ask him questions, very gently at first. questions about the case, you know, general questions. and, finally, the questions got more and more pointed until it was obvious to him and to us that we were accusing him of being the monster of florence. he never lost his smile. he never lost his charm. he never said wait a minute, what are you accusing me of? how dare you? no, he was so charming, so nice. he denied ever having a monster s gun, but he did say he owned a knife. the scuba knife, that that was his knife of choice. now, the medical examiner s report said that the mutilations had been performed probably with a scuba knife, which is a very particular kind of knife with a notch in it and serrations. the same kind of knife that the notch had been used in the killings? in the killings. then spezi asked the biggest question of all.
Monster committed a crime that hannibal lecter would find hard to top. the young lovers this time were tourists from france, camping in the hills south of florence. as they made love in their tent, the monster shot the woman in the face, killing her instantly. the man was shot several times, but somehow managed to burst from the tent. here s someone who s running for his life, and yet the killer was actually able to catch him, reach up behind him, cut his throat. the killer then returned to the tent and mutilated the dead woman in his new, more terrible way. but he still wasn t done. one of the prosecutors in the case, a woman named silvia della monica, received in the mail a letter addressed like a ransom note, you know, letters cut out of a newspaper. and inside was one item, it was the nipple from the victim. the monster s grisly taunt was the exclamation point on a string of murders that had spanned 11 years and taken 14
Looking closer and closer at the carabinieri suspect. by the time he met preston in 2000, he had a convincing case. the more we looked at it, the more we eliminated other possible suspects, the more it seemed likely that he was the person, that he was the monster of florence. they began to refer to him by a pseudonym, carlo, and agreed he would be the focus of their book. they decided they had to talk to him. we went to his house at 9:30 at night, rang his doorbell. got buzzed up, no problem. after two decades on the trail, was spezi along with preston, about to confront the monster of florence? on my phone, i got internet! hotspot five dollars. hey, hey, hey, hey. i can see who s on my network people! lance? lance? yes, yes you are next. all right. dave, i m in. katie!
Shocked him. the judge nodded to the stenographer, she pressed the button on her computer and here s my voice. here i am talking to mario spezi. giuttari and his men had been tapping spezi s phone, and even broken into his car, planting bugs there, too. they recorded him and preston discussing the case. and on tape, spezi said something that struck the judge as highly suspicious. we did it, we did it all. we did it. we did it. yes. spezi says what he meant was that he had turned all his information about carlo over to police. but the judge interrogating preston had a different interpretation. he said you went to the villa to plant evidence to incriminate an innocent man of being a monster of florence to deflect suspicion from mario spezi himself, who, as you know, is being investigated for murder. this is like out of a crime novel. yeah, it is. and he said, you re an accessory to murder if you don t tell us what you know. at this point, i thought they
Homosexual couple by mistake. police hit the sardinian gang again, arresting two more of its members. florentines hoped the terrifying case had finally been solved. but then in july 1984 came the headline everyone dreaded, il mostro e tornato, the monster has returned. the victims were young lovers parked in the country north of florence, both shot to death with that same beretta .22, the woman, just 18, mutilated. but this time it was worse. in this case, the monster had done more than just remove the woman s vagina. he had also cut off and taken away her left breast. murders 11 and 12. there was outrage across italy, and now police were the focus of it. because again and again, the police have been arresting people, and again and again the monster had been killing people when those suspects were in custody. in september of 1985, the