msnbc now. i m craig melvin. shoppers have a few more hours to get last-minute gifts and many stores are offering huge markdowns. retailers could bring in $417 billion this holiday season. despite leading the polls in virginia newt gingrich may win the state. the former house speaker and rick perry will not appear on the primary ballot because they failed to submit ret choired numbers of signatures. write-ins in the commonwealth are not permitted. more news on msnbc. in november 1994, pietro pacciani, fingered by an anonymous tip, went on trial. accused of being italy s most notorious serial killer. it had been almost nine years since the murders had mysteriously stopped. now all of italy was focused on one question. was pacciani the monster of florence?
the victim? never, never. he never had sexual activity. activity with the victims, never. spezi had also seen that fbi profile of the monster and thought it just didn t match pacciani at all. the profile said the killer was probably sexually dysfunctional. pacciani was not. probably lived alone or with an older relative. pacciani had a wife and children. and was probably in his 20s at the time of the first murder. pacciani had been almost 50. you know, from the theory of the botticelli paintings and the way of the working fbi, i prefer fbi. in 1996 pacciani s conviction was overturned and he was released. but then the monster case, already as intricate as the duomo, got even more complicated. a new witness came forward to say that he was involved in the killings. he said, we were working for somebody else who needed body parts.
he was a drunken peasant who as a young man in 1951 had caught his fiancee being seduced by a traveling salesman. he had killed the traveling salesman, stomped his head in, and them raped his fiancee next to his body. and prosecutors claimed, the the murderous pacciani had said something that seemed to link him to the monster killings decades later. when he saw his fiancee uncover her left breast, that s when he had gone crazy. the left breast? very important clue. important because in his last two killings, the monster had cut off the left breast of his female victims. and why did the monster killings suddenly stop in the mid-1980s? pacciani s history offered a sordid explanation for that too. he had been in prison for raping his daughters. police found another set of clues when they searched pacciani s house. first, an erotic print of a woman, her breast exposed with what looks like a flower between her lips. second, a fine art print.
and appealing. pacciani s trial, attended by families of the monster s young victims, was a media sensation. they had pacciani s daughters testifying about how he had raped them. testimony from the murder that he committed in 1951 was horrifying. all this was just just made pacciani look like a monster. and when it was over? he was convicted. as you might expect. but italian journalist mario spezi never believed that pacciani was the monster. for one thing, the gun and the knife that connected all the murders had never been found, and never linked to pacciani. what s more, spezi had been to every crime scene, and he knew the killer had to be smart, fast, skillful, nothing like the dim, drunk, overweight pacciani. spezi also saw a glaring contradiction. pacciani was a sex criminal, a convicted rapist. for the monster, mutilation seemed to take the place of sex. was there any evidence that the killer had sexually assaulted
uncover her left breast, that s when he had gone crazy. the left breast? very important clue. important because in his last two killings, the monster had cut off the left breast of his female victims. and why did the monster killings suddenly stop in the mid-1980s? pacciani s history offered a sordid explanation for that too. he had been in prison for raping his daughters. police found another set of clues when they searched pacciani s house. first, an erotic print of a woman, her breast exposed with what looks like a flower between her lips. second, a fine art print. they found a reproduction of that famous painting by botticelli, the primavera. the original hangs in florence s uffizi gallery. on the right, you ll see a nymph being stalked by hermes. the greek god who escorts the dead to the underworld. look closer. flowers and vines are sort of spilling out of her mouth, kind of vomiting flowers and vines. remember the 1981 murder where the mutilated young woman was