The World's Most Evil Psychopaths: Horrifying True-Life Cases (13 page)

When it was time to dispose of Whitney’s body, Brudos cut off her right breast. He had hoped to use it as a mould in making paperweights like the one he had purchased, but was unsuccessful in his attempts.

On 27 March 1969, his next murder victim, Karen Sprinker, was abducted at gunpoint and taken to his home. Unlike the previous women he’d killed, Brudos raped Sprinker before killing her. She was forced to model various items from his collection of women’s clothing, and was eventually hanged. He cut off both breasts, dressed the corpse in a longline bra, and stuffed the cups.

In late April, using a fake police badge and the threat of a charge for shoplifting, Brudos abducted Linda Salee, his final victim. She was bound in his workshop, waiting while he had dinner, before being sexually assaulted and strangled. Brudos later claimed that she was being raped at the moment of death.

The disappearances of all four women remained complete mysteries to the authorities; all appeared to have simply vanished. Then, in May, a man out fishing found decomposing human remains floating in the Long Tom River. After the police arrived, more remains were discovered bound to a car transmission box. The body was identified as that of Linda Salee. The speed with which the authorities zeroed in on Brudos is truly impressive. Among the clues used in identifying the killer was the manner in which copper wire had been used to bind Salee’s body; an unusual technique that indicated someone with training as an electrician.

On 30 May, he was arrested. Just as he had when he was a patient at the psychiatric ward of the Oregon State Hospital, Brudos openly discussed his sexual fantasies. Indeed, while under interrogation, he appeared to seize upon the opportunity presented to share his secret dreams with others. There was no expression of remorse for his victims. What little sympathy Brudos had was directed towards his wife and children – but most certainly not to his mother.

For his crimes, Brudos received three life sentences. He died of natural causes on 28 March 2006. At the time of his death, Brudos was the longest-serving inmate at Oregon State Penitentiary.

THE MONSTER OF FLORENCE

Late in the evening of 21 August 1968, a Tuscan farmer was awoken by a knock at his door. He opened it to find a young boy who, speaking through tears, informed the man that a stranger had killed his mother and ‘uncle’. The boy had been present when the murder had occurred, sleeping in the back seat as the ‘uncle’ had pulled his car off the road. As he’d begun to make love to the boy’s mother, a figure appeared and shot the couple. The unidentified man had then grabbed the boy and dropped him off at the farmhouse door.

The victims that summer night were Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locci. Their bodies were found in Lo Bianco’s Alfa Romeo, which was parked in a Florentine cemetery. A promiscuous woman, Locci made little attempt to hide her extramarital activities, whether from the community or her family. Indeed, her husband, Stefano Mele, had been at home the day before the murder when Lo Bianco and Carmelo Cutrona, another of his wife’s lovers, had each paid visits. Under questioning, Mele told police that he believed any one of a number of his wife’s lovers had committed the murders. Among those he fingered were three brothers – Francesco, Giovanni and Salvatore Vinci – who had each shared his wife’s bed.

Two days after the murder, Mele abruptly abandoned his claims and confessed to killing his wife and Lo Bianco with the aid of Salvatore Vinci. Mele provided a story in which he had roamed the town of Lastra, searching for his wife and son. In the town square he’d encountered Vinci, who proceeded to criticize Mele for allowing his wife to cheat on him. Together they stalked Locci and Lo Bianco. When the couple parked in the graveyard, Mele used Vinci’s gun to shoot the couple, then drove off.

It was a story full of holes, not the least of which was Mele’s failure to mention his son and how it was that the boy had arrived at the farmhouse. Also suspicious was the idea that one of Locci’s lovers would encourage Mele to kill his wife over her adultery. Each day that followed brought a new story and sequence of events. Mele retracted his confession, asserting that it was actually Francesco Vinci who had committed the murders. Nevertheless, it was Mele who went to trial. In 1970, he received a 14-year sentence on the grounds of partial insanity.

More bodies

As Mele was serving his fifth year behind bars, on 14 September 1974, the bodies of a young couple, 19-year-old Pasquale Gentilcore and 18-year-old Stefania Pettini, were discovered in the countryside just north of Florence. Gentilcore was seated, half-clothed, behind the wheel of his father’s Fiat. Pettini’s naked, mutilated corpse lay spread-eagled outside the car. Both victims had been shot several times, though Pettini’s death had come as a result of one of 96 stab wounds. There were no witnesses and the suspects, who included a mentally disturbed man who had turned himself in, were quickly dismissed. It seemed that the murders of Gentilcore and Pettini were destined to remain unsolved.

On 6 June 1981, investigators were confronted with another mystery when the bodies of another young couple were found off a country road outside Florence. The body of the male, 30-year-old Giovanni Foggi, was inside his Fiat Ritmo. His throat had been slashed. The corpse of Foggi’s girlfriend, 21-year-old Carmela De Nuccio, lay 20 metres away at the bottom of a steep embankment. Like Pettini, six years earlier, De Nuccio’s genitals had been mutilated. Autopsies performed on the latest victims indicated that they had both died of several gunshot wounds before their corpses were stabbed. There was, however, a more direct link tying the recent murders to those of Pasquale Gentilcore and Stefania Pettini; a ballistics report indicated that all had been killed by the same gun.

A man named Enzo Spalletti, known to be a voyeur, was arrested for the murder. The authorities’ case was based on nothing more than Spalletti’s wife’s belief that she had been told of the murder by her husband before it had been reported by the press.

Less than five months later, on 23 October 1981, the killer struck again. The victims this time were 26-year-old Stefano Baldi and his 24-year-old girlfriend Susanna Cambi. They had both been shot and stabbed numerous times. Cambi had been mutilated in a manner similar to Carmela De Nuccio and Stefania Pettini.

It was clear that Enzo Spalletti, who had been in prison awaiting trial, was not the murderer.

On 19 June 1982, a couple were killed while making love in a parked car south-west of Florence. The woman, 20-year-old Antonella Migliorini, died instantly. Her partner, 22-year-old Paolo Mainardi, though injured, managed to attempt a getaway. He was shot several more times. Not found till the next morning, Mainardi died without ever regaining consciousness. As there had been no mutilation, the authorities theorized that the killer had been unnerved by the near-escape. They built upon this assumption by planting a story that Mainardi had regained consciousness and provided an accurate description of his assailant before dying.

Later that afternoon, one of the emergency workers received two calls from a person claiming to be the killer, demanding to know what Mainardi had said.

A few days later, a member of the police force began to wonder whether the current rash of murders might in some way be linked to the 1968 slaying of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco. Sure enough, a forensics test revealed that the gun used in committing the recent murder was the same one that had fired on the two lovers 14 years before. A new theory was formed in which Stefano Mele, who had been in prison for all but the most recent murders, had had an accomplice. When approached by the authorities, Mele refused to co-operate in any investigation.

Over a year passed before the killer, now dubbed ‘the Monster of Florence’, killed again. These murders, committed on 9 September 1983, were almost certainly a mistake. The victims were Horst Meyer and Uwe Rusch Sens, two German boys who were shot to death as they slept in a Volkswagen camper 30 kilometres south of Florence. It is thought that the murderer mistook one of the victims for a girl because he had long blond hair. The theory is supported by the fact that there was no mutilation performed on either male.

Shortly after the murder of the two German youths, the emergency worker who had been badgered by the killer in June 1982 received another threatening phone call. Again, the speaker demanded to know exactly what it was that Paolo Mainardi had said before he died. What troubled police about the call was that the emergency worker had been on holiday in Rimini. They questioned how it was that the man claiming to be the killer knew where to track him down.

After another period of inactivity lasting a little under a year, on 29 July 1984 the Monster killed a couple north of Florence in Vicchio di Mugello. The male victim, 21-year-old Claudi Stefanacci, was found half-clothed, shot to death in the back seat of his car. The body of his girlfriend, 18-year-old Pia Rontini, was discovered spread-eagled behind some nearby bushes. Her genitals had been mutilated and the left breast had been completely removed. It was estimated that Rontini had been slashed over a hundred times. Like her boyfriend, she had been shot with the same gun used in all the other murders.

Beginning in 1982, the Monster appeared to be limiting himself to one double-homicide in each calendar year. In 1985, he struck on 8 September, murdering a French couple who were camping outside San Casciano in the Florentine countryside. The pathologist determined that 36-year-old Nadine Mauriot and 25-year-old Jean-Michel Kraveichvili were very likely making love at the moment of the assault. Mauriot was hit by four bullets and died instantly. Kraveichvili was also hit four times, but managed to scramble out of the tent and run 30 metres before being overtaken and stabbed to death. It was determined that the killer then returned to the tent where he removed the vagina and left breast from Mauriot’s corpse.

The next day the public prosecutor’s office received an envelope containing a small cube of flesh taken from the dead woman’s left breast. Intentionally or not, it was the final communication from the murderer – the Monster of Florence never killed again.

Over the next eight years, more than 100,000 people were questioned as the investigation continued. Gradually, attention came to focus on one man, an illiterate farm labourer named Pietro Pacciani. The 68-year-old had had much experience with the law, beginning in 1951 when he murdered a travelling salesman whom he had caught sleeping with his fiancée. Not only had Pacciani stabbed the man 19 times, he had raped his corpse. The farm labourer had received a sentence of 13 years in prison for the crime. Following his release, Pacciani had married and raised a family. He was, however, anything but a good father. Between 1987 and 1991 the patriarch of the family was imprisoned for molesting his two daughters and beating his wife.

Among the 100,000 people questioned by the police were sources that alleged that Pacciani was a member of a cult that employed female body parts in conducting black masses.

On 17 January 1993, nearly a quarter-century after the initial murders attributed to the Monster of Florence, Pacciani was arrested. He was charged with all the murders, save the 1968 double-homicide of Barbara Locci and Antonio Lo Bianco, for which Stefano Mele had been found guilty. Beginning on 1 November 1994, the trial was a media sensation. Facing a prosecution which had little evidence, Pacciani maintained his innocence. When pronounced guilty and sentenced to 14 terms of life in prison, he left the court proclaiming that he was ‘as innocent as Christ on the cross’.

While they didn’t believe Pacciani’s assertion of innocence, early in the convicted man’s incarceration investigators came to believe that he had not acted alone. Pacciani, they believed, was the leader of a gang of murderers.

A little way into the second year of Pacciani’s sentence, on 13 February 1996, an appeals court overturned the verdict due to lack of evidence. The farm labourer was once again a free man. The same could not be said for two of his friends, Giancarlo Lotti and Mario Vanni, who had just hours earlier been arrested for their participation in the murders.

On 12 December, armed with new evidence against Pacciani, prosecutors convinced the Italian supreme court to order a retrial. Things did not look good for the farm labourer. On 21 May 1997, his friends Lotti and Vanni were convicted of participating in five of the Monster’s double-homicides – Lotti received a 25-year sentence, while Vanni was sent away for life.

But Pacciani never again appeared in court. On 21 May 1997, the 73-year-old was discovered lying dead on the floor of his home. Although his trousers were around his ankles and his shirt around his neck, the police concluded that he had suffered a heart attack. An autopsy indicated that death had come from a combination of drugs that appeared designed to exacerbate a variety of health ailments. Pacciani’s death is now considered a murder.

The investigation of the eight murders associated with the Monster of Florence did not end with the death of Pacciani. In early September 2001, evidence was gathered linking the activities to a Satanic sect composed of wealthy and powerful Tuscan families. One theory is that Pacciani did the bidding of the sect. If so, this may provide some explanation as to why an illiterate farm labourer had two houses and a £50,000 bank balance at the time of his death. On 1 June 2006, a retired pharmacist in San Casciano received a notification letter from Florentine prosecutors, in which they alleged that he gave the orders for Pacciani, Lotti and Vanni to carry out the murders. But he has never been formally charged and remains a free man.