The Monster of Florence (26 page)
T
he morning of February 22, I headed out of the apartment into the streets of Florence to fetch espressos and pastries to carry back for breakfast. As I was crossing the street to a little café, my cell phone rang. A man speaking Italian informed me he was a police detective and wanted to see me—immediately.
“Come on,” I said, laughing. “Who is this really?” I was impressed by the flawless, officious-sounding Italian, and I racked my brains as to who it might be.
“This is not a joke, Mr. Preston.”
There was a long silence as it sank in that this was real.
“Excuse me—what’s this about?”
“I cannot tell you. You must see us. It is
obbligatorio
.”
“I’m very busy,” I said, in a rising panic. “I don’t have time. So sorry.”
“You must
make
time, Mr. Preston,” came the reply. “Where are you right now?”
“Florence.”
“
Where
?”
Should I refuse to tell him or lie? That didn’t seem a wise thing to do. “Via Ghibellina.”
“Don’t go anywhere—we’re coming to you.”
I looked around. It was a part of town I didn’t know well, with narrow side streets and few tourists. This would not do. I wanted witnesses—American witnesses.
“Let’s meet in the Piazza della Signoria,” I countered, naming the most public square in Florence.
“Where? It’s a big place.”
“At the spot where Savonarola was burned. There’s a plaque.”
A silence. “I’m not familiar with that place. Let’s meet instead at the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio.”
I called Christine. “I’m afraid I can’t bring you coffee this morning.”
I arrived early and walked around the piazza, thinking furiously. As an American, an author and journalist, I had always enjoyed a smug feeling of invulnerability. What could they possibly do to me? Now I wasn’t feeling so untouchable.
At the appointed time I saw two men wending their way through the tourist masses, dressed casually in jeans, black shoes, and blue jackets, shades pushed up on their crew-cut heads. They were
in borghese
, in plainclothes, but even from a hundred yards away I could tell they were cops.
I went over. “I am Douglas Preston.”
“Come this way.”
The two detectives took me into the Palazzo Vecchio, where, in the magnificent Renaissance courtyard surrounded by Vasari’s frescoes, they presented me with a legal summons to appear for an interrogation before the public minister of Perugia, Judge Giuliano Mignini. The detective politely explained that a no-show would be a serious crime; it would put them in the regrettable position of having to come and get me.
“Sign here to indicate you have received this piece of paper and understood what it says and what you must do.”
“You still haven’t told me what it’s about.”
“You’ll find out in Perugia tomorrow.”
“At least tell me this: is it about the Monster of Florence?” I asked.
“Bravo,” said the detective. “Now sign.”
I signed.
I called Spezi, and he was deeply shocked and concerned. “I never thought they’d act against you,” he said. “Go to Perugia and answer the questions. Tell them just what they ask and no more—and for God’s sake, don’t lie.”
T
he next day I drove to Perugia with Christine and our two children, passing the shores of Lake Trasimeno on the way. Perugia, a beautiful and ancient city, occupies an irregular rocky hill in the upper Tiber valley, surrounded by a defensive wall that is still largely intact. Perugia has long been a center of learning in Italy, graced by a number of universities and schools, some of which date back five hundred years. Christine planned to sightsee with the kids and have lunch while I was interrogated. I had decided the whole interrogation was a bluff, a crude attempt at intimidation. I’d done nothing wrong and broken no law. I was a journalist and writer. Italy was a civilized country. Or so I kept repeating to myself on the drive down.
The offices of the Procura, where the public minister worked, were in a modern travertine building just outside the ancient city walls. I was ushered into a pleasant room on a high floor. A couple of windows looked down to the beautiful Umbrian countryside, misty and green, wreathed in drizzle. I had dressed smartly and I carried a folded copy of the
International Herald Tribune
under my arm as a prop.
Present in the room were five people. I asked their names and wrote them down. One of the detectives who had summoned me was there, an Inspector Castelli, fashionably dressed for the important occasion in a black sports jacket and black shirt buttoned at the collar, wearing lots of hair gel. There was a small, extremely tense police captain named Mora with orange hair implants, who seemed determined to put on a good show for the public minister. There was a blonde female detective, who, at my request, wrote her name in my notebook in a scribble I have yet to decipher. A stenographer sat at a computer.
Behind a desk sat the public minister of Perugia himself, Judge Giuliano Mignini. He was a short man of indeterminate middle age, well groomed, his fleshy face carefully shaved and patted. He wore a blue suit and carried himself like a well-bred Italian, with a large sense of personal dignity, his movements smooth and precise, his voice calm and pleasant. Bestowing upon me the honorific of
dottore
, which in Italy denotes the highest respect, he addressed me with elaborate courtesy using the “
lei
” form. I had the right to an interpreter, he explained, but that finding one might take many hours, during which I would be inconveniently detained. In his opinion I spoke Italian fluently. I asked if I needed a lawyer and he said that, although it was of course my right, it wasn’t necessary, as they merely wanted to ask a few questions of a routine nature.
I had already decided not to assert journalistic privilege. It’s one thing to fight for your rights in your own country, but I had no intention of going to prison on principle in a foreign land.
His questions were gentle, and posed almost diffidently. The secretary typed the questions and my answers into the computer. Sometimes Mignini rephrased my answers in better Italian, checking solicitously if that was what I really meant to say. At first he rarely, if ever, looked at me, keeping his eyes down to his notes and his papers, occasionally looking over the shoulder of the stenographer to see what she was typing on the screen.
At the end of the interrogation, I would be refused both a transcript of the interrogation and a copy of the “statement” I was required to sign. My account of the interrogation appearing here is taken from notes I jotted down immediately after the interrogation and a much fuller account I wrote up two days later from memory.
Mignini asked many questions about Spezi, always listening with respectful interest to the answers. He wanted to know what our theories were involving the Monster case. He questioned me closely about one of Spezi’s two lawyers, Alessandro Traversi. Did I know who he was? Had I met him? Had Spezi ever discussed with me Traversi’s legal strategies? If so, what were those legal strategies? On this latter point he was particularly insistent, probing deeply for what I might know of Spezi’s legal defense. I truthfully claimed ignorance. He reeled off lists of names and asked if I had ever heard them. Most of the names were unfamiliar. Others, such as Calamandrei, Pacciani, and Zaccaria, I knew.
The questions went on like this for an hour, and I was starting to feel reassured. I even had a glimmer of hope that I might get out of there in time to join my wife and children for lunch.
Mignini then asked me if I had ever heard the name Antonio Vinci. I felt a faint chill. Yes, I said, I knew that name. How did I know it and what did I know of him? I said we had interviewed him, and under further questioning described the circumstances. The questioning turned to the Monster’s gun. Had Spezi mentioned the gun? What were his theories? I told him our belief that the gun had always remained within the circle of Sardinians, and that one of them had gone on to become the Monster.
At this, Mignini dropped the genteel tone and his voice became edged with anger. “You say that you and Spezi persist in this belief, even though the Sardinian Trail was closed in 1988 by Judge Rotella, and the Sardinians were officially absolved of any connection in the case?”
I said yes, that we both persisted in this belief.
Mignini steered the questions toward our visit to the villa. Now the tone of his voice became darker, accusatory. What did we do there? Where did we walk? What did we talk about? Were Spezi and Zaccaria always within sight of me? Was there any moment, even briefly, when they were out of my sight? Was there talk of a gun? Of boxes of iron? Was my back ever to Spezi? When we spoke, how far were we from one another? Did we see anyone there? Who? What was said? What was Zaccaria doing there? What was his role? Did he speak about his desire to be appointed minister of justice?
I answered as truthfully as I could, trying to suppress a damnable habit of overexplanation.
Why
did we go there? Mignini finally asked.
I said that it was a public place and we went there in our capacity as journalists—
At the mention of the world “journalist” Mignini interrupted me in a loud voice, overriding me before I had finished. He made an angry speech that this had nothing to do with freedom of the press, that we were free to report on whatever we wanted, and that he didn’t care a whit what we wrote. This, he said, was a
criminal
matter.
I said it did matter, because we were journalists—
Again he interrupted me, drowning me out with a lecture that freedom of the press was irrelevant to this inquiry and that I should not bring up the subject again. He asked me in a sarcastic tone if I thought that, just because Spezi and I were journalists, did that mean we could not
also
be criminals? I had the distinct feeling he was trying to prevent anything I might say about press freedom or journalistic privilege from reaching the tape recording that was surely being made of the interrogation.
I began to sweat. The public minister began repeating the same questions over and over again, phrased in different ways and in different forms. His face flushed as his frustration mounted. He frequently instructed his secretary to read back my earlier answers. “You said
that
, and now you say
this
? Which is true, Dr. Preston?
Which is true
?”
I began to stumble over my words. If the truth be known, I am far from fluent in Italian, especially with legal and criminological terms. With a growing sense of dismay, I could hear from my own stammering, hesitant voice that I was sounding like a liar.
Mignini asked, sarcastically, if I at least remembered speaking by telephone to Spezi on February 18. Flustered, I said I couldn’t remember a particular conversation on that exact date, but that I had talked to him almost every day.
Mignini said, “Listen to this.” He nodded to the stenographer, who pressed a button on the computer. Through the set of speakers attached to the computer, I could hear the ringing of a phone, and then my voice answering:
“
Pronto
.”
“
Ciao, sono Mario
.”
They had wiretapped our phone calls.
Mario and I chatted for a moment while I listened in amazement to my own voice, clearer on the intercept than in the original call on my lousy cell phone. Mignini played it once, then again, and yet again. He stopped at the point where Mario said, “We did it all.” He fixed his glittering eyes on me: “What exactly did you do, Dr. Preston?”
I explained Spezi was referring to delivering the information to the police.
“No, Dr. Preston.” He played the recording again and again, asking over and over, “What is this thing you did?
What did you do
?” He seized on Spezi’s other comment, in which he had said, “The cell phone is ugly.”
“What does this mean, ‘The cell phone is ugly’?”
“It meant he thought the phone was tapped.”
Mignini sat back and swelled with triumph. “And why is it, Dr. Preston, that you were concerned about the telephone being tapped
if you weren’t engaged in illegal activity
?”
“Because it isn’t nice to have your phone tapped,” I answered feebly. “We’re journalists. We keep our work secret.”
“That is
not
an answer, Dr. Preston.”
Mignini played the recording again, and again. He kept stopping at several other words, repeatedly demanding to know what I or Spezi meant, as if we were speaking in code, a common Mafia ploy. He asked me if Spezi had a gun in the car with us. He asked me if Spezi had carried a gun during our visit to the villa. He wanted to know exactly what we had done there and where we had walked, minute by minute. Mignini brushed all my answers aside. “There is so much more behind this conversation than you are telling us, Dr. Preston. You know much more than you are letting on.” He demanded to know what kind of evidence the Sardinians might have hidden in the villa, in the boxes, and I said I didn’t know. Take a guess, he said. I replied perhaps arms or other evidence—jewelry from the victims, maybe pieces of the corpses.
“Pieces from the
corpses
?” the judge exclaimed incredulously, looking at me as if I were a lunatic for even thinking of such a vile thing. “But the killings took place twenty years ago!”
“But the FBI report said—”
“Listen again, Dr. Preston!” And he pressed the button to play the call again.
This time the police captain jumped in, speaking for the first time, his voice as tense and shrill as a cat’s.
“I find it very strange that Spezi laughs at that point. Why does he laugh? The Monster of Florence case is one of the most tragic in the history of the Italian republic, and it is no laughing matter. So why does Spezi laugh?
What is so funny
?”
I refrained from answering the question, since it hadn’t been addressed to me. But the indefatigable man wanted an answer, and he turned and repeated the question to me directly.
“I am not a psychologist,” I answered as coldly as I could, the desired effect ruined when I mispronounced the word
psicologo
and had to be corrected.
The captain stared at me, his eyes narrowing, then turned to Mignini and with the expression on his face of a man who refuses to allow himself to be fooled. “This is something I note for the record,” he shrilled. “It is
very
strange that he laughs at that point. It is not psychologically normal, no,
not normal at all
.”
I remember at this point looking at Mignini, and finding his gaze on me. His face was flushed with a look of contempt—and triumph. I suddenly knew why: he had expected me to lie, and now I had met his expectation. I was proving to his satisfaction that I was guilty.
But of what?
I stammered out a question: did they think we had committed a crime at the villa?
Mignini straightened up in his chair and with a note of triumph in his voice said, “Yes.”
“What?”
He thundered out, “You and Spezi either planted, or were planning to plant, a gun or other false evidence at that villa in an attempt to frame an innocent man for being the Monster of Florence, to derail this investigation, and to deflect suspicion from Spezi himself.
That
is what you were doing. This comment: ‘We did it all’—that’s what he meant. And then you tried to call the police. But we had warned them ahead of time—and they would have nothing to do with the deception!”
I was floored. I stammered that this was just a theory, but Mignini interrupted me and said, “These are not theories! These are facts! And you, Dr. Preston, you know a great deal more about this business than you are letting on. Do you realize the utmost seriousness, the enormous gravity, of these crimes? You well know that Spezi is being investigated for the murder of Narducci, and I think you know a great deal about it. That makes you an accessory. Yes, Dr. Preston, I can hear it in your voice on that telephone call, I can hear the tone of knowledge, of deep familiarity with these events. Just listen again.” His voice rose with restrained exultation. “Listen to yourself!”
And for maybe the tenth time he replayed the conversation.
“Perhaps you have been duped,” he went on, “but I don’t think so.
You know
. And now, Dr. Preston you have one last chance—
one last chance
—to tell us what you know—or I will charge you with perjury. I don’t care, I will do it, even if the news goes around the world tomorrow.”
I felt sick and I had the sudden urge to relieve myself. I asked for the way to the bathroom. I returned a few minutes later, having failed to muster much composure. I was terrified. As soon as the interrogation ended, I would be arrested and taken off to jail, never to see my wife and children again. Planting false evidence, perjury, accessory to murder . . . Not just any murder, but one connected to the Monster of Florence . . . I could easily spend the rest of my life in an Italian prison.
“I’ve told you the truth,” I managed to croak. “What more can I say?”
Mignini waved his hand and was handed a legal tome that he placed on his desk with the utmost delicacy, then opened to the requisite page. In a voice worthy of a funeral oration, he began to read the text of the law. I heard that I was now
indagato
(indicted) for the crime of reticence and making false statements.
1
He announced that the investigation would be suspended to allow me to leave Italy, but that it would be reinstated when the investigation of Spezi had concluded.
