Book: The Monster of Florence: A True Story

Authors: Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi

Why Did I Read This Book: I have a deep love of the true crime genre. The Monster of Florence serial killings were unknown to me before this book and Amazon also had a copy on sale. So, how could I resist.

Availability: Published in 2008 by Hachette Book Group, you can get a copy here:

Comments: Like I said above, I love accounts of true crime. I also love accounts of miscarriages of justice combined with a healthy dose of vindication. I knew this book was the former when I ordered it but had no idea it was the latter. This book proved an absorbing, infuriating read, all the more because I am a person who takes a keen interest in topics like the belief systems that cause Satanic Panics as well as conspiracies. Most books on those topics get reviewed over on my other site but this book was not an odd book, despite the presence of a decades-long Satanic Panic combined with a pretty profound judicial conspiracy. The line between odd and non-odd is completely arbitrary, I think, but I review this book here mostly because I can see the average person reading this book and finding it very interesting.

There is much to discuss in this book, and strangely, the actual killings, for me, took backseat to the drama that unfolds as Douglas Preston gets sucked not only into telling the tale of the Monster of Florence, but into suspicion of having a role in the supposed conspiracy of Satanists who killed couples along the Florence countryside. The eight killings began in 1968 and ended in 1985. They all involved the killings of couples, most of whom had gone to a wood-like area to park and have sex. The male was generally shot first and the woman shot and/or stabbed, and in five cases, the woman was also mutilated sexually. The cases bear a superficial similarity to the Son of Sam killings in the US, and to my admittedly unexpert eye, the first incident and the last seem very much like they were not done by the same person who committed the other murders because they deviated in some manner from the killer’s MO.

In the course of investigating and then prosecuting men for this crime, the authorities could not have done a worse job had they tried. The first man convicted of the killings, a thoroughly unpleasant man to be sure, eventually had the case against him overturned and was set free by the Italian courts. One Italian police officer even believes evidence was planted to try to prove the case against the innocent man. Though all evidence seems to point to a Sardinian man, whose wife was one of the first victims, the Florence police decided to dive head first off the deep end.

Enter Douglas Preston, American author of popular thrillers, who arrived in Italy to write a book and ended up friends with journalist Mario Spezi, a man with a great interest in the Monster of Florence case. Investigating, they came across all sorts of shocking examples of police failure, investigative misconduct and judicial wrong doing, as well as flat out whacked thinking on the part of Chief Inspector Michele Giuttari, who evidently has a firm belief in the fantastic, and Judge Giuliano Mignini, whose continued presence in the Italian court system after his antics in the Monster of Florence case is baffling.

Investigating the Monster of Florence murders, Preston and and Spezi uncovered all kinds of bizarre information. For example, a lone doctor’s suicide was seen by investigators to be a lynch pin in proving a Satanic cult was behind the murders (the doctor fit several different theories – rich Italians killing for a Satanic sect, a doctor has to be the killer). That theory involved the doctor’s body being fished out of the water, taken to the morgue, swapped with another body, and the fake body was then buried under the doctor’s name.

On April 6, 2002, with the press standing by, the coffin of Francesco Narducci was exhumed and opened. His body was inside, instantly recognizable after seventeen years. A DNA test confirmed it.

This blow to their theories did not stop… Giuttari and the public minister of Perugia. Even in the lack of a substantiated corpse they found evidence. The body was too recognizable for someone who had spent five days in the water and then another seventeen (sic) in a coffin. Giuttari and Mignini promptly concluded that the real body had been substituted again. That’s right –Narducci’s real body, hidden for seventeen years, had been put back in the coffin and the other body removed because the conspirators knew ahead of time that the exhumation was coming.

Then comes Gabriella Carlizzi, a conspiratologist whose ravings make my local hero Alex Jones seem like a rational person of restraint in comparison (a search for Carlizzi’s pro-Satanic Panic blog was of little help but I did find an Italian page that claims she died on August 11, 2010 – I have no idea if this is true). Carlizzi’s theories of Satanic murder, the swapping of the doctor’s body and even more insane theories influenced Giuttari and Mignini, eventually leading to Preston and Spezi finding themselves suspects in the decades-long murders. People warned Preston that Carlizzi was a dangerous person but to those who have dealt with people who are true believers in conspiracy, just the time suck alone of dealing with such people is enough to cause us to want to avoid them. Preston exchanged many e-mails with Carlizzi until he realized his folly and even when he was finished with her, his e-mail box remained clogged by her raving missives. Carlizzi’s theories, crackpot though they seem to us, were taken very seriously by some Italian authorities. In fact, she provided many “links” in the case.

…The investigators also had to show that Narducci had a connection to Pacciani [the man inititally convicted as the Monster who was later released]… and the village of San Casciano, where the satanic cult seemed to be centered.

They succeeded in this as well. Gabriella Carlizzi made a statement to the police asserting that Francesco Narducci had been intiated into the Order of the Red Rose by his father, who was trying to resolve certain sexual problems in his son – the same diabolical sect, Carlizzi claimed, active for centuries in Florence and its environs. Police and prosecutors seemed to accept Carlizzi’s statements as solid, actionable evidence.

Giuttari had no problem rounding up the town drunks and prostitutes and even a man described as a village idiot and having them recite patently untrue information in order to seek convictions. He never seemed at a loss to find people willing to say whatever it was he needed to be said, using the same people over and over, each time molding their testimony to his ends.

As if on cue, Giuttari and his GIDES squad produced witnesses swearing to have seen Francesco Narducci hanging around San Casciano… It took a while for the identities of these new witnesses to come out. When Spezi first heard the names, he thought it was a bad joke: they were the same… witnesses who had been the surprise witnesses at Pacciani’s appeal so many years before…

The three witnesses had earth-shaking new information to impart, which all of them had forgotten to mention eight years earlier when they had first stunned Italy with their extraordinary testimony.

Giuttari was quite unorthodox in his approach to using evidence to solve crimes. In his eyes, a simple doorstop became “an esoteric object used to communicate between this world and the infernal regions.” He fully embraced the theory that powerful people were behind the Satanic conspiracy to kill. Why would these people kill couples and mutilate dying women? Giuttari’s theory was that a

shadowy cabal of wealthy and powerful people, seemingly beyond reproach, who occupied the highest positions in society, business, law and medicine, had hired Pacciani, Vanni and Lotti to kill people in order to obtain the sex organs of girls for use as the obscene, blasphemous “wafer” in their Black Masses.

How all of this came to pass, all this blaming innocent citizens, so many trials and retrials, the willingness to believe in the unbelievable was summed up by an Italian nobleman who was at one point himself accused by some of being the killer:

“In Italy, the hatred of your enemy is such that he has to be built up, made into the ultimate adversary, responsible for all evil. The investigators in the Monster case know that behind the simple facts hides a satanic cult, its tentacles reaching into the highest levels of society. This is what they will prove, no matter what. Woe to the person… who disputes their theory because that makes him an accomplice. The more vehemently he denies being involved, the stronger is the proof.”

And this is exactly what happened. Preston himself has what is essentially a warrant for his arrest should he ever reenter Italy and Spezi himself was arrested and held without communication for days until saner heads prevailed and he was released. Spezi’s appearance on television and numerous articles he wrote examining the deficiencies of the investigation put him squarely in Giuttari’s cross-hairs. In a search of Spezi’s home, Spezi became angry and mocked the police, showing them his own doorstop, identical to the one that Giuttari had considered an occult object. That doorstop gave Giuttari what he considered physical evidence to link Spezi to one of the murder scenes, resulting eventually in Spezi’s arrest. Judges reviewed the evidence and eventually released Spezi but not before his life was completely upturned.

The final trial in this book ended after the book was published, but Giuttari and Mignini’s Satanic killer was acquitted. And so much of this stemmed from the outrageous claims of a demented woman running a website (her claims about the 9/11 attacks are… interesting.)

If that seems like a hopelessly backward idea, us Yanks need to recall that the Satanic Panic plagued us for years and in some places never went away. The trial of the West Memphis Three was no less filled with lies, misinformation and desperate attempts by law enforcement and the judiciary to spin a wild tale of Satanism to solve a case when the real murderer was far more prosaic, far more familiar. Crazy ideas are never far from hand and books like this serve as a sober reminded that there is no idea outrageous enough that some police, judges, or jurors will not believe it.

For those who followed the Amanda Knox travesty in Italy, it will come as no surprise that mad theories again tainted the court system – Gabriella Carlizzi thinks there was some sort of Satanic, Masonic ritual the girl was supposedly involved in that led to the sexual murder of her roommate. Worse, Judge Mignini presided over her joke of a trial.

In November 2007, Mignini became involved on another sensational case, that of the brutal murder of a British student, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia. Mignini quickly ordered the arrest of American student, Amanda Knox, whom he suspected of involvement in the murder… It appears from press leaks that Mignini is spinning an improbable theory about Knox and two alleged co-conspirators in a dark plan of extreme sex, violence and rape.

Knox was convicted and is in an Italian prison now.

But the Monster of Florence remains unidentified and only innocent people have been harmed in the bizarre quest for justice.

Though it may seem as if I have spoiled this book, believe me, there is so much more -so very much more – than what I chose to excerpt here. This case is a skein of tangled yarn. And even if you know how it ends, the many knots along the way make for fascinating reading. I highly recommend it. Fans of true crime will love the investigation and those of us who like a conspiracy theory will realize that America is not the only country where people believe truly bizarre things.

Book: The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession

Author: Allison Hoover Bartlett

Type of Book: Non-fiction, true crime, book about books

Why Did I Read This Book: I am a bibliophile who can at times see how I could easily slide into bibliomania. People who go to any length to get books – be they rare or commonplace – interest me greatly.

Availability: Published by Riverhead Books, you can get a copy here:

Comments: This book engrossed me for reasons I did not anticipate when I started reading it. The story of this particular book thief is not as interesting as some other book thieves of whom I have read. John Gilkey, who remains unrepentant concerning his thefts of rare books from dealers, may one day become a man who steals rare books from libraries, as the book indicates he may be doing right now, but his thefts were more prosaic: He stole credit card numbers during his job as a retail clerk and used the stolen numbers to purchase books. He had an element of brazenness about him as he would go into the stores after calling in an order, posing as the “friend” of the purchaser, and pick up the books, but overall, his thefts lacked the sort of derring-do of those who steal from archives and libraries. How he did what he did and how he got caught are not the most interesting parts of this book.

What is interesting, and what Bartlett shows the best, is the world of the book lover, from the rare book shops to those who become obsessed with books and obtain them at all costs. Any lover of books will salivate over Bartlett’s descriptions of what she saw at trade shows, most especially a handwritten manuscript by Proust. She describes a book with a fore-edge painting, something I had not heard of, and it sent me rushing to the Internet so I could see some examples. It’s pure magic, such a thing of beauty. I am not one for whom old or pretty books mean much aside from the content, but I now want such a book. I am not even sure if I can explain why I want it. I just do. I feel like there is nothing I would not give up to be able to afford a book like that and I can give no adequate reason other than that I… I guess I need it? It’s hard to explain how something you did not even know existed can suddenly become a minor obsession.

This book addresses beautifully one of my greatest puzzlements: Why do I love books instead of jewelry or nice cars? Why will I spend whatever I must to get a book I want to read but will never visit a spa or get a manicure. Of course it boils down to personality, but a certain element of it is that books show a lot about me. When you walk into my home, you immediately know what I am about. And that was what prodded John Gilkey into becoming a book thief. He wanted to amass a collection of books that would wow anyone who saw them. He wanted books to define who he is and what makes him special.

Of course, being a thief meant his books could never really be on display (and keeping stolen books close to him was part of his eventual undoing), but the fantasy of people walking into his home and seeing all those old, rare, beautiful books fed the idea of identity that he wanted to share about himself with others. Us book lovers like to believe that we are often above it all in terms of acquisition, because we eschew more common consumer goods in favor of books but the end result is that our loves and desires craft a tangible identity that we convey to others, which is one of the most basic elements of consumerism.

Many matchmaking and social networking sites offer a place for members to list what they’re reading just for this reason: books can reveal a lot about a person. This is particularly true of the collector, for whom the bookshelf is a reflection not just of what he has read but profoundly of what he is: “Ownership is the most intimate relationship that one can have to objects. Not that they can live in him; it is he who comes alive in them,” wrote cultural critic Walter Benjamin.

However, Gilkey, while he clearly loves books, really sees books as a means to an end and not something that satisfies a deep longing for the item in question:

…he was not dedicated to one author or one period or one subject. As soon as he’d snagged a twentieth-century American mystery, he was on to a nineteenth-century English novel. He thieved across genres the way a distracted reader might peruse shelves in a library, running his finger along the spines, stopping at whatever caught his eye, then moving on.

I’m sure you can imagine how close to home this description hit for a woman who runs a site called I Read Everything.

Gilkey, however, despite his desire to have books, is not like any collector I was aware of, honorable or not, before reading this book. He often did not know a thing about the books he stole, simply wanting to amass a collection of first edition Modern Library Top 100 Books, going after first editions from authors he had not even read. Moreover, his sense of entitlement is baffling to the average person – Gilkey (and most of us) could not afford the books he wanted, therefore dealers were to blame for having such high prices and there was no harm done if he stole from them. As anyone knows who has ever sold books, from dealers to Amazon Merchants to people who work as clerks in bookstores, the margins in book sales are slim. Razor thin. But much of what Gilkey thinks in this book is not based in reality but rather his attempts to justify his thefts. Assigning a Robin Hood morality to what he did likely helps him sleep at night, or gives him further justification.

But through his thefts, Gilkey really was redefining himself. With an impressive book collection, he could reinvent himself into a gentleman as opposed to the impecunious grifter he is:

…he kept his mind on his collection, imagining how it would elevate his position in society. Gilkey would be regarded as a man of culture and erudition, just like the woman in the wealth management advertisement I had seen who was pictured leaving a rare book shop. Everywhere he looked–movies, television, books, advertisements, clothing catalogs–were images that confirmed our culture’s reverence not for literature, per se, but for an accumulation of books as a sign that you belonged among gentility. Through his collection, Gilkey would occupy a revered place in an envied world.

I have not really ever analyzed my own love of books in terms of what this habit says about me. I have longed to own books I cannot afford, and in a sense, I am very proud of the books I do have that are “rare” or collectible. But like most book collectors and accumulators, I am broke. I am sure there are some top dogs out there whose pocketbooks allow them to own whatever they want but for the most part, every book lover I know is like me – constrained by our bank accounts, and willing to do without most cultural markers of affluence in order to have what may seem to others like a quaint gentility. In my world, books equal being broke.

I loved this book. For people looking for a gripping true crime yarn, this will not fit the bill. It is rather a look at a strange thief and the love of books. And anyone who loves books about books will find themselves making notes of other books to read on the topic – of course I already have Basbanes but Bartlett’s careful research threw a few new names my way. This book is accessible, entertaining, and raises questions in the minds of book people about why they have their particular quirk and what it says about them.

Book: The Postcard Killer: The True Story of J. Frank Hickey

Author: Vance McLaughlin, Ph.D.

Type of Book: Non-fiction, true crime

Why Did I Read This Book: I have a weakness for true crime. There was once a time when I could have told you the name and victim count of every serial killer from recorded time to present but I have since lost that ability as serial and mass murder became sort of commonplace in the Internet and on television and I lost interest via excessive immersion. However, I still appreciate a good true crime yarn, especially about a killer I have never heard of before.

Availability: Published by Thunder’s Mouth Press in 2006, you can get a copy here:

Comments: The case of J. Frank Hickey was a fascinating read. Though I disagree with the assertion the author makes, that Hickey was the first man ever captured as a result of profiling, that does not render this book any the less absorbing and hard to put down.

Because I discuss books in depth, there is no way for me to discuss elements of this book that would not spoil elements of it for some readers. I think this is a book worth reading, and if you think my many words will ruin aspects of the book, stop reading now. Just go buy the book. It’s not going to be a book that inspires a lot of thought or cause much internal contemplation – it is simply telling the tale of a sadistic man who killed 100 years ago, and as true crime goes, it is better than most.

J. Frank Hickey was a man who confessed to three murders, and if contemporary knowledge of serial killers is of any use, then it is very likely he killed far more than those he confessed to. As a young man, he killed an older drunk whom he feared might take his job, and a couple of decades later, he killed a newsboy. The book focuses, however, mainly on the murder of Joey Joseph in Lackawanna, New York. In 1911, Hickey lured the seven-year-old boy with a trip to a candy store, then took him into a multi-seat outhouse outside a saloon and strangled and raped the child. He then threw the boy’s body down one of the outhouse seats into the latrine below and went back into the saloon and drank. No one ever suspected him and he very well might have gotten away with the murder had he not overplayed his hand: He began to send taunting postcards to the family.

This is where I contend that Hickey was not caught by profiling. He was caught because newspapers ran copies of the postcards he sent in the hopes that someone would recognize the handwriting, which is exactly what happened. Two separate men recognized Hickey’s handwriting and it was downhill for the police from there. It was a capture due to police exercising certain procedural discretion, not because of profiling.

Three things stand out the most for me in this book. First is that Hickey, likely needing the thrill that finding the body would cause, became frustrated when the local police chief failed to find the boy. He sent a postcard to the chief of police telling him point blank that Joey Joseph was in a cesspit, giving the exact location. He did this within a month of the murder. The police chief sent a couple of cops to check out the outhouse and they peered into the filth below, unable to see much. They did not drain the cesspit, they just looked. Had the police performed even the most casual due-diligence, Joey’s body would have been found sooner. But the chief of police patted himself on the back, finding a silver lining in his cloud of incompetence: Had they found Joey’s body sooner, Hickey would not have written more postcards and they might not have caught him. It took over a year for Joey’s body to be recovered once the police finally pumped the cesspit and found him.

Second is how Hickey toyed with the family. Not even Jack the Ripper or the Son of Sam, David Berkowitz, letter writers both, taunted directly the victims of their killings. Neither did the Zodiac Killer, who remains uncaught to this day. But Hickey did. His postcards were not as horrific as the letters sent by Albert Fish to the family of his victim, Grace Budd, whom he tortured and then ate, but they were upsetting enough. He said that since Joey’s mother was known as a nervous, unstable woman, he could not bear the torture she was undergoing and hoped his letters to the family, confessing the murder, would lead to finding the boy’s body. More likely, he did not receive the catharsis he needed when Joey’s body failed to be retrieved from the muck and needed some release via upsetting the Joseph family. However, if that was his goal, it backfired for a long while as the elder Joseph did not initially turn the letters over to the police, hoping against hope the letters were hoaxes and his son was alive somewhere. But he also sat on the letters because he feared that if the police knew his son was murdered, they might stop looking for the boy.

Third, I had no idea the life of a newsboy was as horrible as it was until I read this book. Young children in urban areas, sent out to sell papers by families barely scraping by, were of course open prey for pedophiles. Some even became prostitutes, selling themselves for meals and sometimes just the price for admission to a cinema, to be in out of the cold. Joey Joseph was not a newsboy but one of Hickey’s admitted victims was, and reading about the terrible life these children faced, the poverty, the potential victimization and similar, has made me want to read more about the topic. Newsboys seem a romanticized part of history in many large American cities and it was appalling and interesting to see how that romance crumbles under the most casual scrutiny. It seems to me, on many levels, that kids selling the news have always been natural victims. From newsboys to boys abducted as they delivered newspapers on their bike routes in more modern times, it seems odd that the technological advance that so many fear imperils children helped stopped one of the perils – the lone child peddling the news.

All in all, a very interesting, well-written book.