It is January 30, 1974. The San Francisco Chronicle receives a letter from the Zodiac Killer. He has been silent for three years and the note will be the last about twenty taunting notes sent to the Californian press. Serial killer claims 37 murders and quotes a movie, “The Exorcist”.
The screenplay by William Friedkin has been in cinemas since December 26, 1973 and, in those days, continues to enjoy enormous success with the public.
To one cultural reference, Zodiac adds another. A quote from “The Mikado” by Gilbert and Sullivan which he uses as a signature.
Signed, yours truley:
He plunged himself into
the billowy wave
and an echo arose from
the suicide's grave
titwillo, titwillo, titwillo
The suicide’s grave is the water in which the subject of the story, a little bird who fails to attract a partner, drowns.
Zodiac has already quoted “The Mikado” in a message from ’70. At this point, the “supreme executioner” Koko, one of the main characters, is trying to seduce lady Katisha, telling her a story about a suicide for love, a drowning.
In the video below, the verse is recited by Australian actor Mitchell Butel, who adapts it perfectly to the scene, making it more understandable.
What does the killer want to suggest with this unusual signature?
Is he drowning, as he claimed in the letter to attorney Melvin Belli postmarked December 20, 1969?
Four months later Zodiac writes he was “swamped out by the rain”.
He concludes the note by threatening to kill again if it is not published, like in his first notes in July ’69.
Days, months go by. More than a year after the last contact, the press asks itself again: “Where is Zodiac?”1
Perhaps it was him who sent a couple more letters before the summer of ’74, signing himself “a friend” and “a citizen”. Someone credits him with others, but there is no evidence.
He is gone.
At the time he should be 35-45 years old, according to witnesses.2 He is not old. What happened to him? Was he arrested for other crimes? Is he dead?
The most popular theory on Reddit is that he has never stopped. That he has become “something different”. What?
Lovers’ lane killers
Before the press wonders about the disappearance of Zodiac, in September 1974, a mysterious killer appears near Florence. He too attacks and kills young couples in secluded public areas.
Coincidence or concatenation?
At the time, no one asked this question. Italian investigators very likely do not even know of the existence of the American serial killer. On the contrary, they almost certainly know “Scorpio”, Clint Easwood’s first antagonist in Inspector Callaghan’s saga, openly inspired to Zodiac. The film dates back to ’71 and by then Zodiac had become a movie subject.
And it is surreal like a horror movie which become reality – an obvious but completely appropriate statement, in this case – what the investigators witnessed starting from ’74 with the chain of murders of the so-called “Monster” who throw terror into Florence in the ’80s.
It is no coincidence that the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac are placed next to each other on the English Wikipedia page dedicated to “Lovers’ lane”.
The “maniac of couples”, which for the first time was nicknamed “Monster” by the Corriere della Sera, on September 16, 1974,3 belongs to a genre that had never been seen in the Italian scene, but was relatively widespread at the time in the countries of Northern Europe and the United States, where it is sometimes referred to as a “Lovers’ lane killer”.
A “lovers’ lane” is an area where young couples seclude themselves looking for intimacy. This is the common “hunting ground” of Zodiac and the Monster.
Affinity
In addition to the chronological coincidence, what the two cases have in common are the preference for a specific, particular category of victims, couples, and the similar modus operandi.
To kill, they both use a gun and/or knife. They generally operate in rural areas, and in a specific period of the year, June-October. They prefer dark hours of the night, in the weekends.4
The similarities extend to the language and also include the same type of misspelling concomitant with the use of the hyphen.
Zodiac takes great care in his crimes and displays some knowledge of investigative techniques in his letters, especially when provoked by the police. For example, he writes that when he kills, he disguises himself and applies air-cement glue on his fingertips to avoid leaving footprints.5
Weapons and military boots used in some of his crimes6 and his knowledge of cryptoanlysis7 lead detectives of the SFPD and army investigators to think that Zodiac has a military background.
The way of describing crime scenes,8 predicting the investigators’ moves,9 approaching victims in a car by dazzling them with a flashlight as an officer on patrol would do,10 and avoiding the capture by escaping in the Presidio, despite unleashed dogs on his trail,11 would lead one to believe that he might have something to do with the police.
Even the Monster seems to prepare his crimes with method and care.12
For the FBI, the “Italian” serial killer probably served in the military.
According to attorney Nino Filastò, he has anaptitude and knowledge that suggest that he is close to the police enviroment. The attorney speculates that the Monster approaches the victims’ cars like a policeman, dazzling them with a flashlight.
Both the Monster and Zodiac are cunning. There is also a contradiction in common. Why do they both take unnecessary risks after the murders despite their caution?
What drives Zodiac to send messages to the press, sometimes attaching evidence of his crimes?13
What reason forces the Monster to linger on the crime scenes to deface the bodies of his female victims?14
Inconsistencies or changes?
In 2018, a well-known Italian criminologist, Ursula Franco, argues in an interview with lecronachelucane.it that the Monster could not be Zodiac because, if it was, he would have sent messages to the press signing himself as before (in reality, in the last certain letter of ’74 the American serial killer no longer uses the name “Zodiac”).
The Monster too sends a boasting message, after his last murder in ’85. A risky action that must have a meaning for him, being his “final act” known to the public.
It is an envelope addressed to deputy district attorney Silvia Della Monica. The address was made up of clippings from a weekly that was identified by researcher Valeria Vecchione in 2020. Inside, 2 square centimeters of last victim’s subcutaneous tissue of her left breast in a cellophane bag sealed with air-cement glue and carefully placed in a folded card. An unusually effective communication for someone who, according to the vulgate, never sent a message to his audience.
The recent discovery of the magazine used by the Monster for the composition of the envelope shows that even in that communication, the serial killer had put a final reference to the water, recurring theme in Zodiac’s notes and crimes.
The treatment reserved for the girl killed by the Monster in ’74, the excisions of the female pubis begun in ’81 (four cases) and of the left breast in ’84 (two cases) are the final phase of a “ritual” of the serial killer from Florence which seems to distinguish him from Zodiac.
During the media coverage following the publication of my 2018-articles on the Monster-Zodiac connection and on the admission of “Ulysses”, two renowned Italian criminologists, Ruben De Luca and Roberta Bruzzone, expresse themselves critically on cronaca-nera.it and in the weekly Di più.
They argue that the two serial killers have nothing to do with each other, arguing that Zodiac would not have mutilated his female victims (De Luca) and that his crimes would not have a “sexual matrix” (Bruzzone).
Both statements are imprecise, if not uncorrect.
In the letter to the Los Angeles Times in ’71, Zodiac acknowledges that he is the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates, a university student stabbed to death and almost decapitated in ’66 in Riverside.
In this case, the killer sent a message a month after the murder announcing the mutilations of his future victim’s “female parts”.15
Although this purpose is not carried out in the definite Zodiac crimes, there are other possible unknown murders in which it could have happened.
According to the last certain letter from the serial killer, his murders would be 37 compared to the 6 attributed to him in ’74.
In any case, the sexual component is also present in the known crimes committed by Zodiac to date, although in those of the Monster it is more marked. For instance, both looked for couples in intimate situations in secluded areas.
After the attack on Lake Berryessa, the Napa Register reports:
In the attack at Lake Berryessa, where the victims are first tied up and then stabbed, the serial killer shows up wearing an executioner’s mask (next image), one of the most recurring objects in sadistic-sexual practices.
Like the Monster, after having rendered the boy harmless, Zodiac torments the female victim, a slender college student who receives almost double the stab wounds inflicted on her friend, a 2-meter young man.
It should be remembered that the Zodiac quotes from the “Mikado” are taken from the parts played by the “supreme executioner” Ko-Ko, and that the executioner’s mask is also mentioned in the Monster case in ’84, in a criminological report by a team of the University of Modena consulted by the Florence DA’s office.
The experts, Francesco De Fazio, Salvatore Luberto and Ivan Galliani, see a sadistic-sexual motivation in the Monster’s crimes.16
What further unites the two series is the fact that, despite the alleged underlying sadistic-sexual motivation, no traces of sexual violence are found in their known victims.
Birth of a public identity
Sunday morning, 15 September 1974, Italy. Zodiac disappeared permanently a few months ago in the United States. On the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, in Italy, there are six days until the national premiere of “The Exorcist”.
In the countryside of the Mugello, near Florence, the lifeless bodies of a teen couple, Pasquale Gentilcore, 19, and Stefania Pettini, 18, are found. They were killed in the night by a .22 caliber pistol, and with a knife, while they were in Gentilcore’s car at the “Little fountains” of Rabatta, a countryside area adjacent to Borgo San Lorenzo.17
Pettini’s body is lying on the grass behind the car with arms and legs apart and a vine branch inserted into the vagina. The body is naked, the clothes folded and placed a few meters away. There was no sexual violence.18 The killer produced 96 lacerations on the girl’s skin, most of them superficial.19
The first Monday after the murders the press does not know the murder weapon, but already highlights the salient characteristics of the murderer that will remain practically unchanged in the following years, significantly influencing possible witnesses and investigators.
For the first time, the term that will be approached by the media in the early ’80s, “monster”, appears. Only 48 hours after the killings the public identity of the Monster has already been born, identified as a “maniac”, “perhaps a voyeur”.20
Discrepancies with the ’68 case
The Monster’s first definite attack dates back to ’74.
There is a crime that precedes it to which the series of murders perpetrated by the Monster by shooting with the same firearm (’74-’85) is apparently connected (I explain why it is not here).
A double murder in the Florence surrounding of August 21, 1968.
Around midnight, a couple of lovers, Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locci, is shot with a .22 caliber pistol in a dirt road in Signa. The two had gone off in the car for a sexual intercourse. Barbara’s son, Natalino, was sleeping in the back seats.
Two hours later, the boy knocks on the door of a house about two kilometers from where the car is parked. To the man who looked out the window he said that his mother and “uncle” are dead.
Stefano Mele, husband of the murdered woman, has been home from work on the day of the crime. The next one, he is found with his hands covered in grease (a way to evade the paraffin glove test). After accusing various people, including brothers Francesco and Salvatore Vinci, he confesses to the crime. Later, he recants, accusing other people and accusing herself several times.
For investigators, Mele’s involvement in the murders is certain, also because his son survived unharmed. The existence of an accomplice is considered possible.
Contrary to what happens in the Monster’s crimes, the woman’s corpse appears to have been recomposed and partially covered.
The Carabinieri believe that the double murder occurred in the context of the Sardinian environment to which Barbara belonged, who had many lovers. The motive of jealousy is considered the most likely.
Mele is definitively convicted in ’73 and is still serving his sentence in prison when the double murder of Borgo San Lorenzo takes place.21
The ’68 case remains unconnected to the Monster murders until a “fortuitous” discovery of evidence in Mele’s trial file in ’82.
In the meantime, none of the detectives and magistrates who participated in the investigations, as well as the ballistics expert, Colonel Innocenzo Zuntini, has thought there might be a link between them.22
There is a reason.
Although the type of victims is identical and the scenario of the attack is similar, the double murder of ’74 has a sadistic-sexual connotation which the ’68 case has not, according to the team of experts from the University of Modena.
In Rabatta, the female victim was stripped and left with a branch slightly inserted into her vagina and numerous stab wounds. In subsequent crimes, when possible, the Monster defaces the girls’ bodies by removing their pubis and, in two cases, their left breast.
In their criminological report, 23 the University of Modena experts note that the Signa crime:
"… appears so devoid of abnormal connotations as to lead to formulate the hypothesis of a crime of passion (hypothesis immediately advanced by investigators, and amply supported by information about the habits and conditions of life, existential relationships, the environment frequented by the two victims)"
"Who committed this crime, therefore, even in the hypothesis that he is the author of the subsequent crimes, does not seem to have been moved by sadistic-sexual motivations, but from common motivations; motivations that lead to the desire for the physical elimination of the victims, according to a modality and a psychological dynamic completely clear of abnormal sexual elements and, even more, of sadistic impulses."
According to experts, the Monster’s crimes (’74-’85) belong to the category lust murders.24
The serial killer follows “a ritual” in his homicides.
With this term, De Fazio and his colleagues refer to the preparatory acts of the attacks, the method of carrying them out and, above all, the disfigurements that the serial killer inflicts with the knife on the body of the female victims once they have been immobilized or killed.
It should be noted that this “ritual” is almost identical to the one followed by Zodiac in attacks on couples, except for the conclusion.
In ’81, the serial killer hits again after an apparent pause of about 7 years. From then until the last crime attributed to him, in ’85, his interest seems to focus on the removal of the murdered girls’ pubis, in particular the skin and hair, and partially (sometimes) the vulvae.
The team led by De Fazio focuses on this detail several times and also highlights the progress of “the accuracy of the excision technique”.
Their conclusion is that the Monster’s intent is to obtain a fetish, the pubis, which is better preserved than the soft parts underneath.
From ’84, the serial killer also removed the left breast.25
One of the main questions that experts try to answer is why in ’74, instead of carrying out the mutilations, the murderer left dozens of superficial cuts on the body of the murdered girl and a branch in her vagina (an act he will never repeat).
The official explanation
The official criminological analysis of the experts of the University of Modena places Stefania Pettini’s wounds and the branch in the vagina in a evolutionary dynamic of a “sadistic ritual” which progresses culminating in the excision of the pubis and breast of the female victims.26
"This evolution does not imply modifications but additions, as a sort of gradual refinement (deviation of fantasies)..."
According to experts, in ’68, the Monster witnesses Signa’s murder or kills the couple of lovers for common reasons (jealousy).
In ’74, he defaces the corpse of the female victim with cuts and inserts a branch into the vagina as “an exploration”. The Modena experts team calls them “exploratory acts.” Seven years later, there is a “progress” of the ritual, with the mutilations of the pubis, to which is later added the removal of the left breast.
Among all these actions interrupted by pauses sometimes lasting many years, the serial killer would develop his own fantasies.27 In particular, experts argue that in the pause between ’74 and ’81 there could be room for…
"… an attempt to satisfy his sadistic desires with surreptitious substitute actions, hence a progressive acceptance ego-syntonic of his own homicidal sadism and a 'refinement' in the elaboration of the criminal action."
Following the “exploratory” experience of ’74, the Monster would try to find an alternative outlet for his homicidal impulse, which however would prevailed in the end. In ’81, the serial killer reappears with a “improved” ritual, i.e. the precise and careful removal of the pubis of murdered women. And, three years later, also of the left breast.
This is a theory that does not dissatisfy the investigators, at a time when there is few doubt that the Monster was the author of the ’68 crime. That crime, to date not attributed to the serial killer by the Italian justice sentences,28 it lies in that evolutionary context as a sort of “prelude”.
Fetishes
The Monster does not vent on the internal organs of his victims. Since ’81, his primary purpose has been the removal of the hairy area of the female pubic area (and twice of the left breast).
According to experts, the killer turns his attention to this anatomical area, in certain cases also cutting out part of the vulvae, because he intends to make a fetish of it, probably through tanning techniques.
To date, the theory of the DA’s office supported in part by the sentences is that the Monster, or rather “the monsters” (labelled “snack companions”), killed and removed the pubes on behalf of a sect that would have used them in occult practices.
This thesis, however, is based only on speculations.
The hypothesis that the female pubis is transformed into a fetish (or “trophy”, say RaCIS Carabinieri experts in this report in Italian) seems correct. However, some doubts remain about the “evolutionary” theory.
Among the actions of the ’74 crime defined as “exploratory” there is in fact also a branch inserted into the female genital organ which does not reappear in subsequent crimes. Furthermore, in the crimes of the 1980s there is a reduction and not an increase in the number of stab wounds inflicted post-mortem, numerous on the body of Stefania Pettini in ’74.
Perhaps there is an unknown fact that can better explain the change in the Monster’s ritual between ’74 and the ’80s?
Inhomogeneous actions may not be a “refinement” of the same sadistic ritual.
Perhaps the conclusions of the ritual in ’74 and ’80 are different simply because they have a different origin.
One of the limitations of the Modena experts’ study is not addressing the issue of possible cultural references that could have influenced Monster’s actions.
Without claiming to replace the “psycho-evolutionary” theory with another, a blogger called De Gothia, who passed away a few years ago, thought that it was necessary to integrate the official explanation on the Monster’s excisions with a filmographic influence.
Even attorney Nino Filastò, historical defender of Mario Vanni, one of the alleged murderers according to Italian justice, had thought that the serial killer might have been inspired by movies.
De Gothia focuses on a horror film released in Italian cinemas a few months before the Monster’s return in the ’80s, “Maniac”.
“Maniac”
De Gothia has the merit of contextualizing the Monster in the time and place in which he lived. The title of his study, “Maniac, the untrodden path”, is the answer to the question of a serial killer’s possible source of inspiration.
A summary of De Gothia’s study was provided by Antonio Segnini in his blog “Quattro Cose Sul Mostro“.
The 70s-80s coincide with the golden age of the horror genre. De Gothia (and attorney Nino Filastò before him) observes that in Florence, in the summer of ’81, numerous films with a violent and sexual theme were screening at theaters in and around the city. De Gothia makes a more than exhaustive list of the ’81 titles. Among them there is also “Maniac”, starring Italian-American Joe Spinell.
The story tells of a serial killer, Frank Zito, who targets single women and couples. The dramatic core is Zito’s relationship with his deceased mother. A possessive woman that this “Monster of New York” tries to replace with some mannequins.
The peculiarity of Zito’s murders is the signature, the post-mortem practice he performed after each killing. As is also evident from the posters below, Zito cuts off female victims’ scalps and collects them as fetishes.
The first to publicly report similarities between “Maniac” and the Monster is a reviewer of the movie on La Nazione, who wrote on 30 August 1981:
"Among some scenes (a boy and a girl in a car at night, attacked and killed with terrible violence; the macabre skinning ceremony) and the details of the Scandicci crime someone saw some similarities."
“Maniac” hits theaters in USA in January 1981 . The violent scenes in the screenplay, especially the practice of “scalping“, in addition to the negative reviews, generate a controversy in the American media. The movie would incite hatred against women. For this reason, the Los Angeles Times refuses to advertise for it.29
In Italy, “Maniac” debuts in February in some theaters in Rome and Palermo.30
A few months later, in June, the Monster of Florence is back in action , after seven years of apparent hiatus. The post-mortem ritual, as we have seen, is different from that of 1974. This time, the serial killer takes no interest in the vagina. Instead, using a very sharp knife, he meticulously cuts the skin of the pubis and removes it.31
What the Monster does, albeit on another anatomical part of his victims, is to replicate and reinterpret the post-mortem acts of the protagonist of “Maniac”.
The Monster, according to De Gothia, appropriates the ritual of Joe Spinell’s character.
On his blog, Segnini, reporting an information taken from the book by De Gothia, points out that the distribution of “Maniac” in Italy stops a few days after the national preview in Rome and Palermo , in February 1981.
The film is screened in Florence only starting from August 1981 , that is after the first crime of the Monster. Where could the killer have watch it?
De Gothia and Segnini argue that the Monster did not watch the whole movie, but was influenced by advertisements .
“Maniac” seems to be a good lead. However, there is no solid explanation as to why the Monster, in 1981, decided to stage a ritual copied from that film, adapting it. Is there a specific reason? What can it be?
“The Exorcist“
There is another serial killer who hangs out in theaters and has the habit of appropriating other people’s works, Zodiac (like the “little list” of the executioner KoKo of “The Mikado” plagiarized in his letter postmarked July 26, 1970).
In his last message of January 29, 1974, the American serial killer quotes “The Exorcist” by defining it “the best saterical comidy I have ever seen”.
At the beginning of ’74, “The Exorcist” has been released for a few weeks in American cinemas, obtaining an immediate and vast success that will spread throughout the world.32
Speaking of the possessed child, Ettore Botti writes in La Nazione in February 1974:
"The girl utters the most atrocious obscenities in a voice that is not her own, tries to rape a psychiatrist, vomits on passing priests and, in a scene that will hardly pass the Italian censorship (for once, long live the censorship) she uses a crucifix to perform acts of self-eroticism."
Those who have not yet watched the film and read this review of February 10, 1974 thus discover that the possessed “uses a crucifix to perform acts of self-eroticism”, a detail that makes think of the branch Stefania Pettini’s vagina.
Could there be a connection between the ’74 ritual of the Monster and “The Exorcist?
When you see the levitation scene, you may think that yes, in the crime of Rabatta, the Monster may have taken inspiration from the same movie “reviewed” by Zodiac a few months earlier.
Stefania’s body is positionated like that of the possesed child, Regan, during the levitation – one of the key moments of the movie – when lying on her back on the bed she rises into the air with her arms stretched out. During the sequence, the exorcist and the younger colleague command repetitively the devil to free her, shouting:
"The power of Christ compels you!"
For a moment during the sequence the camera moves on the possessed girl’s calf to point out one of the scars that the holy water is causing her, similar to the multiple superficial cuts with which the Monster disfigured Stefania’s body.
The hypothesis of another “movie plagiarism” by the Monster explains:
- why the serial killer cuts victim’s body dozens of times;
- why he places it in a supine position with her limbs apart;
- why he puts a branch into the vagina.
This could be the reason for the acts performed by the Monster on Stefania’s body.
The “movie connection” finds a common ground between the apparently disconnected “signature” of the Rabatta crime and the following one of the ’80s.
At the end of his ritual, the serial killer quotes two different horror films. “The Exorcist”, in ’74. “Maniac”, in the 80s.
As seen, “The Exorcist” has the peculiarity of having been mentioned a few months before the Monster by another serial killer who attacks couples, Zodiac.
The water
“Water, water everywhere” reads Samuel Coleridge’s “Ballad of the Old Sailor”. In the last letter, Zodiac signs himself with a passage about a drowning.
Why?
And what is the element that unites it with Regan’s levitation scene?
The answer is: water.
Zodiac refers to the recurring “aquatic” theme (once again) in the same letter in which he quotes “The Exorcist”. Thus, at his first appearance a few months later, the Monster copies and adapts a scene from the same movie quoted by Zodiac in which water plays a fundamental role causing wounds to the possessed child.
Water will also return in the final act of the Monster, the message to Silvia Della Monica. From the pages of a magazine, the murderer will cut out the letters with which he will compose his only “written” message, taking the “E” from the word “acque“, waters, the last letter on the envelope.33
But why water?
And “Maniac”? What does it have to do with it? Why does the Monster sign by quoting a film starring Joe Spinell about an Italian-American maniac from New York city?
The answer to these questions is that, with his movie quotes, the serial killer intends to leave a signature that alludes to his name and surname.
Zodiac also quotes a movie, a Woody Allen comedy, in at least two of its crimes. The purpose is the same. Leave his signature.
There is one more clue in addition that implies that the so called “Monster of the Mugello” may be Zodiac.
“The Exorcist” makes is debut in Italy after, not before, the ’74 murders. The Italian premiere dates back to six days after the crime.34
How and where can the Monster have already watched it?
It is not true that the “Italian” serial killer does not communicate, observes Ruggero Perugini, detective in charge of the investigation between the 80s and 90s.35 He makes it every time he kills with the same gun.
By quoting the Monster and Zodiac together in his book “A man quite normal”, Perugini found that the two serial killers are “communicative” in two distinct ways.
He did not know how close he was to the truth.
The man called “Monster” replaces Zodiac’s verbal communication with the “new” conclusion of his ritual. He transforms words into a visual and universal language composed of movie references that does not need translation.
Endnotes
- UPI, “What is Zodiac doing now?”, The Napa Register, 11 dicembre 1975. ↩︎
- Michael Mageau (report VPD); Bryan Hartnell (report NCSD); San Francisco witnesses (identikit SFPD). ↩︎
- Ettore Botti, “La ragazza fugge ma il mostro la raggiunge. Uccisa e straziata con 90 colpi”, Corriere della Sera, Informazione e Attualità. ↩︎
- Deparment Of Justice – California, Zodiac homicides, 1971. For the Monster, Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984. ↩︎
- Zodiac, letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 1969, pp. 1-2. ↩︎
- Deparment Of Justice – California, Zodiac homicides, 1971. ↩︎
- FBI San Francisco, airtel, file 9-49911, January 22, 1970. ↩︎
- Zodiac, letters to the Vallejo Times Herald, San Francisco Examiner, and San Francisco Chronicle, July 31, 1969. ↩︎
- Zodiac, letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 1969, p. 4. ↩︎
- Vallejo Police Department, interview to Michael Mageau, 6 luglio 1969. ↩︎
- Zodiac, letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, November 9, 1969, pp. 2-3. ↩︎
- Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984. ↩︎
- Deparment Of Justice – California, Zodiac homicides, 1971. ↩︎
- Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984. ↩︎
- Letter to the Press Enterprise, Riverside, November 29, 1966. ↩︎
- Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984 ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ettore Botti, “La ragazza fugge ma il mostro la raggiunge. Uccisa e straziata con 90 colpi”, Corriere della Sera, Informazione e Attualità. ↩︎
- Mario Rotella, acquittal sentence, December 13, 1989, p. 10. ↩︎
- Colonel Innocenzo Zuntini signed the ballistic reports of 1968 and 1974. In both cases, the investigations were directed by Colonel Olinto Dell’Amico, future commander of the Operational Unit of the Carabinieri of Florence and one of the main investigators of the Monster case. ↩︎
- Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- Ibid. ↩︎
- The ’73 sentence condemning Stefano Mele was never revised. The alleged perpetrators of the Monster’s crimes for the Italian justice (to date) were not found guilty of the ’68 homicide. ↩︎
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIKM8WQKMd8. ↩︎
- “Terrore coi manichini”, Corriere della Sera, February 25, 1981, p. 23; De Gothia, Maniac, il sentiero non battuto, 1994. ↩︎
- Francesco De Fazio, Davide Galliani, Salvatore Luberto, Indagine peritale sugli omicidi del Mostro di Firenze, 1984. ↩︎
- Claudio Gorlier, “Il diavolo come distrazione”, Corriere della Sera, September 17, 1974, p. 15. ↩︎
- Francesco Amicone, “Scoperto il magazine usato dal Mostro di Firenze”, tempi.it, 10 maggio 2020. ↩︎
- “Venerdì la «prima» a Milano e Roma”, Corriere della Sera, September 17, 1974, p. 15. ↩︎
- Ruggero Perugini, Un uomo abbastanza normale, la caccia al mostro di Firenze, Mondadori, 1994. ↩︎
Zodiac, il Mostro 
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