Last date: November 2023, I finally managed to send Bevilacqua’s DNA profile to the US law enforcement agencies in charge of the Zodiac Killer case. Updating.
TIMELINE OF THE JOURNALISTIC INVESTIGATION INTO JOE BEVILACQUA
- JANUARY 2017
My research on the Monster of Florence starts. I suspect that the Monster could be the American and notourious “Zodiac” (my first article on the connection at this link).
Excluding the Signa case from the Monster’s list of murders, the two took turns in ’74.
Zodiac disappears from San Francisco and the Bay Area on January 29, mailing a letter mentioning the movie “The Exorcist”.
The Monster appears a few months later in the Mugello, north of Florence, killing a couple. It is September 14 and that is the first attack perpetrate by the Italian mass murderer according to court verdicts.
The two killers shared a similar modus operandi, despite of the disfigurements the Monster inflicted on the bodies of the young women killed – which the American foreshadowed, if as some believe he is Cheri Jo Bates’s murderer.
Their prevailing victims are couples who are attacked in the so-called “lovers’ lane”, isolated areas where youngsters secluded themselves in search of intimacy.
Sifting through the testimonies of the Monster trials, I come across the name of Giuseppe aka Joseph Bevilacqua nicknamed “Joe”.
An Italian-American born in Totowa (New Jersey) on December 20, 1935, he was a witness at the Pacciani trial on the Monster of Florence case in 1994.
At the time of the Monster crimes, Bevilacqua was working for the American Battle Monuments Commission at the Florence American Cemetery, where he resided between July 1974 and December 1988, before moving to Nettuno at the Rome-Sicily American Cemetery.
Bevilacqua arrived in Florence exactly in the span of a few months between Zodiac’s official last letter and the first attack undoubtedly committed by the Monster.
In the hearing of 6 June 1994, the American witness identifies the defendant, the “compaesano” Pietro Pacciani, as an “unknown man” he saw at the edge of the woods in the area of the Monster’s last crime in September 1985.
At the trial, the American claimes to have noticed, in the same days, the serial killer’s victims still alive near the future crime scene, which was about 300 yards as the crow flies from the American cemetery.
During the hearing, Bevilacqua proves to be evasive on the answer about his past. He does not tell the Court he is a Vietnam veteran, a highly decorated Army retired sergeant.
Why?
The number of letters in the name “Joe Bevilacqua” is compatible with the encrypted name of the “cipher killer” sent on April 20, 1970. His birthday, December 20, occurs twice in the Zodiac case.
- APRIL, 10 2017
Bevilacqua provides me with his cell phone number through the superintendent of the Sicily-Rome American Cemetery Melanie Resto, whom I contacted on April 7. I had asked superintendent Resto to have the following message delivered to Bevilacqua.
- MAY 26, 2017
First of six meetings (subsequently ascertained by a phone record analysis by the Carabinieri) between Bevilacqua and me in his home in Sesto Fiorentino and in the Falciani area, near Florence, where I will often go in the following months. I have already been to the Tuscan capital at the beginning of May, accompanied by lawyer Edoardo Orlandi, when I visited Giampiero Vigilanti.
The other meetings ascertained by the Carabinieri in 2018 are dated: - May 27, 2017
- June 30, 2017
- July 28, 2017
- August, 09 2017
- August, 10 2017
- SEPTEMBER 12, 2017
Not 11 as I wrote in my first articles and told the police for an oversight. During a conversation on the phone, Bevilacqua admits his responsibility for the crimes committed by the Monster and Zodiac. Even if the Italian law allows it, I do not record secretely the conversation.
I urge Bevilacqua to turn himself in.
“What should I bring? The gun?” he asks alluding to the Monster’s Beretta.
“Should I bring the gun?” he repeats.
My elderly interlocutor seems intent on doing the right thing.
A strange interference makes me believe that someone is listening our conversation, which I am not recording. Are we tapped?
The American’s wife Meri Torelli comes to the rescue of her husband, who can no longer hear, writing down the number of attorney Francesco Moramarco, a criminal lawyer who works for a firm that uses the magazine I collaborated with at the time, Tempi, founded by my father Luigi.
I ask the attorney, who was previously informed of my journalistic investigation, to help Bavilacqua turn himself in. For this reason, I inform him of his admission and that he will be contacted shortly.
On the evening of September 12, I meet Moramarco in a pub in Milan.
He claims that he simply advised the American not to talk on the phone. Different information from that which he provided to the Carabinieri a year later, stating that he had been contacted by a stranger from Florence and that he had simply given him the address of his office.
The phone records reveal a third version of the facts, given that there were two phone calls. And that the second call, lasting about three minutes, was not made by the Uomo (man) with a capital U, as Bevilacqua is called in the report, but by the attorney.
13 SEPTEMBER 2017
I am in Florence to accompany Bevilacqua to the police. I phone and find out that he has changed his mind.
“‘A friend,'” he explains, “told me to always answer ‘no, no, no’.” “There is no one behind you,” he adds.
Once again he is joined by his wife. Despite hearing the admission, Bevilacqua will not turn himself in.
The two spouses, later interviewed by the authorities, denied everything, failing to mention their telephone contacts with the lawyer Moramarco.
In their two 2018-partial reports on the phone records, the Carabinieri will omit the calls of 12 September 2017 between myself and Bevilacqua, even if they will notice the immediately subsequent contacts with the lawyer Moramarco, not declared by the American.
The complete phone records will be collected in the investigation file on Bevilacqua not before its closure and only at my request, in 2023.
They would have served to confirm my version of events.
- SEPTEMBER 14, 2017
One day after being in Florence to accompany Bevilacqua to turn himself in, I send a first report to the Florence law enforcement.
- FEBRUARY 22, 2018
I deliver a summary of the story to the carabinieri of Monza, after having contacted the Attorney’s office in vain several times.
- MARCH 1, 2018
I decide to file a complaint in Lecco. I am questioned as a possible witness.
- APRIL 16, 2018
I have a meeting at the Florence Attorney’s office with assistant DA Luca Turco’s assistants. Turco is in charge of the investigation. I warn them that Il Giornale will publish my story on Bevilacqua. They are skeptical.
- MAY 7, 2018
Bevilacqua receives a letter from me in which I ask him for proof (in order to convince the Florence Attorney’s Office). I try to entice him with the possibility of an agreement with a publisher for his biography.
- MAY 19, 2018
The first part of my story on the Zodiac-Monster connection appears on tempi.it. Two more parts follow. Only the final one refers to Zodiac.
- MAY 24, 2018
Bevilacqua mails a brief warning via lawyer for the letter delivered more than two weeks earlier without expressly mentioning my articles on tempi.it.
- MAY 29, 2018
Il Giornale publishes my account on Bevilacqua’s admission.
- MAY 30, 2018
Bevilacqua is interviewed by Carabinieri officers at his home in the presence of his wife, a daughter and a grandson. His contradictory statement is not examined, despite the fact that he changes the version of the facts regarding his knowledge of Pietro Pacciani, the main suspect in the Monster case.
The US Department of Justice is not informed. Bevilacqua’s home will not be searched.
Putting aside “mistakes” and omissions on his movements subsequently found in records deposited by me in the Prosecutor’s Office (picture above), in the bevilacqua’s 2018 statement an important contradiction emerges regarding the knowledge of Pietro Pacciani, the main defendant in the Monster case.
“During my stay in Falciani I got to know Pietro Pacciani as he used to come along the fence to hunt (fence of the American cemetery where Bevilacqua lived ED)”
In his 1994 deposition, the American affirmed the opposite, that he did not know him, never having seen him not even on television or in the newspaper.
Before the court that was conducting the trial of il Vampa for the Monster’s murders, Bevilacqua declared that he had noticed an unknown man hanging around suspiciously at the edge of a nearby forest of the crime scene, in the days preceding the double murder of 1985. He added that he stopped and look at him just because he had never seen him before.
In the early ’90s, when heard by the judicial police, Bevilacqua would have identified the “unknown” person as Pacciani, claiming not to know who he was.
This is an important contradiction because the alleged identification of the American was a point for the conviction against Pacciani in 1994.
In Bevilacqua’s 2018 statement, the remaining part of the testimony on the Monster’s last crime remains unchanged. In fact, Bevilacqua claims:
– that he had seen the victims the day before their murder which took place near the American cemetery in Florence, where he lived, and that the girl was wearing a black bathing suit;
– that he had to tie up his dogs on the night of the crime.
Despite the evident contradiction regarding Pacciani and the incorrect information about his movements, the Florentine investigators do not examine his past.
Bevilacqua’s home is not searched. The US Department of Justice is neither consulted nor notified about my statement by prosecutor Turco.
- JUNE 1, 2018
Bevilacqua’s lawyer sends a note in which his client denies all charges. The note is published in major newspapers, including La Repubblica and La Nazione from Florence.
- JUNE 2, 2018
DA’s investigators tell La Nazione that my complaint on Bevilacqua is “already a dead lead”, ignoring the secret of office.
This way, the American can easily understand there is not a recording.
- SEPTEMBER 28, 2018
Date of the preparation of the RacIS Carabinieri report on the Zodiac-Monster-Bevilacqua connection (available here in full).
The Carabinieri’s forensic psychologists analyze the cases of the Monster of Florence and the Zodiac Killer on the basis of the available literature. In their conclusions, the experts find “interesting” elements in Bevilacqua without excluding the possibility that he could be one or both serial killers. However, their suggestion to carry out new possible investigative activities remains unheeded by the DA’s Office and the ROS.
- MARCH 19, 2019
I deliver to the Attorney’s Office official biographical records on Bevilacqua’s military background and on his presence in Florence between July 1974 and December 1988. I also attach an email from a former Bevilacqua’s Army superior officer who confirms that he conducted at least one undercover investigation in 1968. - NOVEMBER 2020
I alerted the US authorities for the first time that Siena deputy DA Nicola Marini had Bevilacqua’s genetic profile acquired.
- APRIL 6, 2021
The investigation for murder into Bevilacqua is closed without knowledge of the public by investigative judge Gianluca Mancuso. In violation of the Italian law, victims’ families have not received notifications from prosecutor Turco’s request.
- NOVEMBER 3, 2022
I am indicted for defamation by the GIP Mancuso, after prosecutor Turco’s refusal, at my attorney’s request, to consult the US authorities for a check of Bevilacqua’s DNA with the samples from the Zodiac case.
- DECEMBER 23, 2022
Bevilacqua died at the age of 87, without the US law enforcement agencies ever being contacted by the Florence DA’s Office for information about him. And without ever having been heard by a Florentine magistrate either as a suspect or as an offended party; an unnecessary scruple for the judges and prosecutors who followed one another on his case until 2023.
- NOVEMBER 7-15 2023
Having obtained authorization from the Sienese prosecutor Marini for defensive investigation, I can send Bevilacqua’s DNA profile to the US authorities for a check.
Zodiac Killer - Mostro di Firenze 
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