Speaker 1: Who doesn't love a satanic panic. That's a rhetorical question
Speaker 1: and a troubling one. Welcome back to the show, fellow
Speaker 1: conspiracy realist. We are introducing a classic episode about satanic panic,
Speaker 1: not in the United States, but in the Atlantic.
Speaker 2: No, that would be good if only if probably the
Speaker 2: rhyme scheme work.
Speaker 1: In Italy out in all of garden countries there you go, yeah.
Speaker 3: Wow, well, but actually it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: Guys.
Speaker 3: Where better to have a satanic panic than where the
Speaker 3: Catholic Church is located.
Speaker 5: From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
Speaker 5: riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
Speaker 5: learn this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my
Speaker 3: name is Nolan.
Speaker 1: They called me Ben. It's good to be back. We
Speaker 1: joined with our super producer Paul Decint as always and
Speaker 1: most importantly, you are you. You are here, and that
Speaker 1: makes this stuff they don't want you to know.
Speaker 2: Matt, that Ben shaped hole from last time is filled
Speaker 2: in with a Ben shaped figure.
Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's filled in so much like he.
Speaker 3: Not only did he go on adventures and come back,
Speaker 3: he brought us gifts he did.
Speaker 1: Oh thanks, yeah. Behind the behind the curtain, all of
Speaker 1: our birthdays occur in a very close.
Speaker 4: Span of time, totally unplanned.
Speaker 1: Totally unplanned. Unless our parents are part of a conspiracy,
Speaker 1: we have yet to discern.
Speaker 4: We were all accidental births as well.
Speaker 1: And I did not know that about you, Gil and Uh.
Speaker 1: One of the practices that I personally like to do,
Speaker 1: and I highly recommend anyone listening, is that when you
Speaker 1: celebrate your birthday, the only real New Year's you get,
Speaker 1: take some time to appreciate your friends and family, give
Speaker 1: them presents instead. Think of it as a loyalty program,
Speaker 1: but not as creepy as the big data grocery store cards.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think we can all do that.
Speaker 4: Wait, are you saying you don't use a Kroger Plus card? Man,
Speaker 4: I still don't think. But they give you.
Speaker 2: Such value and the gash It's.
Speaker 3: The only way I can afford food for my family.
Speaker 1: It's interesting, though, because if you're old enough to remember
Speaker 1: the times before the introduction of those cards, the prices
Speaker 1: were initially lower if you use the card, but then
Speaker 1: they just upped the prices gradually on all the other products,
Speaker 1: so you're getting the normal price.
Speaker 4: Are seeing taking me for a ride?
Speaker 1: I'm saying they're taking your data for a ride, for sure.
Speaker 1: But speaking of rides, speaking of traveling, I want to
Speaker 1: thank you guys for doing what I hear is a
Speaker 1: fantastic episode while while I was away that you told
Speaker 1: me that, Oh cool.
Speaker 3: We got we got through it.
Speaker 4: We did, We did get through it. Listeners right in
Speaker 4: did we did? We say? But be nice?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: I can't wait to hear it. It's only the It's
Speaker 1: only the second episode I've ever missed, and I was.
Speaker 1: I really missed you, guys, So it's great to be back.
Speaker 1: And one place that I have not traveled to in
Speaker 1: all this gallivanting and globe trotting is Italy. Have you
Speaker 1: guys ever been to Italy?
Speaker 3: Not once, but definitely I want to go there. I
Speaker 3: would very much like to go, but not so much
Speaker 3: after this episode.
Speaker 1: Maybe not to Florence. Right spoilers, Hey, Paul, have you
Speaker 1: ever been to Italy? Oh my gosh, so Paul just
Speaker 1: said he's been to Italy and Florence. We might, uh,
Speaker 1: we might consult you a little bit for some background
Speaker 1: information today, Paul, what do we think of when we
Speaker 1: think of Italy just just like off the top of
Speaker 1: the Dome, first impressions.
Speaker 4: Olives there we go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I would say the canals of Venice.
Speaker 4: Maybe gondolas also in Venice.
Speaker 1: Pizza clearly, the Pope, yeah, making a return, Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: the Pope in the Vatican fresh steaming pasta maybe right,
Speaker 1: And I.
Speaker 4: Thought you're gonna say something else.
Speaker 1: Perhaps that as well. Let's go the whole nine with
Speaker 1: the stereotypes. Maybe somebody's singing amore right.
Speaker 2: Possibly while piloting a gondola and wearing a black and
Speaker 2: white striped shirt very similar to the one you wear
Speaker 2: right now, Ben.
Speaker 1: Oh mean, yeah, this one is. I think this is
Speaker 1: from Korea. It was way hotter there than I thought
Speaker 1: it would be. But beyond these images we see of Italy,
Speaker 1: the country also has a dark side, a history of
Speaker 1: violent murders that some allege border on the occult. And
Speaker 1: he here are the facts. In today's episode, we're exploring
Speaker 1: some of the most well known homicide cases in modern
Speaker 1: Italian history. Will start with the Beasts of Satan and
Speaker 1: then eventually will meet maybe the Monster of Florence. So
Speaker 1: the Beasts of Satan. This is Beast's plural, yes, beasts
Speaker 1: plural monster singular but asterisk. Yeah, right, so the beast
Speaker 1: of Satan. This story begins in January of nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: eight when two young people, two utes of Italy, Fabio
Speaker 1: Tullis and Chara Marino, disappear. They're teenagers, they're both just
Speaker 1: around sixteen. They have been drinking at a pub called
Speaker 1: The Midnight.
Speaker 4: Sounds like a respectable neighborhood, watering.
Speaker 1: Home, real family place, but no.
Speaker 2: As it turns out, it was sort of a meetup
Speaker 2: spot for folks in like the black metal scene.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, yeah, the real dark stuff.
Speaker 2: Which is, you know, the stuff like you hear about
Speaker 2: with the Swedish death metal bands. Well black metal, I
Speaker 2: think if we're talking stylistically, black metal has the witchier vocal.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's and death metals more.
Speaker 1: Right right there, they were both involved in black metal
Speaker 1: and death metal. I'm glad you brought up Scandinavia, Noel,
Speaker 1: because a lot of members of black metal and death
Speaker 1: metal bands in Scandinavia were implicated in church burnings, right,
Speaker 1: That's what I was getting to.
Speaker 2: And also even like the ones that maybe didn't actually
Speaker 2: murder each other, like members of the band Mayhem.
Speaker 4: I think you may remember hell Hammer, yeah exactly, or
Speaker 4: that was that a guy or a band?
Speaker 2: They all I can never I always confuse them because
Speaker 2: they all have these crazy names. But there's there's a
Speaker 2: story where the cover of a Mayhem record I believe,
Speaker 2: had an actual image of a dude's suicide. Like they
Speaker 2: walked in and this former band member had blown his
Speaker 2: brains out and they took a picture of it. And
Speaker 2: then there was a whole thing where one of the
Speaker 2: members was implicated and stabbing one of the other members
Speaker 2: to death many many times.
Speaker 4: Then the church burning all in service of Satan, yeah,
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 1: Yeah, or just psychological issues. There was also a little
Speaker 1: bit of cannibalism alleged in that case.
Speaker 3: So let's get let's get back to fab Fabio.
Speaker 1: And Kiara Kiara Shara. Yeah, they were as we said,
Speaker 1: they had sixteen. They were out drinking at the midnight,
Speaker 1: participating in the heavy metal scene in Milan, and they
Speaker 1: never came home. A lot of their friends claimed that
Speaker 1: the two had just run off together, and the police
Speaker 1: initially seemed to accept this explanation as well. However, Fabio's father,
Speaker 1: a guy named Michelle Tolis, didn't buy it. He started
Speaker 1: doing his own research, which we always applaud. He attended
Speaker 1: metal concerts in this scene, and he went to festivals
Speaker 1: not just in Italy but across Europe searching for his son.
Speaker 1: And as we mentioned, Fabio and those in his circle
Speaker 1: were into extremely extremely dark metal, the genres of death
Speaker 1: metal and black metal, both known for their use of
Speaker 1: gruesome satanic imagery like.
Speaker 4: Corpse paint, right, corpse paint?
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is the white and black stuff meant to
Speaker 1: give you a pollor think of a less cartoonish kiss.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean a little more hardcore. And they were
Speaker 2: even known for like carrying around severed or dead animals
Speaker 2: in bags that they would smell before going on.
Speaker 4: Stage, a real kind I don't know some of it.
Speaker 2: You read these stories and you're like, is this all
Speaker 2: just for show and kind of just like sort of
Speaker 2: like an extreme version of punk rock or something, or
Speaker 2: was their actual satanic ritual going on? Not really clear
Speaker 2: even when you read the stories about these Scandinavian bands.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how much of it is sort of Alice Cooper
Speaker 1: performative stuff and how much of it is a reflection
Speaker 1: of their genuine beliefs. The weird thing here is that
Speaker 1: Fabio was very into this stuff, and it turned out
Speaker 1: that his girlfriend also had a pretty extensive collection of
Speaker 1: Satanic literature and quote paraphernalia. So paraphernalia, as we know,
Speaker 1: is a pretty large term, right yeah, like glass pipes,
Speaker 1: right yeah, right, like glass pipes. So this could have
Speaker 1: been just chalices, could have been pentagrams, could have just
Speaker 1: been jewelry.
Speaker 3: Or things that maybe were even interpreted as Satanic investigators.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. And in his search, Fabio's father became convinced
Speaker 1: that the two had not just disappeared. He became convinced
Speaker 1: that Satanism had something to do with his son's disappearance.
Speaker 1: It did not help that Michelle felt his son's former
Speaker 1: friends grew increasingly squirrely and evasive when he asked them
Speaker 1: about the disappearance.
Speaker 3: His friends, the people who should be there, like worried.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Can we also point out real quick, this is something
Speaker 2: that's probably obvious to everybody that's that's looked into this stuff.
Speaker 2: The idea of Satanism is often a huge misnomer because
Speaker 2: like the Church of Satan and like Anton Levy, it's
Speaker 2: much more of a it's not a joke religion but
Speaker 2: it's like much more anti God than pro Satan, or
Speaker 2: like anti religion in general than pro the deity of Satan.
Speaker 4: He's a symbol of.
Speaker 2: Like you know, revolution or liberation and kind of libertae,
Speaker 2: like the French notion of that. So it's interesting to
Speaker 2: see these things referred to as Satanic panics, like the
Speaker 2: murders at robin Hood Hills, the Memphis ZIP six.
Speaker 4: How many of them were there?
Speaker 2: You know those kids there, the documentary is made about
Speaker 2: them getting railroaded for these supposedly satanic ritualistic murders. Satanism
Speaker 2: is they're not really about that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, it's okay, So this is an interesting thing. Longtime
Speaker 1: listeners you'll probably remember how we had covered this in
Speaker 1: some earlier episodes, I believe. So there's the Satanism that
Speaker 1: is typically referred to here in the US as exactly
Speaker 1: what you're describing NOL the Anton Levey do as thou
Speaker 1: wilt shall be the whole of the law, and that's
Speaker 1: more about a spiritual liberation from rigid metaphysical hierarchies, right,
Speaker 1: whether they're treated as metaphors or actual things. But there's
Speaker 1: another genre of Satanism called deistic Satanism, meaning that yes,
Speaker 1: there is a God, yes there is a great adversary,
Speaker 1: and we're cool with the latter. Yeah, So there is
Speaker 1: a difference. I think often for people who are experiencing
Speaker 1: or civilizations, whether they're experiencing a Satanic panic, they're thinking
Speaker 1: not of the more philosophical free yourself from free yourself
Speaker 1: from Christian ideology kind of satanism. They're thinking of the
Speaker 1: deistic the devil is alive. I hear them breathing kind
Speaker 1: of satanists.
Speaker 4: Oh absolutely.
Speaker 2: I think what I was saying was more in reference
Speaker 2: to the whole idea of the death metal bands and
Speaker 2: black metal and all that. I don't know that that
Speaker 2: is necessarily based on like doing any kind of devil
Speaker 2: worship per se. It's more just like we hate God
Speaker 2: and hate religion and think what represents is bad for
Speaker 2: humanity in some way.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And interestingly enough, it's a misnomer that goes beyond the
Speaker 1: label of Satanism, because a lot of Scandinavian metal bands
Speaker 1: in particular are rejecting Christianity and in turn embracing a
Speaker 1: neo pagan approach. So they're worshiping Woden and things like
Speaker 1: that so to them, Christianity is an impressive force, which
Speaker 1: historically is very true.
Speaker 2: It can be a little heavy handed, as history has shown.
Speaker 4: But let's get back into the beasts.
Speaker 1: So, as I was saying, Michelle spent six years on
Speaker 1: his own, out in the cold, on this search, and
Speaker 1: he was extensively documenting connections between the people his son knew,
Speaker 1: his quote unquote friends from the metal scene and their
Speaker 1: areas where they hung out, their haunts, if I could
Speaker 1: do that word, yeah, their bands and their mutual associates
Speaker 1: and connections. And in two thousand and four, Michelle is
Speaker 1: watching the news when he learns of a brutal murder
Speaker 1: in a nearby town, Soma, Lombardo. A young man named
Speaker 1: Andrea Volpe is arrested for killing his ex girlfriend, a
Speaker 1: woman named Mary Angela Pezzotta, and Vulpe quickly admits to
Speaker 1: the crime. You got me, I did it, not framed. Michelle, however,
Speaker 1: recognizes this name. You see. It turns out that Volpe
Speaker 1: played in a band with Michelle's son, Fabio.
Speaker 4: Oh geez.
Speaker 1: So six years later, he decides to call the police
Speaker 1: and they're impressed, but initially they're skeptical. Of course, there's
Speaker 1: nothing law enforcement hates more than a self appointed law expert. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: and so they find when he presents his evidence that
Speaker 1: he has actually done a bang up job with his investigation.
Speaker 1: They're impressed by the thoroughness of it and the quality.
Speaker 1: They actually use his work, his research. When they're interrogating
Speaker 1: Volpe about the disappearances, and he breaks Yeah, he confesses.
Speaker 1: He says, your son and his girlfriend didn't just disappear,
Speaker 1: they were murdered. Furthermore, he tells police, I can show
Speaker 1: you where they are buried.
Speaker 4: Yeah, my god.
Speaker 3: And it turns out that this other dude, another one
Speaker 3: of Fabio's friends, this guy named Mario Macione or Machione,
Speaker 3: he confessed himself to the murder of these two individuals.
Speaker 3: He said he'd beaten Fabio to death with a hammer,
Speaker 3: of all things. And then he also revealed that he
Speaker 3: was not the only person involved in these murders, and
Speaker 3: there were actually a group of them, a group of boys.
Speaker 3: They were part of this network. It was a Satanic
Speaker 3: community that called itself.
Speaker 1: The Beast of Satan?
Speaker 2: Was that also the name of their band? Because that
Speaker 2: is a real missed opportunity.
Speaker 1: If it wasn't I believe it was the I believe
Speaker 1: it was the network's name. It may have been a
Speaker 1: name for a band as well, but it was definitely
Speaker 1: the name of this conspiracy, and this is an act
Speaker 1: of conspiracy. Police also learned that, in addition to murdering
Speaker 1: these two children, there was a drummer in the metal
Speaker 1: scene named Andrea Bontade who had been driven to suicide
Speaker 1: by the same group. They gasled him, they got in
Speaker 1: his head, they emotionally, mentally terrorized him, until one day
Speaker 1: he committed suicide. He ended his life by purposely crashing
Speaker 1: his car while inebriated. And we have to stop for
Speaker 1: one note here. It's a little bit difficult in those
Speaker 1: sorts of cases, is to know for sure, beyond the
Speaker 1: shadow of a doubt, that a weather a drunk driver
Speaker 1: meant to kill themselves in a vehicle. Absolutely so, it
Speaker 1: could have been that he was just depressed and too
Speaker 1: drunk to drive, But the press and law enforcement treated
Speaker 1: it as a suicide. And while this is all happening,
Speaker 1: Italy at the time, a very conservative, very Catholic country,
Speaker 1: already has this boiling fear right just simmering right under
Speaker 1: the surface. And the fear is that there would be
Speaker 1: some arcane, some hidden, some occulted, occult network, a little
Speaker 1: wordplay there that is actively undermining the power of the
Speaker 1: church and is a threat to good Christians or good
Speaker 1: Catholics everywhere. And this story, the Beast of Satan, this
Speaker 1: is the powder keg that ignites in Italian culture, and
Speaker 1: a genuine Satanic pan hits the zeitgeist. Again, it had
Speaker 1: already been there under the surface. And if you look
Speaker 1: at the timeline, similar things are happening in the United States.
Speaker 1: I'm sure anybody alive during the late eighties early nineties
Speaker 1: can recall that. It goes back to Memphis too, like
Speaker 1: you had just mentioned ol and he goes back to
Speaker 1: talk shows, Yeah, and it goes back to talk shows too, Matt,
Speaker 1: You're right, I.
Speaker 4: Blame Marilyn Manson.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, you leave Brian out of this.
Speaker 4: Oh, haven't seen him lately. He is a mess.
Speaker 1: He is a big, old sloppy mess. He's not quite
Speaker 1: Billy Corgan mess.
Speaker 4: Ye.
Speaker 2: When I say a mess, I just mean like every
Speaker 2: time he's on camera talking that he seems like completely
Speaker 2: drunk at yeah of his mind.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fames of Fickle Mistress for sure. And this panic. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Panic's a good word for it. This panic hit police
Speaker 1: just as much as it hit the public and the tabloids,
Speaker 1: so much so that in the course of this event investigation,
Speaker 1: they decide they will create a special unit focusing on
Speaker 1: quote new religious sects, particularly Satanist of any variety and
Speaker 1: violent quote ritualistic groups. They want to coordinate nationwide investigations
Speaker 1: into potentially dangerous new religious movements, and they plan to
Speaker 1: include not only psychologists and investigators, but a priest who
Speaker 1: is an expert on the occult. That sounds like wow,
Speaker 1: comic book in the making, doesn't it.
Speaker 3: It really does, but it seems like probably the right
Speaker 3: move if of this is the kind of thing you're targeting.
Speaker 1: And if you want to learn more about the context
Speaker 1: of Italy at this time, check out our episode on
Speaker 1: the Vatican and exorcism, especially the chief exorcist.
Speaker 3: Right what is it? Father a more No, what's his name? Amorth,
Speaker 3: which you can find a documentary on Netflix on Netflix
Speaker 3: about right.
Speaker 1: Now and he is a very conservative man. He also
Speaker 1: associates Harry Potter with the rise of Satanism. Several other
Speaker 1: people are convicted in the trials that result in this
Speaker 1: beast of Satan investigation, Paolo Leoni, marcos Ampoalo Aros, Manteroso,
Speaker 1: Elizabeta Ballerin and the leader, a plumber named Nicola Sapone
Speaker 1: who is not a musician, but is the spiritual guru
Speaker 1: of this group and is thought to have been the
Speaker 1: sort of Charles Manson behind the murders. Right, so maybe
Speaker 1: not himself wielding the hammer in this case, but being
Speaker 1: the operative mental force behind it. And this means that
Speaker 1: in at least one case, although people will say that
Speaker 1: Satanic panics are often overblown, in at least one case
Speaker 1: here there was an active Satanic conspiracy occurring in Italy, confirmed,
Speaker 1: proven and real, and luckily fortunately officially solved officially. You're right, officially,
Speaker 1: but that takes us to another case and something even
Speaker 1: more I guess notorious would be a good word. This
Speaker 1: is going to contain some graphic sexual content. I want you
Speaker 1: to know that before heading in. This may not be
Speaker 1: suitable for all listeners. This is the story of the
Speaker 1: Monster of Florence.
Speaker 4: Which we will get to right after a quick break.
Speaker 3: And we're back and we're going to jump into the
Speaker 3: Monster of Florence. In the nineteen eighties, there were a
Speaker 3: series of murders, the first of which that was discovered
Speaker 3: by police. It looked a little something like this, and
Speaker 3: as Ben mentioned before, this is going to get graphic,
Speaker 3: so please stop listening if you need to. Someone was
Speaker 3: finding that were out in the in the countryside around Florence,
Speaker 3: and inside these cars there were usually a male and
Speaker 3: a female who were a bit younger, at least one
Speaker 3: of them was a bit younger, usually unmarried, and they
Speaker 3: were engaging in amorous acts in their vehicles.
Speaker 4: And it's really interesting.
Speaker 2: There's an article, really more of an account, a true
Speaker 2: crime story called the Monster of Florence by Douglas Preston
Speaker 2: from the Atlantic, where he points out that for it's
Speaker 2: just kind of a historical thing in Italy that folks
Speaker 2: would live with their parents until they got married, and
Speaker 2: so this culture of like having sex in cars very
Speaker 2: much a thing. And they were even kind of creepers
Speaker 2: that were called like Indiani, I believe, which is a
Speaker 2: little bit of a racially problematic term because it translates
Speaker 2: to Indians. It meant kind of people kind of creeping around,
Speaker 2: you know, so not the best look in terms of
Speaker 2: racial sensitivity there. But they would even like have like
Speaker 2: listening devices, and it was like a total culture of
Speaker 2: this kind of behavior. So I just want to point
Speaker 2: that out in front, that this wasn't just like an
Speaker 2: isolated event, and it was a total hunting ground for
Speaker 2: the person we're about to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yes, so lover's lanes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, even people who were engaged to be married would
Speaker 1: still participate in this. So in June of nineteen eighty one,
Speaker 1: June sixth, this is one of the first cases they
Speaker 1: find initially, although there's another There are another couple that
Speaker 1: we'll get to later, a couple of cases. Rather. There's
Speaker 1: a guy named Giovanni Fogi Foggi. He works at a warehouse.
Speaker 1: He's thirty years old. His fiancee is I went a
Speaker 1: little southern there. His fiance is a shop assistant named
Speaker 1: Carmela Dinuccio, and they are found shot to death and
Speaker 1: stabbed near the town where they both live, an area
Speaker 1: called Scandici. Denuto's body was pulled out of the car,
Speaker 1: and this is the graphic part. The killer had cut
Speaker 1: out her pubic area.
Speaker 2: Her the entire her reproductive work, and not just cut
Speaker 2: out like some sort of brutal, you know, blunt instrument act.
Speaker 2: It was an act of precision, of almost surgical precision.
Speaker 1: And the next morning a guy who was known to
Speaker 1: be one of these peeping Tom characters, a paramedic by
Speaker 1: trade named Enzo Spillati, went around and apparently was talking
Speaker 1: in town about the murder before the corpses have been
Speaker 1: officially discovered. So he gets arrested, just bracket him will
Speaker 1: come back. He's in jail for about three months at
Speaker 1: this time, and the police don't really have any leads,
Speaker 1: but let me clarify something here, so we said nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty one, right June of nineteen eighty one, that's when
Speaker 1: the police find the bodies of Giovanni and Carmela. They
Speaker 1: also at some point think they're there might be other
Speaker 1: things occurring. Other murders start happening. In October twenty third
Speaker 1: of the same year, a couple Stefano Baldi and Susanna Camby,
Speaker 1: are also engaged. They're going to be married. They're in
Speaker 1: a car and they are found shot to death and stabbed.
Speaker 1: Another wrinkle occurs here because an anonymous person calls Susanna
Speaker 1: Camby's mother the morning after the murder to talk about
Speaker 1: her daughter, and a few days before the murder, it
Speaker 1: turns out Susanna had told her mother that there was
Speaker 1: someone stalking her, chasing her by car. And then another
Speaker 1: murder occurs in June nineteenth, nineteen eighty two, Paolo Maynardi
Speaker 1: and Antonola Miguelorini. I should say apologies for our pronunciation
Speaker 1: of the Italian names here also engaged they are. They
Speaker 1: are found shot to death, but this time the killer
Speaker 1: does not mutilate the theme victim. She is still alive
Speaker 1: when she is found, but she dies a few hours
Speaker 1: later at the hospital. And it looks like when the
Speaker 1: police are trying to reconstruct this, that the killer drove
Speaker 1: the car a few feet to hide the vehicle and
Speaker 1: corpses in a wooded area, but then lost control of
Speaker 1: the car and eventually abandoned the scene. And that's when
Speaker 1: something even more strange happened, because originally now the police
Speaker 1: believe these murders begin sometime in the eighties, right, But
Speaker 1: twelve days after that murder, in June of nineteen eighty two,
Speaker 1: the police in Florence received an anonymous letter.
Speaker 2: It's right inside was an aged clipping from La Nazione,
Speaker 2: which was the paper of note, and it was about
Speaker 2: a kind of long forgotten double murder from nineteen teen
Speaker 2: sixty eight, where a man and a woman were slain
Speaker 2: while having sex in a parked car, and scrawled on
Speaker 2: the article was a little bit of advice said, take
Speaker 2: another look at this crime.
Speaker 1: And that's it. No fingerprints, no forensic evidence. This was clean.
Speaker 1: So someone had at least taken the care to make
Speaker 1: sure it was truly anonymous.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: The nineteen sixty eight murder had previously been considered solved.
Speaker 1: It occurred on August twenty first a worker, a mason
Speaker 1: worker named Antonio Lo Bianco and Barbara Locchi were shot
Speaker 1: to death with a twenty two burretta in a small
Speaker 1: town west of Florence. Unfortunately, there was a kid asleep
Speaker 1: in the car. Yeah, woke up, found some other dead.
Speaker 1: Jesus ran to a nearby house like two in the morning,
Speaker 1: opened the door, let me in. Get this. I'm tired
Speaker 1: and my dad's sick in bed. He has to drive
Speaker 1: me home. My mom and my uncle are dead in
Speaker 1: the car. That's right. The woman who was in the
Speaker 1: car was married, and she was not. The guy she
Speaker 1: was sleeping with was not her husband. Her husband was
Speaker 1: a man named Stefano Melee and he was arrested for
Speaker 1: this crime.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 2: He was an immigrant from Sardinia, and they actually did
Speaker 2: a test on him that showed that he had recently
Speaker 2: fired a gun, a handgun, and he confessed to doing
Speaker 2: this murder, these murders in an act of just, you know,
Speaker 2: complete passionate jealousy.
Speaker 1: Hees not premeditated. That that was his initial argument. He
Speaker 1: would spend six years in jail, and it was considered
Speaker 1: an open and shut case until other very similar murders occurred,
Speaker 1: and when the nineteen eighty one murders were committed, and
Speaker 1: it was demonstrably true that he could not have committed
Speaker 1: these because he was.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was incarcerated at the time.
Speaker 1: Right, he would not have been capable physically doing these murders.
Speaker 1: And he became the number one interview that Italian journalists
Speaker 1: wanted to acquire. And then he said something very troubling
Speaker 1: in an interview with Spezi, which I found in that
Speaker 1: Atlantic article that think we mentioned earlier. He is pacing around,
Speaker 1: He seems a little discombobulated, but he mutters, they need
Speaker 1: to figure out where that pistol is otherwise there will
Speaker 1: be more murders. They will continue to kill, they will continue.
Speaker 1: That's right, folks.
Speaker 3: They yeah, a single pistol and they so.
Speaker 2: When I take a quick moment to give props to
Speaker 2: this guy, Mario Spezi, who kind of became a hot
Speaker 2: shot crime reporter in Italy around this time and was
Speaker 2: the guy who the inspector in Thomas Harris's sequel to
Speaker 2: Sounds of the Lamb's Hannibal was based on, and in fact,
Speaker 2: that story in general was inspired by these cases, and
Speaker 2: Harris himself went to a lot of the trials and
Speaker 2: spoke to Spezzi in person and was a big part
Speaker 2: of this whole world. And I believe Bezzi was even
Speaker 2: a little irritated that a spoiler alert for Hannibal, the
Speaker 2: character that was based on him, gets hung by his
Speaker 2: own guts out of the balcony of a piazza.
Speaker 1: And this statement, this plural statement, they will continue to kill,
Speaker 1: led journalists and investigators in police to believe that Mele,
Speaker 1: while responsible for the nineteen sixty eight murder, had not
Speaker 1: acted alone, had not acted in a fit of passion.
Speaker 1: It had not been a spontaneous crime, but rather what
Speaker 1: they call a diletto des clan, a clan killing which
Speaker 1: others from what would later be called the Sardinian Circle
Speaker 1: had participated, so investigators started to theorize that one of
Speaker 1: the killers had enjoyed this experience in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: so much so that he had gone on to become
Speaker 1: the Monster of Florence, using, in a massive stroke of stupidity,
Speaker 1: the same gun. And the next murder cases that proceed
Speaker 1: after this, after nineteen eighty two on through nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: three and up to nineteen eighty five, they were all
Speaker 1: connected by location type by them, you know, people in
Speaker 1: cars sleeping together, and the same twenty two caliber casings
Speaker 1: that were found at crime scenes.
Speaker 2: And I believe that they all had the same unique
Speaker 2: signature of the muzzle of that Barretta in question.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think persisted throughout these cases.
Speaker 1: That's correct, And we know a little bit about the
Speaker 1: method of attack. The killer would wait until the couple
Speaker 1: was engaged in intimate activity so their guard would be
Speaker 1: down right, and then typically shoot the male first and
Speaker 1: use a flashlight to both illuminate the vehicle and lower
Speaker 1: the chances of the killer being clearly identified, and then
Speaker 1: they would shoot the female occupant. Then they would use
Speaker 1: a knife to stab both victims multiple times, which tells
Speaker 1: us a little bit about the emotional state of the killer,
Speaker 1: because a gunshot would already have for lack of a
Speaker 1: better phrase, done the task at least right, depending on
Speaker 1: how you shoot someone with the twenty two, they could
Speaker 1: die quite quickly, right, So the stabbing seems to be
Speaker 1: an active rage of some sort. Then the body of
Speaker 1: the female victim was dragged away and the knife was
Speaker 1: used to mutilate them, the same knife most likely used
Speaker 1: to do the stabbing after the initial shooting.
Speaker 2: Which I think I read would have been the kind
Speaker 2: of knife that a scuba diver would use that has
Speaker 2: kind of a hook on it notches. Yeah, and again
Speaker 2: that very surgical precision. And one of the murders, I
Speaker 2: think only one, I believe a breast was removed as well,
Speaker 2: so it was definitely someone who's theorized that they might
Speaker 2: have been a butcher or possibly someone that had some
Speaker 2: experience in a surgical theater.
Speaker 1: And there was a later correspondence where a single left
Speaker 1: nipple was mailed to law enforcement.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, so we haven't got into There's a lot
Speaker 3: more about this case, and we need to keep exploring,
Speaker 3: and we'll do that right after a quick word from
Speaker 3: our sponsor.
Speaker 1: Here's where it gets crazy. To this day, as we
Speaker 1: record this in twenty eighteen, despite multiple investigations, despite numerous trials,
Speaker 1: the case of the Monster of Florence remains officially unsolved.
Speaker 1: Multiple people were arrested and even convicted over the years,
Speaker 1: but further killings using the same gun that twenty two
Speaker 1: under the same circumstances. While these suspects were imprisoned, ultimately
Speaker 1: exonerated them. Investigators questioned more than one hundred thousand people
Speaker 1: to some degree in hopes of gathering new evidence, and
Speaker 1: they had numerous suspects. Remember Enzo Spillati we have mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: He was the ambulance driver who was initially suspected his
Speaker 1: car been parked near the scene of the crime, and
Speaker 1: as law enforcement officers asked him more and more questions,
Speaker 1: he gave vague, conflicting alibis, probably because he didn't want
Speaker 1: to say that he was a voyeur part of that
Speaker 1: culture we mentioned earlier. More evidence revealed that he had
Speaker 1: told his wife about this incident before it was announced
Speaker 1: in the paper. He was charged with two counts of homicide.
Speaker 1: He was sent to prison to stand trial several months later, However,
Speaker 1: a new murder led police to believe they got the
Speaker 1: wrong guy. He was just a creepy dude, not a murderer.
Speaker 1: But they also questioned a farmer named Pietro Pazziani, who
Speaker 1: was a former rapist and murderer who had been arrested
Speaker 1: in nineteen fifty one when he caught his fiance sleeping
Speaker 1: with a traveling salesman and killed the guy.
Speaker 2: And here's the thing about him too. Even his family,
Speaker 2: who admittedly hated the guy because he was a drunk
Speaker 2: and an abusive bully. Even they said, yeah, this guy's
Speaker 2: the worst, but he didn't do this. And you know,
Speaker 2: our journalist friend Spetsy also didn't buy it, because you know,
Speaker 2: these were very precisely carried out acts with that surgical
Speaker 2: attention to detail.
Speaker 4: And this guy was kind of a big, bumbling, drunken buffoon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but they he also investigators thought he was quite intelligent.
Speaker 3: Investigators thought he was quite.
Speaker 1: Intelligent despite his alcoholism.
Speaker 3: Yes, and he was. He stated, like, just listen to this,
Speaker 3: that nineteen fifty one murder where he found his fiance
Speaker 3: in the car with a traveling salesman. He said in
Speaker 3: the trial that he he saw the image of her
Speaker 3: left breast. When he looked in the car and saw
Speaker 3: her left breast with another man in the car, it
Speaker 3: sent him into a rage and he killed that man.
Speaker 2: Wasn't that one of the things that led them to
Speaker 2: connect it with him because of the severed left.
Speaker 3: Breast and just the you know, his fiance, the love
Speaker 3: of his life supposedly or whatever was cheating on him
Speaker 3: and all this, and it's just like the rage that
Speaker 3: he went through, right, But it.
Speaker 4: Was it was the left breast of one of the
Speaker 4: victims that was removed.
Speaker 1: Yes, I get this. At the time of this new investigation,
Speaker 1: he's already been released after serving check it out, thirteen
Speaker 1: years in prison for ordering this guy in fifty one.
Speaker 1: That's it, thirteen years.
Speaker 3: So yeah, he's been out of prison for a while.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the price you pay, thirteen years. Think about
Speaker 1: it when you're in Italy. But in trial in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety four, he is convicted for fourteen of the sixteen
Speaker 1: counts of murder attributed to the Monster of Florence, all
Speaker 1: many tied together with the use of this twenty two
Speaker 1: because there is supposedly a twenty two caliber round found
Speaker 1: in his garden. More or less the European word for
Speaker 1: yards that we would use in the States, and this
Speaker 1: round matched the rounds used in the monster slains. However,
Speaker 1: I believe it was Spezi who, when he was on
Speaker 1: assignment from a television station, videotaped a police officer at
Speaker 1: the search of the property saying that this is the
Speaker 1: police officer talking. And the police officer said he believed
Speaker 1: the chief inspector had planted this round in that guy's garden.
Speaker 4: And it was an unspent round.
Speaker 2: It was it wasn't a casing, and it certainly didn't
Speaker 2: have the markings in question of the of the weapon
Speaker 2: we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Right, right, So it's not it's not anywhere near as
Speaker 1: rock solid as perhaps some factions of law enforcement wanted
Speaker 1: people to believe. And in nineteen ninety six and Appeal's
Speaker 1: court overturns this conviction. They say, a lack of solid evidence.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's crazy because in fact, this is something
Speaker 2: you just don't even hear happening. The prosecutor who was
Speaker 2: on the case actually refused to prosecute because it had
Speaker 2: been such a just an abomination of justice. He said
Speaker 2: it was something like the level of it was like
Speaker 2: the work of Inspector Clouseau, the famous bumbling pink panther detective.
Speaker 2: And he was acquitted and it was sent back to
Speaker 2: be retried. But he actually Paciani passed away in February
Speaker 2: of nineteen ninety eight, or this new trial could could happen.
Speaker 1: So there's some stuff that happens before he passes away. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the investigators, despite the overturning for the lack of evidence,
Speaker 1: and despite the advocacy of the foreign prosecutor, the investigators
Speaker 1: still believe that Pacianni is guilty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, even though he's you know, it's been overturned.
Speaker 1: Right, they believe they've found evidence the monsters not acting alone.
Speaker 1: And they get a confession from two other guys that
Speaker 1: are friends of Passianni's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Mario Vanni and gian Carlo Lotti, and they confess,
Speaker 3: like they sat down and they confessed, Yes, we helped
Speaker 3: Paciani kill these guys, kill these people. And these two
Speaker 3: men end up getting convicted for four of the double murders.
Speaker 3: Vanni was given life in prison and Lottie was given
Speaker 3: a reduced sentence of twenty six years.
Speaker 1: And at this point in the investigation, this is you know,
Speaker 1: we've gone back a little Passianni is still alive. The
Speaker 1: investigator believe that Pascianni is the leader of a group
Speaker 1: of killers, and that's when they begin this retrial. And
Speaker 1: as we said, days before this retrial, Passianni is found
Speaker 1: dead in his home, allegedly officially from heart related issues.
Speaker 1: But there are some questions about that.
Speaker 2: Right, oh, big ones, that that tie back into the
Speaker 2: aforementioned satanic panic of the beasts of Satan case that
Speaker 2: we talked about at the top of the show.
Speaker 1: Was he dead due to simple health issues or was
Speaker 1: there something rotten in Florence? Right, So, then there's the
Speaker 1: Sardinian connection, which we mentioned earlier. At one time, the
Speaker 1: investigation focuses on three Sardinian brothers, Francesco Salvatore and Giovanna Venci.
Speaker 1: All three had been lovers of the woman who has
Speaker 1: murdered in nineteen sixty eight, and one or more have
Speaker 1: been present at her death. First, the police arrests Francisco
Speaker 1: in September of nineteen eighty three, with Francesco Vinci in jail,
Speaker 1: the monster strikes again.
Speaker 4: Yep, So it keeps happening.
Speaker 1: It keeps happening, and so initially police think, well, maybe
Speaker 1: one of Francesco's affiliates has committed a new murder matching
Speaker 1: the mo just to create a false lead, so cold
Speaker 1: blooded that they said, let's kill two people and make
Speaker 1: them just to make a red herring.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So the police arrests Antonio Vinci on firearms charges, which
Speaker 1: are admittedly kind of trumped up. They're an excuse for
Speaker 1: them to get him in the room, and they question
Speaker 1: him intensely, but they're unable to break him and eventually
Speaker 1: they have to release him. Francesco remains in prison. So
Speaker 1: the police believe Francesco, while perhaps not be the murderer,
Speaker 1: knows the identity of the true killer. And then later
Speaker 1: there's another guy who becomes implicated in this, a fellow
Speaker 1: named Ricardo Vitti. Viti's arrested for the suspected murder of
Speaker 1: several prostitutes in areas of Florence very close to the
Speaker 1: site of the monster's murders. Currently is not considered the murderer,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people say that the Italian courts
Speaker 1: and law enforcement were just trying to get their man
Speaker 1: to get their case closed. But then, you know, we
Speaker 1: go back to the thing we've been talking about this
Speaker 1: entire time, which is is this a lone serial killer
Speaker 1: or is this something deeper? Is there a cult at play?
Speaker 1: Like similar to Berkowitz and the Son of Sam murders.
Speaker 1: Various investigators and criminologists have all argued that the Monster
Speaker 1: of Florence homicides are the result of not only a group,
Speaker 1: but maybe even a group practicing occult esoteric rituals.
Speaker 3: Yikes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this whole notion that this man who took the
Speaker 2: fall for these murders not only wasn't acting alone, but
Speaker 2: was like the least of the involved parties, that he
Speaker 2: was something more along the lines of a courier providing
Speaker 2: these sex organs for the purposes of Satanic rituals or
Speaker 2: black masses. Right, there's an article in the Guardian called
Speaker 2: Italian mass killer was quote servant of Satanic sect Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that comes in two thousand and one, right,
Speaker 1: pretty pretty recent in consideration of the times in which
Speaker 1: these murders occurred. And we should also note here that
Speaker 1: if there's any sand to this, that means the time
Speaker 1: in which the murders we know about occurred. So, Noel,
Speaker 1: can you tell us a little bit about what happens
Speaker 1: in this Guardian article?
Speaker 2: I do, but first I need to make a quick
Speaker 2: correction and I'm so sorry. Earlier I said that it
Speaker 2: was the journalist who was used as the inspiration for
Speaker 2: the character in Thomas Harris's Hannibal.
Speaker 4: It was actually the chief.
Speaker 2: Inspector Ruguero Perugini who was used as that inspiration. So
Speaker 2: I just want to clarify that real quick. But yes,
Speaker 2: Italian mass killer was the servant of a Satanic sect.
Speaker 2: And our Guardian article by Rory Carroll writing from Rome,
Speaker 2: and like you said in this from two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: it's just the notion that there was some kind of
Speaker 2: high level society of Tuscan elite that were carrying out
Speaker 2: these murders, or at least it was on their behalf.
Speaker 2: There was an investigation, a raid that took place in
Speaker 2: the offices of a leading psychologist who was a member
Speaker 2: of the Secret Service, and it uncovered computer discs and
Speaker 2: notes and books and all kinds of things detailing the
Speaker 2: killings and these men who were rated and weren't necessarily
Speaker 2: considered suspects, but it kind of points to some kind
Speaker 2: of deeper cover up involving Paciani, that he was a
Speaker 2: patsy more or less or that he, you know, maybe
Speaker 2: did carry out the murders, but it was that it
Speaker 2: was at the behest of some much more sinister figures
Speaker 2: in high society. They were kind of pulling the strings.
Speaker 4: Like De trou and the De Troux affair in Belgium exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But in this case you've got two guys, Aurelio Metti,
Speaker 3: he's a psychologist with the Secret Service, and this other dude,
Speaker 3: Francesco Bruno, who was a leading criminal criminal psychologist, who
Speaker 3: are actually working on the case of the flor the
Speaker 3: Monster Florence. And what's alleged here is that these guys
Speaker 3: were actually kind of withholding certain parts as Pacciani is
Speaker 3: going to trial and evidence is coming up because they
Speaker 3: are actually implicated in it or part of the major
Speaker 3: reasons for happening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the mystery deepens as well, because in two
Speaker 1: thousand and four there's another inquiry that reopens. The wife
Speaker 1: of a or the ex wife of a chemist named
Speaker 1: Francesco Kalamandre comes forward and accuses her husband, Francesco, her
Speaker 1: ex husband, of being associated with the killings. There's an
Speaker 1: article in the Telegraph Monster of Florence killed on Coult's order.
Speaker 1: In this description. The pharmacist or the chemist is sixty
Speaker 1: years old, and his home is searched for eleven hours.
Speaker 1: Police find ten boxes of pornographic material and associated paperwork,
Speaker 1: and Francesco is one of thirteen people that are put
Speaker 1: under investigation. Officials at this point in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four say they have concrete proof to unmask those behind
Speaker 1: the murders, and they have been carried out according to
Speaker 1: a quote precise esoteric ritual. WHOA.
Speaker 4: So it goes deeper.
Speaker 1: Right, And still, let's say we have to point out
Speaker 1: still this case is considered officially unsolved, and as crazy
Speaker 1: as it might sound to say there's some kind of
Speaker 1: possible occult angle or a cover up recurring, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of troubling, circumstantial things to this case.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And one of them in particular was that in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, when Paciani died of this supposed heart attack,
Speaker 2: a magistrate who was investigating the case, a guy named
Speaker 2: Paolo Kanesa he'd be, actually said on the record that
Speaker 2: he believed that this death was the cause of some
Speaker 2: kind of poisoning to silence him from pointing the finger
Speaker 2: at the real killers.
Speaker 4: And the last lie.
Speaker 2: In this article in the Guardian is what kind of
Speaker 2: leaves me with some chills, and I don't really know
Speaker 2: where to go from here, but I'm gonna give it
Speaker 2: to you. Apparently, Pacian he died with quite a bit
Speaker 2: of assets. He had two homes and about fifty thousand
Speaker 2: lira in the bank, and the idea is that this
Speaker 2: was money that he had been paid hush money. And
Speaker 2: they conjectured that the leader of this sect could have
Speaker 2: been someone like a doctor or a lawyer, or someone
Speaker 2: very high up in that society.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, yeah, very troubling.
Speaker 1: I've found some other strange stuff too, about purported collateral
Speaker 1: deaths occurring in the Monster of Florence case. You can
Speaker 1: find in various forms lists of numbers of suspicious murders, deaths,
Speaker 1: or suicides that surround the case. And there's a lot
Speaker 1: of i would say, allegation or maybe speculation that these
Speaker 1: might be related. These are names of everyone from prostitutes
Speaker 1: to hotel workers, psychists also active or active at the
Speaker 1: time that they were alive, active wizards, warlocks, magicians. It
Speaker 1: gets very fuzzy, very very quickly. And the allegations here again,
Speaker 1: one of the things that I keep going back to
Speaker 1: in this case is that the question of collaboration and
Speaker 1: conspiracy seems pretty it seems very possible. The question to
Speaker 1: me now is just like, what what is the nature
Speaker 1: of this group? Is it a group of people who
Speaker 1: are related to each other and making repeated killings? Is
Speaker 1: it a group of a network in acting rituals, a
Speaker 1: network with enough influence to cover it up or keep
Speaker 1: it keep it from being officially solved? You know, I
Speaker 1: think I think off Air Noel you had compared it
Speaker 1: to True Detective.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, I mean, it's got that.
Speaker 2: And then, like we said, Thomas Harris definitely drew a
Speaker 2: lot of inspiration for this for his fictional book Hannibal.
Speaker 2: So I mean, it certainly has the stuff of great storytelling.
Speaker 1: And I read another. I read another allegation that didn't
Speaker 1: relate to clan killings or to serial killers. An article
Speaker 1: from July twenty seventeen, the Italian Insider mentions the reopening
Speaker 1: of the Monster of Florence murders and also mentions a
Speaker 1: new suspect, a guy named Jimpario Vigilante, who was eighty
Speaker 1: six years old at the time, and the investigation argues
Speaker 1: that this series of murders occurs to function as a
Speaker 1: false flag, a pieta neetra, meaning that according to the
Speaker 1: lawyers arguing this Vieira Rani, he says that the crime
Speaker 1: serve as distractions for magistrates and public opinion from what
Speaker 1: was happening in Italy during the strategy of Tension, the
Speaker 1: series of terrorist acts throughout the seventies and eighties committed
Speaker 1: by right winging extremists, such as the Bologna bombing, which
Speaker 1: aimed to shift the blame onto communists to call communist
Speaker 1: movements to gain support for right wing causes.
Speaker 3: Wow, that's a big conspiracy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you gotta like the simplicity of it, right, And
Speaker 1: they were like, ah, what if the game mousetrap was
Speaker 1: what if we just did that?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 3: But what if that's actually what happened.
Speaker 1: I don't know, it seems it seems sort of far fetched,
Speaker 1: doesn't it.
Speaker 3: It certainly does.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess we could see some of that
Speaker 1: tail wagging the dog in other journalistic aspects, but it
Speaker 1: seems like a lot to murder people because whatever the
Speaker 1: motivation of the cause is, the truth is that real
Speaker 1: people did die, and that seems it seems like actually
Speaker 1: murdering people is going a bit far to distract from this.
Speaker 1: But again, the Bologna ball meme was a real thing.
Speaker 1: So we have at this point no official conclusions or answers.
Speaker 1: And I don't know what do you guys think? Do
Speaker 1: you think there's U Do you think there's a cover
Speaker 1: up afoot?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 3: I think there is. There was some kind of cover up,
Speaker 3: But you know, there are two guys who went to
Speaker 3: jail for most of it, and maybe they were just Patsy's,
Speaker 3: but they did give confessions.
Speaker 2: I think weird rich dudes do stuff like this all
Speaker 2: the time. Probably, I'm not kidding. I really wait, really, Oh,
Speaker 2: I definitely do.
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think any I think as perverse
Speaker 2: and twisted a thing as you can imagine. Somebody is
Speaker 2: paying a bunch of money to do it and are
Speaker 2: able to continue doing it because of their position of
Speaker 2: power and prominence.
Speaker 4: I have no doubt in my mind that's true.
Speaker 1: I argue that there's another force. I bet that could
Speaker 1: be true, But I argue there's another force that actively
Speaker 1: aids and a bets this, which is that governments and
Speaker 1: especially intelligence agencies, when they're functioning on rogue level, do
Speaker 1: encourage these things in order to have I'm not saying
Speaker 1: these murders in particular, but do encourage illegal activities in
Speaker 1: order to have dirt on people. It's blackmail later if
Speaker 1: you can get somebody in a honeypot situation. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying it has to be something wild and out there
Speaker 1: like cannibalism or crazy abuse.
Speaker 4: It could just P tape.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it could be a P tape. It could be
Speaker 1: a prostitute, it could be anything like that, and that
Speaker 1: is a proven tactic of intelligence agencies. We've also heard
Speaker 1: allegations that that extends to much darker and more twisted
Speaker 1: territory than the public knows about. But yeah, that's the
Speaker 1: scary thing about this. We don't have definitive proof that
Speaker 1: it happened, but we have pretty good evidence that it's plausible, And.
Speaker 2: We have pretty good evidence of like the level of
Speaker 2: depravity that human nature can now push people to.
Speaker 1: That's true, especially when it's slowly.
Speaker 2: Escal and when they're corrupted by ultimate power. I don't
Speaker 2: I hate to sound like such a downer on the
Speaker 2: human race, but man, we've seen some stuff.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I would even say just lack of consequences is enough.
Speaker 1: It might not even have a benefit man. Well, the
Speaker 1: terrible news is that modern ritual murders do continue to
Speaker 1: occur in Italy even today. In February of twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: an eighteen year old girl named Pamela Mastro Pietro was
Speaker 1: discovered in two suitcases.
Speaker 3: Yes, her dismembered body had been left alongside this rural
Speaker 3: road near Maserata, Italy. And this is gruesome again here
Speaker 3: you go. Her heart and internal organs were all missing,
Speaker 3: and she's been struggling with drug problems. She recently went
Speaker 3: to this recovery clinic to try and get some help.
Speaker 3: And she was to some degree familiar with the air
Speaker 3: as well as the criminal underground that's there, the people
Speaker 3: who are moving in the shadows giving her pass with
Speaker 3: drug abuse, yes, just getting it.
Speaker 1: So the investigation led law enforcement to the home of
Speaker 1: a twenty nine year old man named Innocent Osagale.
Speaker 4: Well he's fine then, right right.
Speaker 1: Right, nominative determinism all the way. He is in a
Speaker 1: legal immigrant at the time, and he has a criminal
Speaker 1: record for drug dealing and it was probably still selling
Speaker 1: drugs at the time. They believed two of his associates
Speaker 1: are also arrested. Police find blood covered clothing belonging to
Speaker 1: Mastro Pietro, along with knives and blades with her blood
Speaker 1: on them, and her body had been washed with bleach.
Speaker 1: He had washed his hands with bleach. The absence of
Speaker 1: her heart, internal organs, and sexual organs led police to
Speaker 1: suspect the girl may have been sacrificed in what and
Speaker 1: this is the law enforcement's term and what they called
Speaker 1: quote some kind of ritual. According to criminologist Alessandro Muluzi,
Speaker 1: it is a routine to cut victims into pieces and
Speaker 1: in some cases to eat parts of their body in
Speaker 1: this criminal underworld. Mlusi claims that cannibalism is more of
Speaker 1: a rule than an exception in these situations, and then
Speaker 1: people often refuse to speak out about the practice due
Speaker 1: to concerns being called racist. So again we see racism
Speaker 1: raising its head here in Italy because in these reports
Speaker 1: we'll see things where someone will say utto immigrants, or
Speaker 1: murdering people and eating them and whatever other scary thing
Speaker 1: you can think about. But in this case, it does
Speaker 1: appear that at least this guy did kill someone ritualistically
Speaker 1: in order to through supernatural means, accomplish some task in
Speaker 1: the material world. That's what we mean when we say
Speaker 1: ritual murders. Ritual murder is not just to kill someone
Speaker 1: in a way that the killer finds interesting for its
Speaker 1: own sake. It is supposed to create some sort of
Speaker 1: effect in the world. Italian law enforcement claims other drug
Speaker 1: dealers participate in ritual murders with the goal of causing
Speaker 1: madness and death amongst the police population. In December of
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, a forty six year old Morocco woman was
Speaker 1: found in a forest near Verona and her body was
Speaker 1: dismembered into approximately a dozen pieces. There are a number
Speaker 1: of other cases like this you can unfortunately find in
Speaker 1: Italian media. However, the big question is are these actually
Speaker 1: ritualistic murders or is law enforcement portraying them as such?
Speaker 1: And there's a huge historical and cultural context bubbling again
Speaker 1: just under the surface here. How much of the motivation
Speaker 1: for the betrayal of these things as religiously motivated ritual murders,
Speaker 1: how much of that motiveation comes from religiously motivated hysteria,
Speaker 1: how much of it is corruption or incompetence in the
Speaker 1: Italian law enforcement system, and how much in recent cases
Speaker 1: could be attributed to racism. These are questions that are
Speaker 1: tough to answer, but one thing is for sure. There
Speaker 1: was at least one proven active satanic conspiracy slash ritual
Speaker 1: murder group in Italy, and the case of the Monster
Speaker 1: of Florence remains to this day unsolved.
Speaker 3: So don't listen to death metal if you're in Italy.
Speaker 3: That's a bad idea because there's probably some ritualistic murders
Speaker 3: happening somewhere near you within that scene. And then two,
Speaker 3: don't park your car and get amorous with someone in
Speaker 3: the countryside ever, unless you're married and you've got documents
Speaker 3: on the windows.
Speaker 4: This is like Jason vorhe's rules. Dude.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's where that's where we're at.
Speaker 4: Can you do it in a tent? No? There, I
Speaker 4: don't think we talked.
Speaker 1: About at least you want to get stabbed in his
Speaker 1: head or shot in hand.
Speaker 2: And how about we just be safe and to say
Speaker 2: no sex before marriage.
Speaker 3: Dune, that's it, don't do it hard pass, don't wait,
Speaker 3: both of you guys stop right now.
Speaker 1: Oh that's right, Bat, you are married. So at this
Speaker 1: point we end on a question too. We would like
Speaker 1: to hear your perspective on these murders. Do you do
Speaker 1: you think this stuff is being I don't know, like
Speaker 1: falsely advertised as a cult in nature or do you
Speaker 1: think that there's and there is an active cover up
Speaker 1: And if so, does it continue today? And if that
Speaker 1: is the case, then who's doing the covering? Is it
Speaker 1: the Secret Service? Is it an elite group of disgusting,
Speaker 1: perverse aristocrats.
Speaker 4: Is it a.
Speaker 1: Family with a dark secret? We'd like to know. You
Speaker 1: can tell us about it on Instagram, you can reach
Speaker 1: us on Facebook, you can reach us on Twitter.
Speaker 2: Hey, don't forget, We're coming to a city near you
Speaker 2: very soon on our first ever live tour.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're gonna be on tour in the Northeast. You
Speaker 3: can find more information about it right now if you
Speaker 3: go to stuff they Don't Want You to Know dot
Speaker 3: com and click on the live shows tab. You'll see
Speaker 3: everything there and you can get tickets directly.
Speaker 4: Who knows, we might be talking about more Satan stuff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe or not. Could be anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't really know yet, but we're figuring it out.
Speaker 3: That's right. And if you don't want and that's the
Speaker 3: end of this classic episode. If you have any thoughts
Speaker 3: or questions about this episode. You can get into contact
Speaker 3: with us in a number of different ways. One of
Speaker 3: the best is to give us a call. Our number
Speaker 3: is one eight three three STDWYTK. If you don't want
Speaker 3: to do that, you can send us a good old
Speaker 3: fashioned email.
Speaker 5: We are conspiracy at iHeartRadio dot com.
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