The Monster of Florence

By June 1981, seven years had passed since the Borgo San Lorenzo murders, and as with Stefano Mele, they were all but forgotten.  On Saturday, June 6, 1981, investigators were again stumped when a police sergeant on a country walk with his young son accidentally discovered the bodies of 21-year-old Carmela De Nuccio and her 30-year-old lover, Giovanni Foggi.  The sergeant had first noticed a copper-colored Ritmo automobile parked alongside the road.  The doors to the vehicle were closed, but a womans handbag was lying next to the drivers side door, with the bags contents scattered about the ground.  His curiosity obviously piqued, the sergeant decided to move in for a closer look.  As he made his way to the vehicle, he noticed that the drivers side window had been smashed. Sitting at the wheel of the vehicle was the body of a young man whose throat had apparently been slashed.  The sergeant immediately left the scene to call the crime in to headquarters.

Investigators at Foggi crime scene

As investigators joined the sergeant at the crime scene, they soon discovered the body of a female victim lying at the bottom of a steep bank, just 20 yards away from the red Fiat.  Her legs were spread apart, her T-shirt and jeans were slashed, and most ghastly of all -- her vagina had been crudely removed.  There were no tracks and no witnesses.

An autopsy revealed that they had both died of multiple gunshot wounds while sitting in the vehicle.  Subsequently, the young man had received three stab wounds, two to his neck and a third to the chest.  The excision of the girls vagina had been performed with an extremely sharp apparatus, thus prompting the pathologist to conclude that the killer had skill in the use of cutting instruments. 

Ballistic reports indicated that both victims were killed by a minimum of seven gunshot wounds from a .22-caliber automatic pistol with Winchester rounds.  This revelation quickly raised the eyebrows of veteran detectives, and they requested that the bullets be compared to the ones recovered from the 1974 double murder.  A ballistics match was made, and investigators were beginning to realize that they had a possible serial murderer on their hands.

Investigators focused their attention on Enzo Spalletti, an occasional voyeur, whose red Ford had been seen parked near the scene of the crime.  Although the suspect gave investigators a confused alibi, they were more interested in the fact that he had talked with his wife about two corpses and a copper-colored Ritmo automobile as early as 9:30 in the morning, telling her that he had read about them in the paper, whereas the story did not actually come out until the day after the bodies were found. Spalletti was quickly arrested for the crime and placed behind bars to await trial.