Serial killings of 1968-1985 may have been masterminded by society figures in an occult group

Police in Italy have reopened inquiries into the Monster of Florence case, the serial killings that inspired the creation of Hannibal Lecter. The people of Tuscany had thought the story was over - the last victims were killed 16 years ago while the "monster" alleged to have murdered them died in 1998. But yesterday detectives in Florence said there were new suspects for the murder and mutilation of eight couples between 1968 and 1985.

Police now believe that a group of between 10 and 12 wealthy, sophisticated Italians orchestrated ritualised murders over the course of three decades and got away with it, allowing their careers and reputations to blossom to this day.

Detectives who were tipped off by a series of anonymous letters are questioning a key witness and have sent magistrates a file which is believed to name some of the suspects, including a doctor and an artist.

The sect's requirements were precise: night-time executions of courting couples followed by mutilation with the help of a .22 Beretta revolver and a surgical knife.

Pietro Pacciani, an illiterate farm labourer, was convicted in 1994 of seven of the eight double killings. The conviction was overturned and he was awaiting a new trial when he died. Despite his denials few doubted that the stocky Tuscan, who in his youth had murdered a travelling salesman by stabbing him and stamping on him, was indeed the Monster of Florence.

A month before his death two friends, Mario Vanni and Giancarlo Lotti, were convicted and jailed for helping to kill the couples, and were sentenced to life and 26 years respectively.

Case closed, it seemed.

But some investigators were uneasy. There were unexplained factors and leads that were not followed up. How, for instance, had Pacciani saved more than £50,000 and bought two houses? What did he do with his bloody trophies? Who was the mysterious doctor Lotti referred to in court as the man who ordered the jobs?

The novelist Thomas Harris, sitting in on the original hearings, seemed to share suspicions that a society figure had masterminded the gore and so made his fictional killer, Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist.

The head of Florence's detective force, Michele Giuttari, believed Pacciani was too sloppy to have planned the crimes. They started in August 1968 when Antonio Lo Bianco, 29, and Barbara Locci, 32, were shot in their car. A pattern was set: it was always a moonless night on a weekend in an isolated lane.

The Germans Horst Meyer and Uwe Rusch Sens were murdered in woods near Galluzo in September 1983. One had long hair and may have been thought to be a woman. The last couple, French, were slain in September 1985 as they camped in a vineyard near the village of Scopeti.

Detectives have found evidence of what they believe was an occult group which directed the three peasants, Pacciani, Vanni and Lotti (who were known collectively as the peeping toms because of their nocturnal ramblings) to commit the murders.

Pacciani and Vanni were also alleged to have participated in black masses which used female body parts at the house of a supposed wizard in San Caciano, a popular tourist destination because of its Romanesque Pisan church. Nurses at a clinic which hired Pacciani as a gardener claimed that he told them a doctor presided at other satanic ceremonies.

A Swiss artist, now being questioned by police, was allegedly part of the group. After he left the area in 1997, police found drawings of mutilated women and newspaper cuttings of Pacciani's trial in the artist's farmhouse.

The investigating magistrate, Paolo Canessa, believed Pacciani's heart attack in February 1998 was triggered by drugs to silence him, lest he reveal the real monster, or monsters.

Fetishists



Detectives made little progress until a few months ago when a series of anonymous letters, containing details about the killings that had never been made public, revealed that a woman in Genoa had useful information.

Although she was described in letters but not actually named, she was tracked down last week to an apartment shared with her sister. Italian media suggested she was one of the prostitutes that Pacciani visited during trips to Genoa's red light district in the 1980s. Detectives are checking why the last letter was intercepted and opened by someone in the police station.

Massimo Introvigne, a religious historian who helped police in the original inquiry and advised the FBI, told the newspaper La Repubblica that Tuscany, which partly inspired the poet Dante to write his classic about the inferno, had a long tradition of sorcery. He said American anthropologists noted a phenomenon of medieval chants and invocation of the devil in the 19th century. "There are elements that make the [police] hypothesis possible. Experience teaches us that deviant groups do exist," said Professor Introvigne.

He stressed that occult sects were not necessarily satanists and that the ritual nature of the murders suggested fetishists were to blame.

Magistrates must now decide whether to seek prosecutions for those named in the police file.



Why Hannibal went to Tuscan capital



One of the visitors to the Florence court spellbound by the 1992 trial of Pietro Pacciani was the novelist Thomas Harris.

The true tale of serial killers who shot and mutilated courting couples in Tuscany caught his imagination.

Not just for its horror but because of the suspicion that Pacciani was not the real Monster of Florence but a pawn who acted on the orders of a powerful high society figure, possibly a doctor or surgeon.

Harris was inspired to locate his third novel, Hannibal, in the Tuscan capital, and echoes of the real life case reverberated during filming of the novel in Florence last year.In the fictional story, Lecter (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) escapes from custody in the US and resurfaces as the custodian of the Capponi library, with all the refinement and homicidal impulses attributed to the suspected "real" monster.

Politicians and locals objected to the filming on the grounds that Florence's reputation had been sullied enough by the murders without being used as the setting for Hannibal's appetites.