Have to apologize and correct what I said yesterday. In 1974, Antonio Vinci would have been THIRTEEN years old. Really? This kid committed those murders, used picquerism to the tune of about 95 stab wounds and shoved a vine into the victim’s vagina? Maybe, but it doesn’t seem likely to me that someone this young had such a highly developed pathology.

Mike

Hiya Mike,
I read this book last year, and I don’t now remember the conclusions particularly well. I do remember that the investigation seemed totally inept, and that there were a litter of suspects some of whom were from the same family. "Team Monster". I’ll have another look through it soon.
Meantime (having looked it up, you mean "picquerism" I’m sure, ha) I certainly agree with you. That seems an extraordinary MO for someone of that age, doesn’t it? Naaa, probably not. Although….

Hi Smithy-

Yeah, that signature of picquerism to the tune of 90+stab wounds in a sort of "pattern" (as I recall), as well as violating someone with an olive branch seems kind of odd for a thirteen year old. The police investigation was incompetent, no doubt. The FBI did a profile and made the killer a lot older than 13 but the age is glossed over in the book. Hide the dirty laundry! The thing is that these guys had a bestseller plastering this Vinci guy’s all over the world in their book as being the killer apparently just because he was the last in line of the "Pista Sarda."

Mike

Mike – I bet "pattern" is another one of those "in the shape of a cross" pieces of BS. I also would bet that the libel laws in Italy are different from ours (and yours.) Last, the book’s a bit sensationalised, plays around with some of the facts, jumps to conclusions, and….. Hey! It’s a bit like the yellow book!

Hi-

I think the "pattern" is something like the stab wounds being concentrated around the pubic and breast areas.

Mike

Gotcha.

They were supposed to make a movie about this case starring George Clooney, but it never happened

My layman’s understanding of serial killers’ psychology would be highly sceptical of a 13yr old perp. Surely that’s too young to have gone through many of the required mental and physical problems during/after puberty that cause people to turn into a sexual psychopath?
If there was some sort of conspiracy it seems it was helped along in no small part by the prevailing attitude of Italian justice at that time. This case sounds way too clouded in corruption, incompetence, and the passage of time to ever be solved.

On recent days a story has been developing in Italy about a man named Joseph Bevilacqua who has confessed to being both The Monster of Florence and The Zodiac Killer.

A low-grade translation from Giornale.it:

A former US Army officer who has lived in Italy tells the "Giornale" to be the most wanted serial murderer in the United States and the multiple murderer who terrorized Tuscany.

"I did not give myself so I would not get others into trouble." An American citizen who was a former US military confessed to being the material author of the crimes that took place in Florence between 1974 and 1985. According to an unprecedented testimony under review in recent weeks by the Florence Public Prosecutor’s Office, the man admitted in a phone call a few months ago to be the serial killer already known in the United States with the name "Zodiac". The testimony on the table of Florentine investigators is corroborated by biographical compatibility and the presence of the author’s identity of admissions in the encrypted messages of the American killer, sent to the US press between 1969 and 1974. It would also be the same person that the postman of San Casciano, Mario Vanni, had called «Ulysses» in a conversation intercepted on 30 June 2003 in the Don Bosco prison in Pisa.

ASSASSIN IS AMERICAN

The document in the possession of the Procura di Firenze and arrived at the Giornale through the magazine Tempi, in addition to containing the testimony, is corroborated by biographical data and the solution of four riddles about the identity of Zodiac, which actually contain the name and surname of man. It is a thin, four-page document, which in clear and clean tones describes an unequivocal admission of responsibility on the part of the alleged serial killer who between 1974 and 1985 killed at least seven pairs of boys in the countryside around Florence. The author of the confessions is a retired former American official with deep-rooted knowledge of the Florentine territory. A man on whom no one had ever suspected until a few months ago. In his twenty-year career in the US Army he had been involved only in a suspected blood episode in Vietnam.

«MY COLLEGES KNOW»

Ulysses according to Vanni and according to this new testimony is the true author of the Florentine serial crimes occurred between 1974 and 1985, as well as the man who between 1966 and 1974, killed at least 6 people in California, claiming their crimes in letters sent to the press and signed with the nickname "Zodiac". The American would have admitted his responsibilities during a phone call of 11 September 2017, but officially reported to the investigators on March 1 of this year. The man according to the witness who spoke recently with the Florentine investigators added: "My colleagues at the Criminal Investigation Detachment (a battalion of the US military present in Livorno until 1969) knew it."

COMPANIONS OF MERENDE

For years on the story of the Florentine serial crimes that took place between the ’70s and’ 80s and in which 14 young people were killed, almost all engaged couples, the curtain had fallen. The investigation, which dates back to 1981, has never recorded any admission of guilt and in the case of the Monster of Florence no one has ever been convicted. The peasant Pietro Pacciani, the last of a long line of suspected "monsters", ended his earthly existence on February 22, 1998 after being acquitted on appeal. Despite this and against the opinions of countless jurists, including the magistrates of the Procura Generale of Florence in 2000 were condemned the alleged accomplices of a "monster" that had been acquitted: the postman Mario Vanni and the unemployed Giancarlo Lotti. However, the trial case has never been closed. The document in the possession of the Giornale reverses the procedural truth that emerges in the trial to the "Companions of snacks" and confirms what has always been the majority of investigators and criminologists had suspected: behind the murders of the Monster there was certainly a company of the poor marginalized like Pacciani, Vanni and Lotti, but someone who, besides knowing how to shoot and possess a gun (something never seen in any of the companions of snacks) had the ability to perform their crimes without ever being identified.

THE MEETING WITH «ULISSE»

The story that led to the admission of guilt by "Ulysses" explains the document in possession of Il Giornale has matured during the summer 2017. The witness (a journalist) met him, became his "biographer" and Ulysses, speaking of his life, made him a resounding revelation.

The reason that provokes the first meeting between the witness and the alleged serial killer in May 2017 appointment during which "Ulysses" seems to be rather nervous is precisely the suspicion of a connection between him and the trial case on the Monster. The journalist does not confess it to him, but "Ulysses" must have at some point understood what the real reason for their meeting is. This is confirmed by the witness writes from the fact that «Ulysses» that day makes more than one ambiguous joke run away. In any case, the witness proposes to «Ulysses» as «biographer», to deepen the knowledge, and «Ulysses» accepts.

During the summer, after some meetings while news leaked about the new investigations on the Monster concerning the former French legionnaire Giampiero Vigilanti, the journalist asks a comment to «Ulysses» on the story.

MACABRE COINCIDENCES

Before insinuating for the first time a connection between the "Zodiac" and the "Monster of Florence" case, the journalist asked "Ulysses" if in 1970 he found himself "by chance" on Lake Tahoe, where one of the crimes was consummated of «Zodiac». "After a silence that lasted twenty seconds, we read in the document Ulysses admitted. Then he said he could not talk about those years because of his work. " Not a minor admission, since in 1970 a victim of «Zodiac», Donna Lass, disappeared just from the parts of Lake Tahoe. So when "Ulysses" admits that he lived in northern California in Santa Rosa in 1969, a few kilometers from the crime scene of several "Zodiac" crimes and that he lived in another theater in 1966 in Riverside, California. of death, the witness realizes that he is probably facing the most wanted American serial killer of all time. Indeed according to the journalist there is no doubt that it is the same American that Vanni said he met. And it is still "Ulysses" to reveal that he "saw Pacciani several times in the woods", indicating to his "biographer" also the area near San Casciano in Val di Pesa that the peasant and he used to frequent.

A CRIMINAL INSTINCT

In addition to possessing the criminal skills that the companions of snacks did not have, «Ulysses» also has the enormous capacity to commit crimes without leaving a trace. His biography speaks clearly: the witness says: "Twenty years in the army, including 10 in the Military Police. He is also a veteran of the war in Vietnam. " After leaving the United States, «Ulysses» settled in a town near Florence in July 1974, a few months after the last «official» letter sent by the serial killer «Zodiac» (dated 24 January 1974) and a few months before of the first certain crime of the Monster of Florence (September 14, 1974). Man, a polyglot who knows both English and Italian, has been familiar with our country since the early 1960s. The reason: he was a soldier in Italy.

One of the findings that the journalist reports is that of the date of birth of «Ulysses». The SFPD, the police of San Francisco, in a report dated January 5, 1970, delivered to the FBI, declares that during the Christmas period the Zodiac Killer had called a lawyer, Melvin Belli, saying that it was the day of his birthday. And «Ulysses» was born that very day. More precisely, on the same day of the first crime claimed by the Killer of the Zodiac in California on December 20, 1968, and the postmark of a letter sent by "Zodiac" to the lawyer Belli (December 20, 1969).

NEVER INNOVATION THE MONSTER

On one occasion, Ulysses would have told the journalist: "Do you want to break the balls at the Monster?" of course not, replies the reporter, but, he adds, are the Carabinieri who are investigating. "Do you think I’ll break my balls?" He answers.

In the next meeting, the journalist submits to "Ulysses" other material, up to two codes written by Zodiac, who later writes the witness will be solved thanks to his suggestions (and which all lead to his name and surname). It is also remarkable that by opening "by chance" the book Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, "Ulysses" has focused precisely on an episodiode which was a source of pride in one of his letters: when October 11, 1969, a few minutes after murder of Paul Stine in Presidio Heights in San Francisco, the serial killer deceiving a couple of policemen shows them the direction in which he had seen a "suspicious person" escape. «Ulysses» knows that Robert Graysmith, the author of the book, has changed surname and even «sighs» to the reading of the name of the detective Dave Toschi. One might assume that he is a mythomaniac if it were not for his photo albums to write the journalist to confirm his words. Ulysses is not lying.

"Vanni? I WILL KILL IT »

One day, the journalist shows "Ulysses" photocopies of some pages of the book Delitto degli Scopeti (by Vieri Adriani, Francesco Cappelletti and Salvatore Maugeri). When he talks about the receipts found in the cars of the last two victims of the Monster, Jean-Michel Kraveichvili and Nadine Mauriot, «Ulysses» says: «They are all the places I go». In particular, "Ulysses" assiduously frequented La Terrazza di Tirrenia, to which belongs one of the receipts found in the victims’ car and on the Via degli Scopeti square where their bodies were found.

The reporter read "Ulysses" the conversation in which Vanni claims that the true serial murderer of Florence is just an American met by Pacciani in a wood. «Ulysses», when reading these few lines, gets angry. "I think they will kill him," he said. "They will kill who?" Asks the journalist. "Vanni." The postman was actually already dead, but the biographer does not tell him. In fact, he reassures him by telling him that the investigators had thought that Vanni was referring to Mario Parker, a tenant of Villa La Sfacciata, a gay fashion designer who entered and left the investigation in the eighties.

«I WOULD LIKE TO CONSTITUTE YOU, BUT …»

On 11 September 2017, the journalist held the solution to the so-called "My name is" the encrypted message that "Zodiac" sent to the San Francisco Chronicle on 20 April 1970. The solution is simple and "Ulysses" suggests it to him. The journalist calls him and says: "There is your first and last name on this letter. Now I’ll read the solution ». «Ulysses» is frightened: «They knew …» he says. In the following lines of the document drawn up by the journalist we read that «Ulysses» now mentions some of the army’s work colleagues who knew his second life. At this point the reporter suggested that he become a "Zodiac" and "Monster of Florence". And also to address a priest. «Ulysses» explains a little cryptic about not having delivered «so as not to get others into trouble». It seems to want to be: "What should I bring?". The journalist advised him to be a lawyer and they greet each other. Since then, it was September 13th, the journalist and the alleged "Monster" no longer heard. And now the most sensational of revelations.

Any way to see these solutions?

Here’s a post on Reddit, which always leaves me skeptical, but has a lot of the arguments laid out in one place (including photos):

https://www.reddit.com/r/ZodiacKiller/c … _florence/

Curious to get other’s thoughts…

Right, it seems this italian article is the only piece of news on the whole Internet relating this story. Google it and you’ll see that no other media has picked up, which has me skeptical.

Alleged Italian solution…

https://ostellovolante.wordpress.com/

Agreed – pretty far-fetched…