“The Monster of Florence” on Netflix.
© 2023 Netflix, Inc.
After exploring the chilling story of Ed Gein, Netflix is turning to another real-life killer with The Monster of Florence. The new crime drama dives into the terrifying true story of a mysterious murderer who terrorized couples in the area around Florence, Italy, from 1968 to 1985.
Created by Leonardo Fasoli and Stefano Sollima, the limited series opens with the brutal murder of two teens killed in a parked car on their way to a party. When district attorney Silvia Della Monica arrives on the scene, she lies to the public, saying that the male victim gave a detailed description of his attacker before he died, hoping this would lead the killer to slip up.
Over four episodes, Monica and her team reinvestigate the other killings connected to Il Mostro. Each chapter of The Monster of Florence tells the story of a person who, at some point, investigators believed was the killer.
Beyond the investigation itself, the series also captures Italy’s social landscape during the late 1960s through the 1980s, a time of rapid economic growth and cultural transformation that left many rural communities behind.
While Italy was encountering “feminism and sexual liberalization, the countryside remained a patriarchal peasant society where men dominated in the family as fathers and husbands, and women had a subordinate role,” Sollima told The New York Times. He said that might have contributed to the conditions “in which a monster was born.”
The Monster of Florence takes viewers across Italy, but much of the story takes place in the quiet Tuscan countryside surrounding Florence, the area where Il Mostro stalked and killed his victims. Keep reading to learn more about the real-life investigation that inspired the series.
Is The Monster of Florence Based On A True Story?
“The Monster of Florence” on Netflix.
EMANUELA SCARPA/NETFLIX
Yes, Netflix’s new series The Monster of Florence is based on the true story of Italy’s first modern serial killer, known as Il Mostro, who was one of the most brutal murderers in the country’s history. The case remains one of the Italy’s darkest unsolved mysteries, with countless questions and theories still surrounding it today.
The show’s director told TIME that all names used in the series are real. “So whatever you see in the series is what really happened and part of the dialogues that you hear are dialogues which really took place among and between the people,” Sollima revealed.
How Many People Did Il Mostro Kill?
“The Monster of Florence” on Netflix.
© 2024 Netflix, Inc.
Il Mostro murdered 16 people, mostly couples who were attacked while parked in cars, often during or shortly after having sex in secluded areas outside Florence. Several of the female victims were also mutilated.
Il Mostro’s first murder is believed to have occurred in August 1968. Barbara Locci, 32, and her lover, Antonio Lo Bianco, 29, were shot and killed while sitting in a car outside Florence. Locci’s six-year-old son, asleep in the back seat, survived the attack and later called for help, according to TIME.
Over the span of 17 years, eight young couples were killed, with victims ranging from Italian youths to French tourists. In each case, the same .22-caliber Beretta pistol loaded with Winchester “series H” bullets was used, suggesting the murders were committed by a single person with access to the weapon.
The latest murders Il Mostro is believed to have been involved with happened around September 1985. French couple Jean Michel Kraveichvili and Nadine Mauriot were shot and stabbed during a camping holiday in Italy. Mauriot was one of four women whose bodies were mutilated, according to CBS News.
What Was The Sardinia Trail?
“The Monster of Florence” on Netflix.
EMANUELA SCARPA/NETFLIX
After Locci’s murder, her husband, Stefano Mele, was charged with the crime and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He initially confessed to killing his wife and her lover, but later retracted his statement.
Stefano then implicated several men of Sardinian origin, who were all allegedly lovers of his wife, which led investigators down the “Sardinia Trail,” which theorizes that the killer may have been tied to the Meles, a family of Sardinian immigrants in Tuscany.
Francesco Vinci, one of Locci’s former lovers, was arrested first and held for over a year. Mele’s brother, Giovanni Mele, and brother-in-law, Piero Mucciarini, were also detained, but Il Mostro struck again in 1984 while they were in custody, so they were cleared as suspects.
Salvatore Vinci, Francesco’s brother and another former lover of Locci, was a person of interest in his wife’s suspicious death in Sardinia. He was arrested but later acquitted, according to TIME. All Sardinian suspects in the Sardinia trail were finally cleared by 1989.
Who Is Il Mostro?
Unfortunately, investigators have never been able to uncover Il Mostro’s true identity. It’s been 40 years since the Il Mostro’s last murder, and the Beretta pistol used in the killings has never been recovered.
Throughout the investigation, police suspected dozens of men of being the killer. Five men were imprisoned for the crimes at various points, but each time, another murder occurred while they were in jail, leading them to be released. One of these men had confessed, according to CBS News.
“There was not a single perpetrator who has been sentenced for all 16 murders,” the show’s director, Sollima, told TIME. “We decided to tell the story from the beginning, when investigators started connecting the dots and realized this might be the act of a serial killer.”
Sollima added that the series purposefully does not take a stance on who the killer actually was.
“We wanted to tell the story of the Monster without taking a position,” he continued. “Instead of focusing on the investigation, we kept it in the background and decided to focus on the individual suspects who, in each episode or case, were considered by the investigators to be the culprits.”
In March 2022, families of Il Mostro’s victims demanded a new probe into the case, asking prosecutors in Florence to follow up on potential leads.
“We want a fresh look at a lead concerning a suspect named in an old police file who was never investigated properly, as well as DNA found on anonymous letters,”lawyer Valter Biscotti, who represents Estelle Lanciotti, the eldest daughter of French victim Nadine Mauriot, told AFP at the time.
Lawyers representing the families of Nadine Mauriot, Jean Michel Kraveichvili, and Carmela De Nuccio, also requested access to the case file of former suspect Pietro Pacciani, a farmer.
Pacciani, a convicted murderer who was also found guilty of raping his two daughters, was sentenced to life in prison in 1994 for the murders of six of the eight couples. However, he was acquitted by an appeals court two years later, according to CBS News. He died of a heart attack in 1998 at age 73.
The Monster of Florence is streaming on Netflix. Watch the official trailer below.