Andrea Galli for the“Corriere della Sera”
FRANCO POSA
Time isn't helping. Or perhaps it is—and in fact, it will prove decisive, bringing together the sophisticated advances in the investigation and overturning the hitherto elusive figure of the "Monster of Milan," a source of inspiration for novelists, a recurring thought among retired cops, and a subject of study for historians.
A mysterious figure, perhaps solely because he—the murderer—has been (and remains) untraceable. Fifty years have passed since the first of five murders, all of women and all unsolved, plus two others that occurred in the mid-1960s and may be linked to one of the five.
High-profile cases that garnered media attention from the very beginning, and lesser-known cases that occurred during periods of terrorism, violent daily life, kidnappings, and wars between criminal clans: the murders of Simonetta Ferrero, the boarding house owner Adele Margherita Dossena, the shop clerk Salvina Rota, the fashion designer Valentina Masneri, and the prostitute Tiziana Moscadelli, whose death prompted Dr. Franco Posa, a criminologist, to also investigate the murders of Olimpia Drusin and Elisa Casarotto, also prostitutes, who were murdered in 1963 and 1964.
THE MURDER OF SIMONETTA IN CATTOLICA
A reserved professional and defender of a science often trivialized, working alongside a team of very young colleagues out of a deep personal curiosity and funding the project himself, Posa has launched an investigation into the crimes, hypothesizing that a common hand lies at their root. Never before have we witnessed the formation of an investigative project—certainly still in its infancy—that now requires the support of prosecutors and law enforcement to examine individual case files with the goal, to begin with, of narrowing down the scope.
A triangular area. The killer is believed to have lived and worked within this part of Milan. The geolocation is the result of complex, highly expensive American software used by the New York Police Department and in court proceedings. The software, which requires a full year of training before certification, processed an infinite amount of data using algorithms: the number and types of crimes, profiles of criminals and victims, locations and times of crimes, traffic accidents, public transportation routes and stops…
VALENTINA MASNERI
The findings cover a large, densely populated area of Milan—true—yet they suggest that the focus should not be narrowed to a convergence around Central Station, given the proximity of three murders. At 18 Via Copernico, Adele Margherita Dossena ran a guesthouse. Eight rooms, affordable prices, a frequent turnover of guests—mostly office workers and college students—in a place known for its order, cleanliness, and punctual payments.
At 55, separated, Adele Margherita was the mother of two daughters: Ermide, who would go on to open a hair salon in the Lorenteggio neighborhood, and the other, Agostina Maria—known in the family as “Mariuccia”—the future star of Italian comedy films, Agostina Belli, who spent her film earnings in vain on hiring private investigators. A crime without a culprit. A shrewd woman, Adele Margherita did not keep large sums of money in the small apartment from which she ran the boarding house. Whoever killed her on February 16, 1970—stabbing her in the back, continuing across the rest of her body, and finally slitting her throat—ransacked the apartment or pretended to do so in an attempt to stage a robbery.
ADELE MARGHERITA DOSSENA
The lack of witnesses did not help the investigation. The obvious difficulty in tracking her down suggested a mysterious double life. Adele Margherita did not have one. Nor did Valentina Masneri, a fashion designer, married but childless, who was also stabbed to death—the blows again delivered from behind—in her elegant home at 57 Via Settala. At 5:55 p.m. on March 18, 1975, Valentina was supposed to board a flight to Frankfurt at Linate.
Customers were waiting for her to show them her clothing sketches. The body lay in the living room, on the carpet, between two armchairs. The neighborhood was a slum of thieves and gamblers; the abundance of dive bars provided hiding places. From the four-and-a-half-room apartment on Via Settala, a gold watch belonging to 25-year-old Valentina disappeared; she had opened the door to the assailant while wearing slippers. Her husband, a graphic designer, who had said goodbye to her shortly before returning to work, attacked the police, whom he accused of negligence.
SALVINA ROTA
Forensic investigators isolated a button from a men’s coat, the heel of a shoe, and a blonde hair—which did not belong to Valentina and may have fallen from a friend’s head. The theory of a female killer held until there was a total and definitive lack of evidence. The results of the software “operated” by Posa’s team—which includes a former Army rifleman who served in the Balkans—indicate the hypothetical serial killer’s regular presence (for no less than eight hours a day) at a point within the geographical triangle.
Places where the victims are presumed to have passed through, catching the killer’s eye and drawing his attention—which would have prompted him to begin following them, if he lived in the area, or to strike up a conversation if, for example, he ran a business there. A shopkeeper. Or a self-employed artisan without a steady stream of customers, whose schedule—given the different times of the murders—allowed him to move about freely, leaving and entering the shop without arousing suspicion.
TIZIANA MOSCADELLI
Unless it was added to the timeline after the case was closed. Salvina Rota died on June 16, 1971, around midnight, tortured with a file and strangled. She lived at 4 Via Tonale, where she had returned after her shift as a cashier at a supermarket in Largo Alpini. On the evening of that day, 22-year-old Salvina had met a friend, Teresa, a waitress, who had taken a taxi home (an account that was never proven; a desperate appeal by the prosecutor’s office for that driver to come forward fell on deaf ears).
Rumors circulated about a female killer, with the focus falling on Teresa herself—with whom the victim had shared a lover in the preceding months—as well as a railway worker who was a suspect but lived far from Via Tonale and had an alibi considered solid at the time of the murder. The case file on Salvina Rota was also closed without a culprit. A serial killer may strike near his own home, in an area he regards as the exclusive hunting ground of a predator, or far from his residence to reduce the chances of being immediately identified.
ELISA CASAROTTO
The scenario described corresponds to the second one, if we include the murder at the Catholic University—a crime in which key figures are still alive, such as the then-seminarian, now a bishop, who discovered Simonetta’s body in the bathroom, ravaged on July 24, 1971, by 33 stab wounds. The assignment given by her father, an executive at Montedison, broadened the investigation to include hypothetical plots and professional-institutional secrets—a fruitless lead, much like the hindsight speculations linked to the long-standing friendship between Valentina Masneri and Michele Sindona’s son. The case of Tiziana Moscadelli was simpler. On the surface.
Once she came of age, Tiziana left her family home on Via Voghera and moved into a two-room apartment without a bathroom at 58 Via Tertulliano, which she shared with “Lola,” whose legal name was Salvatore De Natale. Like the transvestite, 20-year-old Tiziana worked as a prostitute in the so-called “lion’s den” between Cadorna Station and Sempione Park, where many people used to loiter to harass and spy, including a certain “Federico the Mad.”
SIMONETTA FERRERO
Well known to the cops, he had been arrested on charges of murdering the girl on February 12, 1976. Tiziana, who refused to work for pimps, was murdered with a knife and a screwdriver; she didn’t work from home and would never have let the “crazy guy” come to her place.
They preferred to stay away, like 45-year-old Olimpia Drusin, who was stabbed in the Greco neighborhood in 1963 and lived near Sempione Park, and like 29-year-old Elisabetta Casarotto, who was brutally murdered the following year—also by stabbing—in Lacchiarella, south of Milan, and who lived on Via Sercognani in the Villapizzone neighborhood.
Posa’s next step, once the project has been approved by the District Attorney’s Office and the investigators, will be to re-examine the autopsy reports, starting with a comparison between Simonetta’s case and the other murders. Serial killers leave a signature in their criminal acts, one that remains distinct even when the number and pattern of stab wounds vary: it resembles the common characteristics of handwriting, even as the shape and slant of the letters change and even the hand used changes. If there is ever a new police narrative, this work by the criminologist—and any discoveries made—will form its opening chapter.
OLIMPIA DRUSIN
Thieves and gambling dens in the casbah